'Moral Monopoly'

Watching videos like the one embedded below make me feel quite fortunate to have grown up in the modern Ireland, where a staunch Catholic upbringing wasn't the 'common sense' approach to take.

Whenever I hear a disgustingly nostalgic account about the 'Catholic Ireland' that was left behind, I think about the testimonies of people like this whose lives have been shattered by those who once held a moral monopoly*.


[Brought to my attention via http://www.atheistmedia.com/]

Good riddance to Catholic Ireland.

*An interesting aside: Tom Inglis' book 'Moral Monopoly: The Irish Church in Modern Irish Society' published in 1987 is a a fantastically relentless broadside against the evils perpetrated by the church from a pre-sex-scandal era. The 1998 updated edition: 'Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland' dials back the tone considerably, and features an extra chapter cataloguing the 'fall' of the church in a rather sombre manner, as if eulogising a stern, misunderstood father, rather than the merciless tyrant that the first edition personified the institution as.

Why the rose-tinting, Irish commentators? Answers on a postcard in the comments!