The Irish Affliction
"The Irish responded to the publication in 2009 of two lengthy, damning reports — detailing thousands of cases of rape, sexual molestation and lurid beatings, spanning Ireland’s entire history as an independent country, and the efforts of church officials to protect the abusers rather than the victims — with anger, disgust, vocal assaults on priests in public and demands that the government and society disentangle themselves from the church."
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"Ireland’s move away from the Catholic Church began before the reports were released. Between 1974 and 2008, regular Mass attendance dropped by some 50 percent. The situation today highlights a problem that is looming for the Vatican, especially in the West, as the global sex-abuse crisis, coupled with the increasingly conservative rule and top-down control that have prevailed since the 1970s, is contributing to the departure of populations the church once considered foundational. “Ireland is a prime example of what the church is facing, because they made this island into a concentration camp where they could control everything,” Mark Patrick Hederman, abbot of Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in County Limerick, told me. “And the control was really all about sex. They told you if you masturbated, it meant you were impure and had allowed the devil to work on you. Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up.”"
Full Text:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Irish-t.html?pagewanted=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210
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