The impact of “the Vatican” on the Irish Church is over-rated. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Irish bishops pay only nominal felicity to Rome, and in practice ignore well over 90% of Church rescripts. For example, there are only five parishes in Ireland that offer a weekly Traditional Mass but the Vatican demands that it be celebrated in every parish. Not a single diocese in Ireland has implemented Redemptionis Sacramentum or much else indeed besides. Still even as bad as the postconciliar priests are, it would not be impertinent to point that according to the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report of 2002, around 320,000 people were raped in childhood, about 4 per cent of child rapes have been perpetrated by the clergy.

The Dublin Report did not conclude that Canon Law impeded the prosecution of clerics, indeed it was never even applied. As Chapter 4 of the Report noted, after Vatican II there was a “collapse of respect for canon law [CIC] in archdiocesan circles … offenders were neither prosecuted nor made accountable within the church”. The 1917 CIC “decreed deprivation of office and/or benefice, or expulsion from the clerical state for such offences”. A bishop who heard of an abuse allegation was canonically required to investigate it, and expel the priest from the priesthood if found guilty in a canonical trial (which was to happen parallel and independently of a civil prosection). The anti-’legalistic’ mindset after the Second Vatican Council lead the post-conciliar Archbishops to ignore the CIC and only two canonical trials ever took place in the period under reivew (both were in the 1990s) and in spite of severe opposition from Monsignor Sheehy, the archdiocesan “expert” in canon law and ultra-liberal, who “considered that the penal aspects of that law should rarely be invoked”.

Veteran commentator/journalist/economist Joe Foyle made an interesting observation on the Studies blog about Diarmuid Martin’s remarks on Prime Time about the collapse of diocesan severity in the 1960s:

“It seems that around the 1960s a major policy change emerged. In line with the secular anti-punishment mood of the times, it was decided that the defrocking sanction was inhumane and that, instead, rehabilitation should be attempted to enable offenders to continue to work as priests. The policy change backfired when offenders re-offended. That hurt children and blighted lives gravely, cost Dioceses and Congregations hundreds of millions, evoked ‘cover-up’ allegations that undermined Bishops and the priesthood in general, and ushered in our current era of Catholic laity who are effectively priestless.”