Religious orders - The groups must accept responsibility

The controversy over the amount of money the religious orders should pay to indemnify the state for compensation in relation to the abuse highlighted in the Ryan Report has no more to do with the tenets of faith or religion than the actual abuse had anything to do with religion.

What happened was an obscene contradiction and perversion of Christianity. It should be clearly recognised that it was all the worse because it was done in the name of Christianity. That is why it is so important that the whole issue should be cleared up.

There has been too much prevarication already. Good, idealistic people in the Church have been betrayed by their own administrators being more concerned with covering up the abuse, rather than dealing with the problems properly.