AP reports that a hard-hitting speech to the lower house of Ireland's Parliament, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny delivered an unprecedented attack on the Vatican's handling of priest sexual abuse in Ireland. The move comes after the release earlier this month of a report on failures in the Diocese of Cloyne to report abuse to civil authorities. (See
prior posting.) In his speech (
full text), Kenny said:
Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic...as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.
And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism....the narcissism .......that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.
The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation'.
Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict's "ear of the heart"......the Vatican's reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.
This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded.
