John Guillaumier appears to have relaunched his campaign of vilification against the Catholic Church, focusing mainly on paedophile scandals.
Mr Guillaumier is, of course, right to castigate the Church for failing to deal with the foul activities of a small minority of priests over the years. However, he fails to make any attempt to place the whole sorry business in any sensible context.
The UK is currently being regaled with clear evidence of widespread sexual abuse of minors over half a century by one its most famous public figures (Sir Jimmy Savile) in hospitals, schools, possibly orphanages and within the BBC itself.
As often happens, everyone suspected but no one acted. Schoolteachers, scoutmasters, taxi drivers, you name it, there have been convictions galore over physical and sexual abuse of helpless children over the past 20 years. Cruelly, but logically, the majority of cases have involved family members.
In my role as family doctor over the past 25 years, I have been consulted by a significant number of “adult survivors” of child abuse of all manner and form. Each has had a tale of horror to tell; each has impressed me with their courage, and, sadly, by the serious and lasting harm done to them.
I have also met folk with previous convictions and several others going through court proceedings over such issues.
One of the constant themes has been the failure of people around the perpetrators to realise quite what was going on under their very own noses. Even the most cursory study of statistics will demonstrate failure within all the public services – police, social workers, doctors, the teaching professions as well as parents and grandparents – to identify these activities within the community.
To add to this, it was common to treat paedophilia with counselling alone, assuming that warnings and discussion would be enough to persuade these people to change their behaviour. Sometimes they did. Tragically, however, many did not, as we now all realise.
The fact of the matter is that society as a whole has only just begun to grasp just what a serious and widespread problem the issue of sexual abuse of children is within our communities.
The Catholic Church, for Mr Guillamier’s information, has actually led the way in the UK in instituting child protection regulations. That is small comfort to the victims of priestly crime but, in common with all other public institutions devoted to the common good, it is cleaning up its act.
Narrowly focused attacks on the Church by certain commentators over one issue also fail to acknowledge the extraordinarily good work all churches have done in the community. Such commendable work includes care for the sick, the dying, the poor and, yes, in the vast majority of cases in a loving and selfless manner, children in need.
Mr Guillamier might like to take a step back and examine the extremely serious issue of the sexual abuse of young people in a sensible and proper manner instead of making use of it as a tool with which to pursue his own private campaign against the Church.