THEY HAD not understood child sexual abuse. Cardinal Cahal Daly said on behalf of the men who run the Irish Catholic Church. They had not known enough about it. He wants us to take his word on that. I will, too, and all, providing the corollary is also accepted – men who do not understand or know enough about sexual abuse do not understand or know enough about sexual pleasure either.

Having got one end of the spectrum so grievously wrong, it stands to simple reason that they haven’t got the hand of the other end. It’s all one and the same to them – it is sex, it is dirty in itself, and the only cure for it is to shift the participants along, remove them from the immediate source of temptation, douse them in prayer and hope for the best.

They always had higher hopes of curing priests of sexual inclination, because the priest’s cavortings took place, by definition, at irregular intervals. No priest was ever given permission to have a consort twenty-four hours a day. Officially, the priest went to bed alone at night, even if he was surrounded by children, women and men.

But what about the rest of us? That’s where church officials worried themselves sick. By law of God and State, Catholics were given official license to carry on. They were married, publicly and formally, on the altar, and sent off on honeymoon, obliged to do the dirty needful. No marriage was valid until it was consummated. The vagina was invalid until it was consummated. The vagina and the penis were obliged to interlock.

Frantic, and filthy-minded, legions of Holy Men from here to Rome bent their minds to drawing up regulations which would ensure that, as far as possible, no pleasure would be taken in the act, and the act would be seen as a foul duty.

Thermometers were handed out, and calendars, and instruction given on mucus count. When the stuff was yucky enough, and at a sufficiently warm temperature, on certain days of the month, it was time to “Brace yourself Brigid”, for God and Ireland. Anyone who did it on a day that was not marked in the calendar was risking God’s wrath, exposing themselves to sexual pleasure and avoiding the duty to have children.

BEWARE THE LOCAL PRIEST

Any woman who did have a child had to be “churched” afterwards; that is to say she was brought to the altar, made go on her knees and undergo a cleansing ritual. The element of sexual pleasure, if such there was, was retrospectively expunged, and she was made to ask forgiveness for her actions.

The church knew very well what it was about, understood exactly what it was doing, when it dealt with consensual sexual relationships. Pleasurable or abusive, it was all the same to Cardinal Daly and his band of self-proclaimed Holy Men. It was sex, it was dirty and it was wrong.

It was particularly wrong when people contacted voluntarily to engage in it. They were the ones beyond hope. They couldn’t be split up, moved to another diocese or another country. They couldn’t even be brought, most of them, to acknowledge that it was wrong in itself. The pigs queued up for the calendar, the thermometer, and the mucus count, anything to take the bare look off themselves and then rushed home to engage in the filthy deed.

Now the Cardinal has landed himself in it. He’s over eighty years of age, has heard in more intimate detail than most, through the confessional, what people get up to, and he’s finally acknowledged that he really hasn’t a clue. He does not understand sexuality, doesn’t know nearly enough about it, can’t tell the difference between abuse and pleasure, between children and adults, between consent and exploitation. It’s all just sex to him. By his own admission he has much to learn; the Holy Men have untold amounts of damage to undo.

Next time they open their mouths on love, sex, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, pleasure – on anything that goes on between consenting healthy adults – their words should be publicly quoted back to them. They did not know; did not appreciate; did not understand.

I believe them.

Now let them shut up while people put themselves and their families back together again, and knock some delicious, loving sexual pleasure out of life. In the meantime, beware the local priest. He is a danger to your mental, physical and sexual health. Never leave one alone with a child. Not ever.