The Catholic Church should cease to trade

In late 2001 Enron, a global blue-chip energy company with roots in the 1930s, declared itself bankrupt following revelations of accounting fraud, criminal insider dealing and corruption. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen, the company responsible for auditing and therefore hiding Enron’s accounting malpractice, fell with Enron for prevarication and obstruction of justice. Individuals such as Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow were prosecuted and found guilty of their crimes.

In 1945 the death of Adolf Hitler hastened the demise of the German Nazi Party, the organisation responsible for the extermination of over twelve million Jews, homosexuals, Roma, mentally and physically handicapped people, Slavs, Communists and dissidents. Individuals such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Konstantin von Neurath were prosecuted and found guilty of various crimes. Allied governments prevented the resurrection of the Nazi Party after the war.

The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect formed after a schism in 1955, effectively came to end after the siege of Waco in 1993. The sect had been accused of child abuse and rape, among other things more important to the US authorities, and although the charges at the eventual trial reflected the authorities’ priorities there is no doubt that Vernon Howell would have been prosecuted had he survived the siege.

The Ryan Report, published in May 2009, and the Murphy Report, published this week, have concluded that the Catholic Church in Ireland is guilty of perpetrating systematic and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse of children for the last seventy years, of protecting and retaining the services of priests accused of these crimes, of failing to release information about these practices to the relevant authorities, of obstructing any efforts to prosecute or even publicise the abuse and of continuing to allow the abuse within its organisation. Successive governments (in the case of the Ryan report) and members of the Garda Síochána (in the case of the Murphy Report) have been shown to share a large part of the blame for failing to act on accusations and actively protecting the Church and its criminal element. Although it is not a criminal offence, the Church is also failing to show any remorse for the crimes committed under its auspices and within its ranks.

The Church in Ireland is not alone in these accusations, as priests in Canada, Australia and the United States have also been accused – and in some few cases convicted – of child abuse and independent reports have echoed the findings of the reports in Ireland. In total there are thousands of accusations and thousands of priests implicated in the abuse. Many dioceses in the US have been forced to file for bankruptcy either because of paying or in order to avoid paying compensation. And the only response from Rome has been to suggest that homosexuality is a pre-requisite for paedophilia.

Whether the Church is to be regarded as a religious organisation, a political organisation or an economic organisation there is considerable precedent to support the idea that as an organisation it should be dismantled in its entirety and should cease to exist in its current form. The Catholic Church has become not only obsolete and irrelevant to modern life but also a dangerous enemy to modern society. It has strayed so far from Christian principles of charity and protection as to be unrecognisable as a Christian entity, and instead shows the principal characteristics of a mafia-like organisation or a totalitarian regime.

There is no doubt that not all Catholics are bad people, in the same way that not all Germans were Nazis and not all bankers are thieves. They have a right to a church in the same way that Germans have a right to membership of a political party and businessmen have a right to trade; this is beyond dispute.

However, the Catholic Church as it operates today must close its doors permanently and the people who are responsible for the abuse – including those who have attempted to cover it up – should be prosecuted in a civil court and punished for their crimes. Only then can a new church be constructed on the basis of more acceptable ideals, if that is what the Catholic faithful want, and only then can the rest of us see that justice has been done.

Keeping your house in order

It seems Google are in hot water. Four executives are being prosecuted in a Milan court after four high school students bullied a teenager with Down’s Syndrome, filmed the bullying and posted the video on the internet. The father of the victim, as well as an organisation that defends the rights of people with Down’s, are accusing the Google executives of “defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data”.

Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.

This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.

The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.

The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.

Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.