Family Guys: Detonating the Irish Nuclear Family

Abstract

In July 2011, the Cloyne Report was published. It examines how both the Catholic Church and the state handled allegations of abuse against 19 clerics in the County Cork diocese up until 2009. Shortly after its publication, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny delivered an impassioned speech to Dáil Eireann, the Irish Parliament, condemning the Vatican and the institutional church in Ireland. Kenny accused the Vatican of downplaying the rape and torture of children to protect its power and reputation and of refusing to cooperate in investigations as recently as three years ago. His speech marked a watershed moment in the state’s deteriorating relationship with the Catholic Church, not least because in it he made clear that Canon Law may never be exempt from the laws of the state:

This is not Rome. Nor is it industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity, and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish Catholic world. This is the Republic of Ireland, 2011. A republic of laws, of rights and responsibilities, of proper civic order, where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version of a particular kind of morality will no longer be tolerated or ignored.¹