A question about Church sexual abuse

I came to Ireland in 1973. My husband was a Catholic and our children were reared as Catholics. He was a teacher in a small, private boys' boarding school run by an order of priests, some of the priests would come to the house on occasion and have a cup of tea. He also had an uncle who was a priest and visited occasionally.

I had no previous experience of priests beyond the ones that very reluctantly married us abroad. I had no reason to have any opinion on them one way or another. The one or two from the school that called on us to chat were pleasant enough, and I had some interesting discussions with one in particular.

In all aspects of life the Church was there, which did get on my nerves. You could not organise anything of a social nature without there being a priest involved somewhere along the line. In one case I joined a casual, social discussion group where we talked about life, the universe and everything (but nothing contentious, like sex or women's rights) and the PP saw fit to join the group, freely admitting it was to ensure that we didn't discuss anything 'inappropriate'.

In another case the Parish Priest/Chairman was asked by the primary school management board (on which I was a Parents' Representative, which was very open minded of the parents ) to go to the DoE with a specific request. He had a different opinion, but everyone else was in agreement. We found out more or less by accident that he had actually put his own opinion rather than the Board's (and had been turned down, which destroyed our options). We could do nothing about it as the DoE would not talk to anyone but the Chairman - the priest. He thought he knew best, the department thought he knew best and there was nothing anyone else could do about it. That was what you were up against.

However, at no time did I hear anything that might suggest any impropriety at all, not at the secondary school or the primary school, or indeed anywhere. I am not suggesting that there was nothing happening, just that I, or anyone I knew, was not aware of any issues.

I did have a run-in with a nun who wanted my daughter to write with her right hand even though she was left handed. There was no abuse, she told me that Sister said she should use her right hand, I went and had words with Sister and that was the end of that.

I know that it is difficult now to understand this level of unawareness. There are different attitudes to what is acceptable and what is not. There is an entirely different outlook on what can be repeated outside the home. There is a different approach to guilt and fault. People had far less communication with each other and discussion of what might or might not be happening was 'gossip' and not to be encouraged. Communication with 'authority' was pretty much impossible for the average person.

It is easy now to say 'why didn't people do this' or 'you should have done that'. It was a different time. It does not make anything right to say that, but time has moved on and we need to make sure that things continue to improve.

In 40 years time I wonder what the new generation will look back at and say, how could you allow it to happen.

How could you allow the Travelling community to not educate their children, to live in caravans by the roadside, to not pay tax, or whatever the mores of that future time considers to be most important?

How could you allow an education system that dictated a person's entire working life by two weeks of exams in their teens? Will they say 'could you not see how unfair - and unproductive - this was'?

How could you allow a criminal on the streets to re-offend, or imprison him/her without attempting to reehabilitate them? You must have seen how much damage they did?

How could you allow anti-social families to raise anti-social children to continue the spiral of criminality? You must have known about them?

Or any number of other things that may in the future be seen as utterly unacceptable? This is not comparing clerical child abuse with the leaving cert of course, this is trying to point out that from a distant vantage point things are much easier to sort than they were on the ground, at the time.

The church has lost a lot of its power and influence, it will eventually fizzle into insignificance. The next question is, for the benefit of those who like or need to be told how to live, what will take its place? If it becomes a toothless ceremonial as it is in many countries, maybe that will be sufficient. For the moment it is more important that the grip that it still has on some parts of life that do not concern it be loosened, so that it becomes a more accountable and manageable entity that serves, rather than controls, those parts of society that need it. That we can and are doing, and it is much more useful that trying to look back and find someone to blame.