It is simply not good enough that less than 10 out of 90 child sexual abusers released from prison this year will receive the standard course of treatment for child abusers, the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe has said.
Addressing the annual Values and Ethics conference in Ennis, organised by the Ceifin Institute, Dr Willie Walsh said yesterday: "Simply naming and shaming abusers, venting anger and acting out of revenge may be understandable but contributes little to the reform of abusers or the protection of children."
He said the Catholic Church must ask itself a lot of uncomfortable questions arising from the issue of sexual abuse.
He asked: "Has celibacy been a contributory factor in the area of abuse? Has our training as priests and religious in some way stunted our growth as sexual beings and does priesthood attract more than its share of people with psychosexual difficulties?"
Dr Walsh asked, if the Church has been too concerned with laws and orthodoxy and too little concerned with human development and human relationships.
"Has the virtual absence of female input into either sacramental ministry or decision-making areas of the Church been a serious distorting influence?" Bishop Walsh asked.
Reflecting on the influence of the Church on Irish society in the 20th century, Dr Walsh said that the "hand and glove operation of authorities of Church and State was often oppressive, authoritarian and without accountability".
He said: "This close connection sadly led to the Letterfracks and the Magdalen homes.
"I had occasion to visit Letterfrack recently. Those of you who have some knowledge of that area will know what I mean when I say that back in the 1940s to send a boy from Dublin to Letterfrack - you might as well have sent him, like criminals of old, to Van Diemen's land."
Dr Walsh claimed the ideals set out in the most inspiring documents of Vatican II never became a reality and that "the Church during the 20th century became too obsessed with what one might call personal holiness".
"There was a belief that to meet God and attain real holiness one needed to get away from society rather than taking an active role in it. There was little connection between religion and daily life.
"This led to a privatisation of religion and placed morality very much in the private individualistic sphere," he added.
Bishop Walsh said: "I have no yen to return to the old certainties. But we appear however to have moved so far in the opposite direction that we are in real danger of losing any real sense of right or wrong."
"There is growing evidence of the privatisation of morality with the common adage that 'his/her private life is his/her affair'."
There was little debate on morality, either private or public, even if the distinction between public and private in the area of morality is valid at all.
Bishop Walsh said that for the Church to change, he believed "we have to look at ourselves in a radically different way than we have been doing".
"I believe that one of the difficulties that the Church has made for itself is that it has seen itself in some way as an end in itself. The Church always came first and protection of the Church was more important than protection of the children.
He said that if anyone challenged Church authority, they were clearly wrong and had to be defeated - the Church could not be wrong. "We must be prepared to listen and take advise on the many positions which we thought were sacred," said Bishop Walsh.
Though acknowledging the work of the media in uncovering the scandals of sexual abuse, Bishop Walsh said: "Can I ask the media to be aware of the danger that it might use its power to occupy that oppressive and uncompassionate role which hopefully the Church has vacated or at least begun to vacate."
He said later: "One of the most painful truths in our world is the truth that we live in a society and in a wider world which is hugely unjust. It seems to me that the single greatest and most urgent challenge facing us in this new millennium is to begin to work seriously towards the creation of a just society."