He has attacked an institution that was already terribly weakened by what has already been revealed, and just as the institution has been revealed as being run by fairly mediocre people.
He has gone for the jugular of an animal that won't fight back.
Well, as someone who is neither Irish, a priest or a child abuser, I don't have to keep cringing, and I must say that it looks to me as though the Irish political class is trying to lay all of the ills of Ireland on the one institution that it can get away with portraying as worse than itself.
Was it the Church which brought Ireland to bankruptcy? Is it the Church which runs the most crony-ridden political system in Europe outside the Eastern Mediterranean? Is it the Church which is putting people out of work, and cutting the salaries of those fortunate enough to stay in?
Has every abused child in Ireland been abused by a religious? Has every crime covered up in Ireland been covered up by a religious?
And if you enumerated all of the corruption and hypocrisy in Irish public life, would the Church or its religious be responsible for all of it?
"Filth" was the word the Pope used to describe those who abused children, and I agree with him, and would probably be much more intemperate in language and in action were one ever to come into range.
But the idea that an Irish politician - especially one who has climbed to the top of his country's greasy pole - can blame the Church for the corruption of his country would be a joke, were it not such a nauseatingly cynical example of naked self-interest identifying a scapegoat.
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4 comments:
Truly well spoken, Sir.
This is the most spectacular exercise in passing the buck for the failure of an entire generation of politicians in living memory.
I had to do with Ireland and remember an absolutely shocking degree of moral corruption and malpractice. Much worse than in Italy, which says something.
Mundabor
It's even worse than you say: the Taoiseach blamed the vatican, thus giving wiggle room to a bunch of disloyal and disobedient priests who have been posturing about recently. Perhaps he wants a "new National Church" of his own, subordinate to the State ...
OFF TOPIC:
Ttony, your email address appears to have been hacked.
I congratulate you on this article. It sums up my own thoughts exactly. It is simply amazing that a country such as Ireland, which used to supply priests and nuns to the world, should sink to the depths to which it now wallows.
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