Enda Kenny, Taoiseach, delivered an astonishing speech to the Dail yesterday during which he lambasted the Vatican in ways unprecedented in the history of the Irish Republic. It was, indeed, a republican speech of the best sort during which the Taoiseach asserted – reasserted would, alas, be too innacurate a way of putting it – the primacy of the state over canon law. At long last a senior politician, responding in this instance to the Cloyne report into clerical child abuse in that diocese and the church’s willingness to cover that abuse up, has stood up to the habitual denial, obstructionism and duplicity of the church in these matters.
As Mr Kenny put it:
“It’s fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But Cloyne has proved to be of a different order.”
“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.”
Just in case there was any doubt, he concluded:[…] Mr Kenny continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.”
Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.” As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne Report, as Taoiseach, I am making it absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the Church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic.
It’s 12 minutes long and one of the most remarkable speeches ever given by a senior Irish politician and, in some ways, one of the most significant too. Here is the full text.Not purely, or simply or otherwise.
This has needed saying for years, so hats-off to Enda Kenny for saying it.
Comments