Combatting the spin on the Irish sexual abuse scandal

Gerald Warner at the Telegraph said the media spin seems to be placing the blame for the Irish priestly-abuse scandal on the pre-Vatican II Church. He begs to differ:

Revealingly, the Report says: “As is shown in Chapter 4, canon law appears to have fallen into disuse and disrespect during the mid 20th century.” Yes; and we all know why – the post-Vatican II anarchic denunciations of “legalism”, of “oppressive” sexual morality and Church teaching generally, promoted by the modernists. As regards implementing canon law against abusers, the Report concedes that Archbishop McQuaid “set the processes in motion but did not complete them [difficult to do when you are dead]. Archbishops Ryan and McNamara do not seem to have ever applied the canon law.”

Well, who ever did, in the trendy, let-it-all-hang-out 1970s and 1980s? The image that has sedulously been propagated is of Irish child abuse perpetrated by priests in soutanes and birettas, cowled monks muttering Latin incantations and nuns in starched wimples and mediaeval habits.

On the contrary, the nightmare orgy of relentless mortal sin recorded in this report was committed by modern priests, with a strip of white celluloid in place of a Roman collar – if they deigned to wear clerical dress – devastating their church sanctuaries as badly as they devastated childrem’s lives, abolishing all the devotions such as Benediction, the Rosary, regular confession, devotion to saints, etc that had sustained Irish faith for centuries. One priest admitted to abusing over 100 children. For that he was indulged; but if he had celebrated the Latin Tridentine Mass his feet would not have touched the ground.

The BBC (to turn to light relief) has exploited this scandal in a style that vindicates its claim to have succeeded Pravda as the leading disseminator of disinformation. A radical priest was produced on Radio 4 to testify that an excessively strict code of sexual morality in the Church was to blame: one shudders to think what excesses would have been committed if the code had been more lax.

Was clerical celibacy the problem? prompted a BBC interviewer. Of course it was. We all know that what a priestly abuser of boys (and this is mainly a homosexual scandal – the Report records a ratio of 2.3 boy victims to 1 girl) needs is a wife – ask any of the Anglican vicars who have provided a living to the red-top tabloids for generations.

Let us set the record straight.