In your article "Closing Vatican embassy 'a mistake' - The Irish Times - Thu, Feb 23, 2012" , Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is quoted as saying that, in the history of Ireland, Church and State have been intertwined "for the good and for the lesser good", adding that the two will be intertwined in Irish society for many years to come.

The more usual formulation of that phrase, in the bible and elsewhere, is "for good or evil". Could that rephrasing be an unconscious echo of the attitude of "hear no evil" see no evil" which characterised the attitude of both Church and State to the rampant and institutionalised abuse of children?

Until we can force ourselves to recognise that there was much that was evil in the interwined history of Church and state in Ireland, our future relations between Church and State will forever be condemned as being at best for the lesser good.

It is time we moved beyond the banalities of public relations parlance and diplomatic speak and called a spade a spade: The collusion of the Church in the cover-up of child abuse and the protection of abusers must be condemned for the evil that it so manifestly was.

Insofar as this became intertwined in the relations between Church and State, there is no "lesser good" about it. If we are, ever, to reopen a separate embassy to the Vatican it can only be on the basis of a Vatican act of contrition and repentance for very real acts of evil.

Bishops such as Cardinal Francis George of Chicago who is reputedly snubbing our Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, at a  Irish Fellowship Club St. Patrick Day dinner because of the closure of the Embassy are welcome to stay away. Cardinal George's recent comparison of Gay Rights movement to the Ku Klux Klan already marks him out as a progenitor of hate speak we can better do without.

The suggestion by your correspondent, Breda O'Brien, (Closure of Vatican embassy has wide-ranging implications
Saturday, February 18, 2012) that the closure of the embassy is obviously a mistake because it  deprives us of the Vatican's influence on our standards on child abuse should be treated with the derision it deserves.

Ms. O'Brien ends her piece with a most extraordinary straw man argument: "In Ireland, we have a massive problem with sexual abuse. If the Catholic Church was outlawed in the morning, we would still have that problem. It could be a huge changing point for our society if we could properly acknowledge, and begin to deal with, that fact."

Who on earth has ever claimed that sexual abuse is limited to the Catholic Church? And why would pointing out that sexual abuse also occurs outside the Church reduce its culpability in covering up the abuse?

Is there no end to the denial, evasion, misdirection and dissimulation?

Index of Frank's Diaries