Take on the EU, not the Church

THERE was a time, not too long ago, when people would look at events in history, such as the penal laws in Ireland, and wonder how any society could really believe in such practices.

Not so much as to how they could have been implemented, because history gives us many examples of unjust administration, but how people, presumably people just like ourselves, could possibly have supported such obvious injustice.

The astonishing populist attack by Enda Kenny against a church which has a significant membership in this country is a case in point. Over the past several years an ongoing campaign of vilification has been waged against that Church at a variety of different levels by public and private organisations, both national and international. This has been complemented by an atmosphere of mass hysteria on the issue of child abuse leading to more and more extreme measures for protection, which in reality are only cynical exercises in vote catching.