It's quite hard to prove wrong-doing when you own the judiciary and reliably claim that your unique status puts you above the law.

Unfortunately, sooner or later that unique status breaks down.

'Endemic' rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care, inquiry finds | World news | guardian.co.uk

Rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages, a report revealed today.

The nine-year investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorised thousands of boys and girls in the Irish Republic, while government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation.

The high court judge Sean Ryan today unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's commission into child abuse, which drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. Police were called to the news conference amid angry scenes as victims were prevented from attending.

More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families - a category that often included unmarried mothers - were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last facilities shut in the 1990s.

How much more evidence do you need to accept that there's a problem?  

You're attempting to spin this as occasional one-offs mixed in with false accusations. The reality is that when abuse is investigated, it reliably reveals thousands of cases.

Of course abuse happens in other institutions - our treatment of asylum seekers in the UK is nothing to be proud of. But no one claims that the prison service here is any kind of moral authority.

The Catholic Church very much does claim to be a moral authority - in fact it claims to be the ultimate moral authority on this planet.

So when it turns out to be rather fond of doling out sadism and abuse to innocents, scepticism about its claim to the moral high ground becomes unavoidable.