Church and state - The Vatican response is unsurprising

THE Vatican’s response to Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s criticisms will do little to bridge the widening gap between traditional Irish Catholicism and those Irish people — including a growing number of disenchanted Catholics — who believe the interests of this society and corporate Catholicism are no longer compatible.

This may seem almost as academic as trying to agree about how many angels might dance a quadrille on the head of that infamous pin. For some it may even be as irrelevant as the fact that today, September 5, is the day designated to remember the life of a seventh-century Benedictine abbot who lives on in Catholic observance as St Bertin.

However, in a country where religious persecution has been at the root of so much hatred and bloodshed it would be foolish to pretend that the seeds of a destructive social schism do not exist within the Vatican’s, and the Irish Catholic hierarchy’s — past and present — response to the uncovering of so much child abuse at the hands of protected, recidivist clerics.