Malachi O’Doherty says his nieces and nephews are helpless at funerals.
Raised without religion, they are flummoxed by the practices and customs that accompany a Catholic ritual. Though he himself left the church as a teenager in the 1960s, he’s ambivalent about the loss of a binding and, at times, beautiful religious culture.
“People are rejecting something they don’t even remember,” said O’Doherty, whose 2008 book "Empty Pulpits: Ireland’s Retreat from Religion" chronicled the impact of secularization on Ireland. “We may have only a sterile, secular culture that looks at the Catholic Church as an army of priests raping children.”
(...)
Another reason for the church’s relative strength in the north may be that neither the northern dioceses nor the local government have thoroughly investigated clergy sexual abuse.
A series of church-based and government investigations in the south revealed widespread abuse of children as well as illicit heterosexual relationships extending over the last quarter of 20th century. Compounding the problem, offending priests had been reassigned by bishops, seeking to cover up or ignore problems. Full story...
Related posts:
Raised without religion, they are flummoxed by the practices and customs that accompany a Catholic ritual. Though he himself left the church as a teenager in the 1960s, he’s ambivalent about the loss of a binding and, at times, beautiful religious culture.
“People are rejecting something they don’t even remember,” said O’Doherty, whose 2008 book "Empty Pulpits: Ireland’s Retreat from Religion" chronicled the impact of secularization on Ireland. “We may have only a sterile, secular culture that looks at the Catholic Church as an army of priests raping children.”
(...)
Another reason for the church’s relative strength in the north may be that neither the northern dioceses nor the local government have thoroughly investigated clergy sexual abuse.
A series of church-based and government investigations in the south revealed widespread abuse of children as well as illicit heterosexual relationships extending over the last quarter of 20th century. Compounding the problem, offending priests had been reassigned by bishops, seeking to cover up or ignore problems. Full story...
Related posts:
- Archbishop says Irish Catholicism at 'breaking point' over child abuse...
- Irish prime minister's stinging attack on Vatican over child sex abuse...
- Anger mounts in Ireland at Vatican silence on Cloyne sex abuse report...
- Thousands raped and abused in Catholic schools in Ireland.
- Vatican ordered Irish bishops to hide child abuse...
- Irish Catholics go online to lose religion...
- High tension between Vatican and Ireland over child abuse cover-up.
- How the Irish police closed their eyes to paedophile priests...
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