Christianity and hypocrisy

MARGARET HICKEY (Letters, August 1) operates a diligent and vigilant perspective in her comparative dissection of the child abuse revelations of the past recent years.

One wonders, though, what her underlying driving force really is. To parse and pickle the various reports is at once both laudable and self-defeating.

The state has indeed failed many family situations in respect of child protection. But the Catholic Church has long travelled the pious road of purity of esteem and holy divine righteousness, while it simultaneously and knowingly violated, manipulated and grotesquely subordinated the fragile rights of children to protect its own selfish power systems.