A bewk has come into my temporary possession by the generous lend of a friend called Undercover Surrealism published by the Hayward Gallery promises to expand on Bataille’s Documents.

Also it came accompanied by The Church A Demon Lover A Sartrean Analysis of an Institution by Roberta Imboden. (Univ of Calgary Press) Am trying and flailing to consider the staggering (can there be any more stagger left in staggering) Murphy commission report.  Will post a collection of links if I ever sit upright again. Depravity that, listening to the discussion of whether such and such bishop should resign, continues to know no bounds, nor comprehends the scale and extensive reach of its damage. Damage that has taken lives of those we may never even know about. The diluted apologies from the church that increasingly sound like the same dead note, the donging of a clock to merely fill the silence and mark the passing of time at a press conference or during a news interview.

Question not being asked, or perhaps being discussed quietly out of the public domain is what is at the root of this sexual abuse, the appetite for it, why was it so prevalent even beyond the church, in swimming etc. Where does this come from? If it was only Catholicism then other Catholic countries would be besieged with these horrors.  There was a piece I must dig out in the Irish Times talking about the culture of secrecy and saying nothing. But in reading it, it’s not entirely accurate. Perhaps it was once. Power, fear, control, domination yes but there’s something further to it.

What is healthy is the uproar. People are furious. Collectively furious and collectively ashamed. Furious enough that real change may result. There’s a clarity to the fury that needs now to push for further excavation of where this all comes from. Sometimes the terms in which it’s discussed are distancing and it merely pushes it further away as something incomprehensible, but in order to ensure it doesn’t continue in any diluted form, we must attempt to comprehend it.