It’s not often I have a good word to say about a politician.

Usually the best I can muster is a grudging indifference.

Yesterday however, as I listened to our esteemed leader Dame Enda giving his speech in the Dail, I found myself [metaphorically] jumping up and down, and shouting “that’s my boy”.

From the time of its foundation this country has been effectively run by the Vatican.  They shaped our constitution and our laws; they ran their “Magdalene Laundries” which were nothing more than slave labour camps and they treated Ireland as a fertile breeding ground for their paedophile priests who raped and buggered their way through our children for decades.  They even dictated what we could read or watch in the cinema.  For many many years the government and the media lived in fear of “the belt of the crozier” where they would be called to the archbishop’s palace and read the riot act for doing something that was displeasing to the Vatican.

No more.

Yesterday Dame Edna marked the Vatican’s cards for once and for all.  He referred to “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism….the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”  He talked about how “the rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.”  In essence he told them to go fuck themselves. 

Bearing in mind that this was technically one state talking about another, it was about as far as Dame Enda could go without rolling out the tanks.  I have heard milder declarations of war.

I was raised as a Catholic and was indoctrinated from a very early age as to the standing of the Vatican.  Then I began to think for myself and realised that faith and religion are two entirely separate things.  The faith was Christianity but the religion was Big Business.  And that Big Business revelled it its elitism, its power and its wealth.

It’s time now for Ireland to dump the full cost of the fiasco on the Vatican.  Their carry on has cost this state millions in tribunals and compensation, not to mention the destroyed lives.  Let them bear the cost.  They can fucking well afford it.  No more Mister Nice Guy.  Let’s go the whole hog and issue a warrant for the arrest and extradition of the Pope for aiding and abetting the worlds largest paedophile ring.

Now that would be justice.