The scandal of clerical abuse is not just a local issue

They do protest too much methinks, people taking offence on behalf of the Catholic Church at recent criticism from the Anglicans. That was like throwing them a lifeline: Never mind what's wrong with us, we're not taking that from the Church of England! No wonder they call patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel.

But though you may call the Archbishop of Canterbury's remark ill-conceived, undiplomatic, even simply offensive, you cannot seriously call it wrong. The Catholic Church in Ireland is teeming with people who are kind and good as individuals, but how can it be said to retain any credibility as an institution? If a sports club covered up child sexual abuse we would say it was morally bankrupt. When an organisation that claims to be society's moral authority does it then yes, it has no credibility. How could it possibly?

But it is wrong to single out the Irish Catholic Church for this. Though some cases in the US and UK had Irish perpetrators, priests have been convicted for sexual abuse of minors in Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Slovenia and Sweden. There have been allegations made too in Austria, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, Poland and Mexico. It would be hard to blame all that on Irish priests.

Is it a Catholic problem then? It's tempting to guess that the celibacy of priesthood causes sexual desire to become twisted and misdirected – or conversely, that it attracts men whose sexuality is already confused – but I doubt if this is really a significant element. You hear it claimed sometimes that paedophiles are known to be less common in the priesthood than they are in the general population. It would not surprise me, most sexual abuse occurs within families.

There is an image of the paedophile as a shady figure who hangs around school playgrounds – remember how our parents taught us not to talk to strangers – but in the vast majority of cases the abuser is a known adult in a position of trust and responsibility. In all probability paedophilia as an inclination occurs about equally as often in people of all religions and walks of life.

The reason why acts of child abuse are carried out by some kinds of people more than others – leaving aside such complicating (but important) factors as alcoholism – is down almost entirely to one thing: Opportunity. Priests, carers and scout leaders are left alone with children a hell of a lot more than say coalminers, electricians and airline pilots. It must be remembered that the failure of the Church here was not to have child abusers within its ranks – that was virtually inevitable – but that it attempted to hide the fact, and by so doing provided abusers with new opportunities.

Above I named other countries in which clerical abuse is known to have occurred. The key word is obviously 'known'. You'll notice that almost all of them are well-developed countries with free press and reasonably functional democracy.

How is it that most of South and all Central America are absent? Where is Asia? Where is Africa? This is far from a local problem. They extent of it may be almost too terrible to contemplate.