Back Issues / 2000

An old priest, who taught in a Minor Seminary for many years, was fond of recounting that at the beginning of the school year he would stand at the window of his room and observe the arrival of the new pupils. These young boys of 14 years of age had enrolled in the school intending to go on for the priesthood. The priest noted that many a pale faced youth was accompanied by a ‘lantern-jawed parent with a vocation’.

Over the past 30 years almost all the developed countries have seen a great increase in the rate of divorce, the number of single-parent households and the number of births outside marriage. The reasons for these changes are many. Women have acquired greater economic opportunity and the independence that goes with it. Far fewer are now forced to choose between the misery of a failed marriage and penury. The easing of the divorce laws reflects the demand for greater personal freedom.

Throughout the 1990s there were constant reports of child sexual abuse on a dreadful scale. We heard, too, often in revolting detail, of the sexual and physical abuse of residents in industrial schools and orphanages. This abuse occurred in religious and secular institutions. A number of recent Irish studies have pinpointed the abuse of children by clergy and religious, a number of whom have been convicted of such abuse. These studies have painted a dark picture of clerical and religious institutions and of the religious congregations that managed them.

2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997