While most of us were gorging ourselves yesterday, Ireland was busy digesting agovernment report on their own clergy sexual-abuse scandal. Its verdict? Over a period of thirty years, diocesan authorities systematically covered up sexual-abuse allegations against clergy--in collusion with the police. The L.A. Times reports:

Thecommission, which investigated how the church and state agencies handled three decades of endemic child abuse by priests in the Irish capital [from 1974 to 2004], also criticized police and social and health authorities who, with a few exceptions, it said, ignored complaints or simply referred allegations back to the church hierarchy.Presenting thegovernment-commissioned report at a news conference in Dublin, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern spoke of his "revulsion" on reading the findings and called them a "scandal on an astonishing scale."

Ring any bells? The seven-hundred-page Murphy Report, three years in the making, studied how the archdiocese handled abuse allegations against a sample of forty-six priests who worked in Dublin between 1974 and 2004. (Eleven of the forty-six have either been convicted of or pleaded guilty to sexual assault. The rest are dead--or haven't been prosecuted.) According to the report, the archdiocese demonstrated an obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal, while showing little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child.The archbishop has apologized. So have the police. And the government has promisedswift action.Other main findings from the report (from the Irish Times):

All archbishops and many of the auxiliary bishops in Dublin handled child sexual abuse complaints badly. None of the four archbishops reported their knowledge of abuse to garda [the police] throughout the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s.

Church authorities used the concept of mental reservation, which allows senior clergy to mislead people without being guilty, in the churchs eyes, of lying.

Senior members of the garda regarded priests as outside their remit, with some members reporting complaints to the archdiocese instead of investigating them.

It said there were some courageous priests who brought complaints to the attention of their superiors. But in general there was a dont ask, dont tell policy.

The report concluded that it is the responsibility of the State to ensure that no similar institutional immunity was ever allowed to occur again.

Ah, mental reservation. The truth but not the whole truth so help you God. Is Father available? No, the secretary says, knowing Father is upstairsnotdoing much of anything. She has mentally reserved the rest of the truth: that Father is not available to the person asking. Clever concept.Perhaps it's time to give it a proper burial.More, much more: A background timeline from the Irish Times. Their editorial. Dublin auxilliary bishop argues the Murphy inquiry should not be extended beyond Dublin to the rest of the country. Letters from the Murphy commission to nuncio and Rome asking for information about clergy sexual abuse went unanswered. Who abused and where. Backgrounder on the Murphy commission. Abusive priestforces victim's family to move. Minister for Justice promises "a collar will protect no criminal." The archbishop's apology.Is it Lent yet?