Losing Moral Authority

Ireland voted decisively to repeal one of the world’s more restrictive abortion bans, sweeping aside generations of conservative patriarchy and dealing the latest in a series of stinging rebukes to the Roman Catholic Church.

Ireland was, until not very long ago, a theocracy in all but name. The scandal about the "Magdalene Laundries", where unwed women were effectively enslaved by the Catholic Church, began to break about 20 years ago, first with the publicity around mass graves on Church properties. The laundries were essentially prisons of a sort where rampant abuse of women and children took place. The Irish government denied being involved, but the ties between the state and the Church showed that denial to be a lie.

The Irish people came to realize that their black-cassocked overlords were little more than power-mad beasts. To the extent that the Roman Catholic Church has accepted any responsibility for what went on, it has done so rather grudgingly, as it has around the world for similar crimes.

The Church, in advance of the constitutional referendum, attempted to exercise its self-proclaimed moral authority. Two-thirds of the voters effectively told them to go fuck themselves.