@Gareth Miskelly: I started to watch is too scattered so far haven’t made the full first episode is badly directed

@Peter Higgins: Where the Irish brand of Catholicism was powerful child sex abuse has been a cancer. Ireland, US and Australia have the worst rates of child sex abuse .

@Barry Somers: abuse is not part of catholicism as a faith. I’m Not saying the church didn’t do wrong. But if it was part of the religion it would be illegal to practice catholicism now. We are talking about different things. Tony Daly suggested it is part of catholicism. I’m a Catholic and live the faith. Abuse in the church hurt catholics too but our understanding and perseverance in our faith is worth it.

@Aoife Pedreschi: “love the faith”. Not live …… I’m no saint ☺

@Aoife Pedreschi: clerical sexual abuse of children was pervasive, organised, facilitated co-ordinated and hushed up by the institutional Roman Catholic Church and which enabled the foul evil to thrive for so long.

@Barry Somers: she’s right though .. they may have covered it up but it’s not the tradition of Catholicism. . That’s not what Catholicism itself is about .the abuse was done by paedophiles .. if that priest chose a different profession or career instead of becoming a priest . He would still be a paedophile..

@Aoife Pedreschi: so many Roman Catholics turned a blind eye to what happened so as to protect the institutional Roman Catholic Church and to put the interests of the Roman Catholic Church ahead of its child victims.

The pernicious evil is such that even today many “loyal” Roman Catholics minimise and evade the issue of the reality of clerical sexual abuse of children facilitated by privileged access to children.

@Suzie Sunshine: Clerical sexual abuse is part of the cultural reality of Roman Catholicism. It was pervasive and it straddled many continents.

@Tony Daly: it’s not part of the Catholic faith though .. there’s a difference.

@Tony Daly: you notoriously comment about the abuse of the Catholic Church Tony. Even on unrelated articles. The institution of the church right back to jesus himself and passed onto st Peter is a beautiful faith of love and compassion. Human error and evil can manifest anywhere especially in a place where someone can be given a place of power. Power is often abused. We see it in government, social services and so on ….. these of which also turned a blind eye in the past. abuse is not part of the teaching of catholicism that’s what I’m tryna say. But i think you know that. It’s a pity all you do is equate the church to abuse when really there is alot more to offer and alot of good being done.

@Aoife Pedreschi: it is certainly not practicised with love and compassion. It is and was perpetrated with evil exploitation and tacitly supported by devout and loyal Roman Catholics, the bulwark of the institutional Roman Catholic Church.

@Tony Daly: I’m a Catholic Tony and I love my faith. You can hide behind your fake profile with your friendless facebook page and hate all ya want.

@Suzie Sunshine: I know what you mean Suzie but often people don’t make the distinctions between inspirational Christianity and the failings of denominational Christianity.

The roots of the current mess is when the Catholic Church jettisoned its scientific heritage to concentrate on ethics after the Galileo affair . Just as the individual is connected to the Universal in physical terms or the individual is to the Eternal in inspirational terms , this disintegration was always going to happen and give rise to such thing as reason vs faith, science vs religion, truth vs superstition and things like that.

Ask anyone here if they can be inspired or inspiring and nobody is going to deny it but that is what it means to be spiritual and it can be found in saint or savage.

@Aoife Pedreschi: it is your entitlement to love a faith which has been institutionally implicated in widespread sexual of children, as shown in the Murphy and Ryan Repirts.

@Aoife Pedreschi: Your opinion doesn’t change the fact that the Church’s own founder and scriptures do endorse abuse of underage and frail little girls. http://www.romancatholicism.co.uk/paedophileslovebible.html http://www.romancatholicism.co.uk/patronofpaedophiles.html

@Aoife Pedreschi: best get your head out of the sand their Aoife. Of course its a tradition backed at the highest level

@Tony Daly: if a maths teachers abused multiple victims does that make maths intrinsically linked to abuse or is maths just maths?

@Aoife Pedreschi: nonsense, RCC is the ashes of the roman empire. An evil organization

@Tony Daly: it not only Catholicism . Sure doesn’t Islam follow a peado as their example of how to live .

@Anto Curran: exactly.

@Mumpsimus: Same god.

@Anto Curran: well if maths had a governing body that sent a letter to every maths Bishop in the world telling them not to report any rape or abuse of a child by their math teachers and to only contact the governing body and not the authorities in their respective math jurisdiction. That’s called a criminal conspiracy, but you know all this

@Aoife Pedreschi: all hail the sky fairy.

@Anto Curran: if there was a divine being of maths and a person they chose as their representative on earth raped kids you’d have to ask why the divine being would do that wouldn’t you? The all seeing, all knowing one chose paedos as his representatives. Or at least that’s what the Bible says. I can’t believe people are trying to trivialise this. The last pope moved paedos from parish to parish,as did the guy before him, haven’t heard any such stories about the new guy so I won’t speculate. It’s not some fringe members of the organisation, it’s the whole Damn thing. Any organisation that defends the rapers of children in the name of God does not deserve to be free. Does not deserve to be defended and does not deserve the support of its followers.

@Aoife Pedreschi: This particular documentary is a mere snapshot of what happened here in Ireland, Australia, across the United States and many, many other places. Catholic priests raping children, and the Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals covering it up, in full knowledge of their acts (they received detailed reports of the abuse), and moving the paedophile priests on to new parishes facilitating further abuse of other small children over the course of decades. Don’t forget that Jesus was a Jew who founded Christianity, he was not, nor had any hand in, the foundation of the cult of the Roman Catholic Church that you follow and adore, that was founded centuries later, and has been a plague on humanity since. In The Keepers one victim tells how the priest wished to cleanse the young girl of her ‘sin’, which was her being sexually abused by a relative when she was an infant, he made her feel guilty about it. His ‘cure’ was to ejaculate in her mouth and tell her it was the Holy Spirit ‘cleansing’ her.

So be proud, love your faith, but know that it has destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people, and even though you are continually presented with overwhelming evidence of how evil Catholicism is, you choose to devote yourself to it.

@Anto Curran: I think that it would be unfair to suggest that child sexual abuse was endemic and systematic amongst Match teachers in contrast to the way it was so endemic in the Institution of the Roman Catholic Church.

@Aoife Pedreschi:

@Aoife Pedreschi: sorry, all this vitriol must be tiring. If we could just look at some legitimate stats (not conjecture), the Australian commission is currently putting the percentage of abusers at 7%. If that was used as an acceptable aggregate across a community that would put about 10 sex offenders on my street and a couple of hundred within a 1 minute walk. Does that not seem a bit “off” to you? What would you think if that was,say, Scientologist? Wouldn’t you think that said something quite fundamental about their organization?

@Tariq Ibn Ziyad: Mohamed saw nothing wrong with marrying and having sex with a child….. but yea catholicism is the only evil one . Pot kettle. I’m against all religion’s but ive yet to find one as oppressive and hate fuelled as islam. How many terrorist attacks have been in the name of jesus this week?

@Mumpsimus: yeah those religious types are very ropey.

@Michael Devlin: I think the christians are pretty good at killing too….just got better PR.

@Aoife Pedreschi: you are going off topic now by attacking @tony daly personally to gain leverage in your argument.

@Aoife Pedreschi: Your points are correct and well stated. However, you are aiming them at a dumb target. Keep firing though, you might knock the chip of the shoulder. As for the topic in question, The Keepers, I doubt if those making most comments have even watched it. If they did they would see that what happened inside that “school” was as much carried out with the direct involvement of the police as well as the priest. Cathy Cesnik was a good catholic. Maskel was evil and should have been outed by the Catholic Church, as Mr Daly says, but, that as you say does not make every catholic responsible. Neither does it create a platform for keyboard warriors to tell us all that we are stupid for following such a faith and it is not their business.

@Tom Fennelly: the last two popes before this one protected paedophiles. God’s chosen representatives on earth are guilty of aiding and abetting paedophiles. Why did God chose such filth? How is it not the whole organisation when it runs from the very top all the way down?

@Dave O Keeffe: Oh don’t get me wrong, I had to bring a bully of a priest to the steps of the High Court myself – before he signed a written apology. I was fighting out of my own bank account while he enjoyed the facility of the church solicitor funded by the money put on the Sunday plate collections. However, in my time, going back to the fifties I have also seen good decent compassionate and caring priests and despite your correct analyses of the cover ups I do not think it is anyone’s business to dictate to anyone that they are some kind of imbecile for being a catholic. There is nothing wrong with anyone defending their catholic faith. What is wrong is when the Popes and Bishops fail to defend it, That is why 1.285 BILLION Catholics in the world are right – by choice – and Tony Daly is wrong

@Tony Gordon: you and your mate Tony are just trolls.

@Tom Fennelly: in my opinion Christianity is a good faith run by bad people. Once people see that that can be Christian without strict adherence to those people it’ll be a beautiful day. Christianity is what you do not who you take orders from. The people involved in the acts and the cover ups need to be jailed and disowned. The flock needs to realise that they already know right from wrong and are capable of being good Christians without the corrupt church

@Michael Devlin: That was a story-book, this really happened, and stop deflecting by shouting ‘but look over there!’. Show some respect to the victims.

@Tariq Ibn Ziyad: Tariq you’re very confused …… Jesus did in fact found catholicism. He handed it to his right hand man Peter the apostle who became the first pope. Who was then crucified upside down in St Peters square in Rome. Catholicism has a direct link to jesus.. even history can confirm that.

@Tariq Ibn Ziyad: you’re a hippocrit . You are the one deflecting. You use every opportunity to attack the Catholic faith when your own faith is just as barbaric. I read your anti Catholic comments on a post about our first openly gay leader. Meanwhile in saudi arabia gay men are being thrown off buildings in the name of allah. Trolling posts putting down catholicism isn’t making your beloved islam any better. It wont change the fact Muhammad by today’s standards was a child molester , a bigot and a war monger. Its sickening what catholic priests done to children but please explain how its worse than a 6year old CHILD being forced to marry Mohamed . Barbaric!

@Barry Somers:
I watched your clip and realised that I was actually sitting in front of Michael O’Brien when he made that impassioned speech. As can be seen the Politicians were struck dumb and you could hear a pin drop . (Leo Varadkar take note.)
I met Michael in the green room afterwards . I gave him a hug and told him what all victims want to hear most of all and that is I believe every word you said and am so sorry that this awful abuse happened to you , even worse by the people who were supposed to care for you. People seem to forget that it was Catholic children who were abused and that we were and still are outraged by this criminal behaviour and the cover ups.Not in my Name.

@Aoife Pedreschi: be careful when using the phrase “in fact” when talking about something with one source written by people with a vested interest.