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THERE'S an episode of Father Ted in which Dermot Morgan makes a painful attempt to put the Catholic Church's most serious problem in some sort of perspective. "We're not all like that," he explains. "Say there's 200 million priests in the world and 10 per cent of them are paedophiles. That's still only 20 million!"
After the tragic and sickening revelations of the last few weeks, that joke suddenly seems a lot less funny.
The report into child abuse in the diocese of Cloyne, which definitively shows that Archbishop John Magee failed to follow his own church's rules on how allegations of child sex abuse by priests should be dealt with that the church's problems in this area are as grave as ever.
Even more depressing in some ways, however, has been the response of Magee's fellow bishops.
Instead of showing some moral leadership by calling on the man to resign, most of them seem to believe this is a troublesome little incident that will blow over if they can just brazen it out for another few days.
INSULT
Their craven attitude proves once and for all that despite everything the public has learned over the last 15 years, the church itself has yet to learn the first thing about its own cardinal sins.
Now Sean Brady, the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, has added insult to injury by describing Magee as a "dependable and reliable" man who should stay on to ensure that proper child protection guidelines are put in place.
For the victims who suffered in silence while the "dependable and reliable" bishop sat on his hands for so many years, the insensitivity of Brady's language is breathtaking.
Incredibly, however, all the signs are that his statement of support has the full backing of the Vatican - and, by extension, Pope Benedict himself.
The evidence against John Magee is overwhelming. Despite being fully aware of what the Ferns inquiry had revealed about clerical child abuse in Ireland and the outrage at the way abusers were moved around, he ignored the systems put in place to ensure the same couldn't happen again.
The effect of this news coming out is predictable - fury, hurt and a suspicion that the church has learned nothing.
This is not the first time, of course, that Magee has found himself the centre of controversy. A former secretary to three Popes, in 1978 he famously claimed to have been the person who discovered John Paul 1 dead in bed.
When it eventually became clear that, in fact, a nun had been first on the scene, he brushed it aside by declaring: "I did find him -- I just didn't find him first."
This latest scandal is of a completely different moral order, of course, but Magee's attitude clearly hasn't changed in 30 years -- the smugness, the weasel words, the abject refusal to accept any culpability for his own actions.
Even now, he apparently cannot bring himself to appear on camera and give a proper explanation (or even a simple sorry) to the victims who suffered for his sins. To be fair to the church, it is clear that many ordinary, decent priests are shocked by these revelations and are desperate for their leaders to take some sort of stand.
The Augustinian monk Fr Michael Mernagh voted with his feet by travelling from Cobh to Dublin in a "walk of atonement" that was joined by hundreds of concerned Catholics along the way.
PAINFUL
He was later greeted at the Pro-Cathedral by Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin who has dropped several hints that Magee should quit.
By now, however, it should be clear hints are not enough.
Martin must unite with other Irish clergymen, politicians such as the Minister for Children Barry Andrews and lay Catholic groups in making a clear statement calling for Magee to do the decent thing.
That might or might not have the desired effect -- but it would at least be a positive step in the long and painful process of dragging the church into the 21st century.
Or at least out of the Dark Ages into which the Cardinal has now plunged it.
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Sotto Voce
(Source: EH)