I Will Send Wild Beasts Among You

The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, successor to the well-known children's friend and Nazi-sniffer Cormac Murphy O'Connor, has responded to a five-volume, 2600-page Irish report on the wonders of faith schools by commending the courage of those who are forced to let their sins be concealed by the Roman Catholic Church rather than exposed and punished by an amoral secular state. Nichols also noted that "we shouldn't forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that [the various sadists and paedophiles] also did", though he does not appear to have gone into specifics. As a matter of fact, the report does mention that "a word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives ... Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected." Well, if such conduct did no harm at Nineveh, I suppose it can hardly have bothered a few thousand children "deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families - a category that often included unmarried mothers". The report also concludes that the faith schools' "management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care", and that inspections were carried out with due respect for the staunch and deeply held beliefs of the criminals whose activities they were supposed to be monitoring. In a similar spirit of charity and forgiveness, the report's findings will not be used for prosecutions, and victims of abuse will receive compensation from the Irish government only if they give up the right to sue the church.