¹ The territory of the Archdiocese of Armagh and of the dioceses of Clogher, Derry and Kilmore includes counties in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

² The reports are available online: The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (The Ryan Report), available online at http://www.childabusecommission.ie/ [accessed May 30, 2011]; Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (The Murphy Report), http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504, [accessed August 1, 2012]. The Ferns Report, released in 2005, was the first official Irish government inquiry into the allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic diocese of Ferns.

³ The Ryan Report, Vol. 1, Chapter 3, p. 41.

⁴ Earner-Byrne, Lindsey, “Child Sexual Abuse, History and the Pursuit of Blame in Modern Ireland”, in Holmes, Katie and Ward, Stuart, eds., Exhuming Passions: Memory and the Pressures of the Past in Australia and Ireland (Dublin & Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2011), p. 51Google Scholar. Earner-Byrne also notes: “As Britain began to reform and undo its industrial school system, Ireland clung reverentially on despite many commentators questioning the validity of the system in a state that (in theory) venerated the family…. The Irish Free State inherited the industrial school system, and within seven years of its existence it expanded the grounds for committal including non-attendance at school, poverty and neglect.” Ibid, p. 61.

⁵ “The welfare of children and justice for victims was subordinated to the priorities of maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservations of its assets.” (Murphy Report 1.15)

“There was little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child or the welfare of other children who might come into contact with the priest.” (Murphy Report: 1.35)

“In his dealings with Fr. Edmondus in 1960 he [Archbishop McQuaid] aimed at avoidance of scandal and showed no concern for the welfare of the child.” (Murphy Report: 1.37)

The Commission notes the “extraordinary charity shown by complainants and their families towards offenders”. These “frequently behaved in a much more Christian and charitable way than the Church authorities did”. Many indeed expressed concern for the welfare of the priest concerned (Murphy Report: 1.105).

⁶ Patrick Murphy, Opinion Piece, The Irish News (May 3, 2012).

⁷ Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (Dublin: Veritas, 2005), no. 118Google Scholar.

⁸ ‘To speak of social sin means in the first place to recognize that, by virtue of human solidarity which is as mysterious and intangible as it is real and concrete, each individual's sin in some way affects others. This is the other aspect of that solidarity which on the religious level is developed in the profound and magnificent mystery of the communion of saints, thanks to which it has been possible to say that “every soul that rises above itself, raises up the world.” To this law of ascent there unfortunately corresponds the law of descent. Consequently one can speak of a communion of sin, whereby a soul that lowers itself through sin drags down with itself the church and, in some way, the whole world. In other words, there is no sin, not even the most intimate and secret one, the most strictly individual one, that exclusively concerns the person committing it. With greater or lesser violence, with greater or lesser harm, every sin has repercussions on the entire ecclesial body and the whole human family. According to this first meaning of the term, every sin can undoubtedly be considered as social sin.’ Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, no. 16. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia_en.html [accessed September 8, 2012].

⁹ Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, no. 8. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html [accessed September 2, 2012].

¹⁰ Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Diocese of Cloyne (The Cloyne Report, July 2011), available online at http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/Cloyne_Rpt [accessed September 2, 2012].

¹¹ The Report of the Independent Child Death Review Group, by Geoffrey Shannon and Norah Gibbons, available online at http://www.dcya.gov.ie/documents/publications/Report_ICDRG.pdf [accessed September 1, 2012].

¹² Published in The Irish Times, May 15, 2010.

¹³ The Second Tranche of Safeguarding Reviews undertaken by the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI), September 2012. The Diocese of Cork and Ross fully met 42 of the 47 standards set down by the Catholic Church in its guidance document published in 2009, and partially met the remaining five standards. Available online at http://www.safeguarding.ie/safeguarding-reviews-2nd-tranche-september-2012/ [accessed September 8, 2012].

¹⁴ Report on the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Irish Province. Available online at http://www.safeguarding.ie/safeguarding-reviews-2nd-tranche-september-2012/ [accessed September 8, 2012].

¹⁵ Robert Orsi, “A Crisis about the Theology of Children”, Harvard Divinity Bulletin 30:4 (Spring, 2002), pp. 27–30. Orsi suggests that the roots of the crisis lie in our troubled theology of childhood.

¹⁶ Pastoral Letter of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland, March 19, 2010, no. 4. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20100319_church-ireland_en.html [accessed, August 30, 2012].

¹⁷ “Church: A Culture of Abusive Relationships?”, Conference of the Irish Theological Association, March 18–19, 2011; the “Broken Faith, Re-visioning the Church in Ireland” conference held in the Milltown Institute, April 6–9, 2011; and, taking a different approach, the interdisciplinary conference on “Childhood in Irish society”, organized by the School of Theology and the Department of Irish Studies of Mater Dei Institute, Dublin City University, April 18–19, 2011.

¹⁸ “Crying unto Heaven: A Liturgy of Lament”, held in the oratory of the Mater Dei Institute, Dublin, in August 2010, was broadcast on national radio. Available online at http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/crying-unto-heaven-liturgy-lament [accessed, August 30, 2012]. The “Liturgy of Lament and Repentance for the sexual abuse of children by priests and religious” in St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, February 20, 2011, was prepared principally by survivors.

¹⁹ Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organizational Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

²⁰ Ethna Regan, “Barely Visible: The Child in Catholic Social Teaching”, paper delivered at “Childhood in Irish Society: An Interdisciplinary Conference”, Mater Dei Institute, Dublin, April 18, 2011.

²¹ A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1971). Rawls, influenced by the cognitive-development theories of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, treats children in terms of their moral development and their capacity to acquire a sense of justice.

²² Dorr, Donal,Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Catholic Social Teaching, rev.ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 369–77Google Scholar.

²³ Justice in the World, pars. 36, 40. Official text in English available online at http://www.osjspm.org/majordoc_justicia_in_mundo_offical_test.aspx [accessed August 30, 2012].

²⁴ A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor's Marianist Award Lecture, ed. Heft, James L. (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Hiberno-Romanism was itself a subset of a wider neo-ultramontanism that swept the Catholic Church in the nineteenth-century. See Barr, Colin, ‘“Imperium in Imperio”: Irish Episcopal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century’, English Historical Review, Vol. CXXIII No. 502 (June, 2008), pp. 611–650CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ “Rome's formidably obedient servant”, The Irish Times (September 10, 2011), review of Cardinal Cullen and his World, edited by Dáire Keogh and Albert McDonnell (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011).

²⁷ Chenu, Marie-Dominique, La ‘doctrine sociale’ de l’ Église comme idéologie (Paris: Cerf, 1979), pp. 29–30Google Scholar.

²⁸ Curtis, Maurice, A Challenge to Democracy: Militant Catholicism in Modern Ireland (Dublin: The History Press Ireland, 2010), pp. 204–5Google Scholar.

²⁹ Lindsey Earner-Byrne, “Child Sexual Abuse, History and the Pursuit of Blame in Modern Ireland”, p. 67. [see note 4]

³⁰ Review of the Irish Province of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, available online at http://www.safeguarding.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Spiritans.pdf [accessed September 8, 2012].

³¹ This emphasis on the oppressive nature of the Catholic Church in post-Independence Ireland is often accompanied by a forgetfulness of our history of having an established church, the (Anglican) Church of Ireland, which was disestablished in 1869. Enda McDonagh notes that the churches in Ireland – North and South – often behaved as if they did have some established status, despite the fact that after 1869 there was no established church. “Church and State: The Case of Ireland”, New Blackfriars (September 1989).

³² Statement by the Taoiseach on the Dáil Motion on the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, in Dáil Éireann, 20 July, 2011: “The revelations in the Cloyne report have brought the Government, Irish Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture. It is fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports, Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. However, the Cloyne report has proved to be of a different order because for the first time in this country a report on 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. In doing so the report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day. The rape and torture of children were down-played or managed to uphold 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 is the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion on which the Roman Church was founded. Such radicalism, humility and compassion comprise the essence of its foundation and purpose. This behaviour is a case of Roma locuta est: causa finita est, except in this instance nothing could be further from the truth.” Available online at http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2011/07/20/00013.asp [accessed August 30, 2012].

³³ Keogh, Dermot, Ireland and the Vatican: The Politics and Diplomacy of Church-State Relations 1922–1960 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), pp. 366–369, p. 369Google Scholar.

³⁴ Andrew McMahon, ‘The Politics of Child Abuse’, The Furrow (November, 2011), pp. 602–615, p. 606.

³⁵ Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 195.

³⁶ Afterlife, Dublin: Daedalus Press, 2010.

³⁷ See “Loss and Hope in the Irish Catholic Church: Part I”, Doctrine and Life, Vol. 62, No. 4 (April, 2012), pp. 16–27 and “Loss and Hope in the Irish Catholic Church: Part II”, Doctrine and Life, Vol. 62, No. 5 (May-June, 2012), pp. 35–46. Ganiel describes “de-institutionalisation” as a sociological process linked to the wider processes of modernisation, secularisation and globalisation.

³⁸ Ganiel, “Loss and Hope in the Irish Catholic Church: Part II”, p. 46.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ The ACP was founded in 2009 to be a voice for Irish priests, particularly in promoting Vatican II reforms and now has more than 800 members. Their survey, carried out by the market research company Amárach, found that more than a third (35%) of Catholics go to Mass once a week and more than half (51%) attend once or more each month.

⁴¹ Ryan, Fainche, ‘Why were we silent? The role of the “simple faithful” in Ecclesial Structures’, Doctrine and Life Vol. 60, No. 8 (October, 2010) pp. 15–26, p. 24Google Scholar.

⁴² The Liberation of Theology, trans. Drury, John (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979), p. 209Google Scholar.

⁴³ Regan, Ethna, Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010), pp. 114–133, p. 121Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Metz, J.B., Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. Smith, David (London: Burns & Oates, 1980), p. 232Google Scholar.