Thy Rod and Thy Staff

Further revelations have emerged in Ireland about the importance of religious faith in protecting law and order. Senior members of the Garda, doubtless recalling the joys of their own Catholic upbringing, gave priests immunity from investigation, let alone prosecution. On at least one occasion the Garda and the heirs of St Peter collaborated to ensure that a complaint of abuse never went to trial, and to enable the person accused to leave the country. In an uncompromising access of ethical Britishness, the latest report on the wonders of faith schools describes this relationship as "inappropriate". Investigators found "no direct evidence of an organised paedophile ring among priests in the Dublin archdiocese", presumably because the practices of the Church and the Irish government made such things about as necessary as an organised expenses-fiddling ring in Westminster.

A campaigner for victims' rights has challenged the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak to visit Ireland and apologise for "the betrayal of children" by those who were only supposed to beat the true faith into them. Rather bizarrely, the campaigner claimed that only a visit from the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak would exonerate the Church of culpability in the abuses for which the Church is in fact culpable, and which a certain Cardinal Ratzinger was once rather anxious to cover up.