The public response to the recently transmitted States of Fear documentaries bears a remarkable resemblance to the careful, dissembling responses of - sterling reputations for piety and compassion notwithstanding - some of those supposedly responsible individuals whose inaction in the face of obscenity is now highlighted for all to see.
It is as if we knew nothing about the abuse of children in State-run institutions before Mary Raftery's series was transmitted. Oh, we declare, if only we had had a Mary Raftery back then to tell us the truth, then we could have done something.
States of Fear made its case with great sincerity and precision, but its essential content has been common knowledge in this society for a long time. For more than 20 years there has been a parade through the media of high-profile former inmates of our industrial school system, all seeking to draw our attention to their experiences.
There have been a number of fine books, in particular those of Mannix Flynn and Paddy Doyle, in which the facts were outlined in a manner at least as compelling as in States of Fear.
The image which gripped the nation from the opening programme of the series was of a brother beating and sexually abusing a boy in front of his class. The opening chapter of Paddy Doyle's The God Squad, published in 1988, contained a similar account of a public beating of him by a nun. Later in the book he described being sexually abused by the same nun. Why did this not fill us with the same horror as States of Fear?
The answer, it should be obvious, is that, even in adulthood, those victims whose childhoods were so discounted as to be regarded as worthless were not highly valued. It is rare for victims of horrendous physical or sexual abuse to climb to the dizzy heights of societal power.
So when, on foot of this recent series, a commission of inquiry is established and the Taoiseach apologises "on behalf of the State and its citizens", we need to ask ourselves: why now rather than before?
One factor, obviously, is that the status of children has changed for the better. In the past, parents, guardians and teachers were regarded as having rights of ownership over children. Today children's rights are at a premium in the society, at least at the level of public platitude. This has enabled public outrage to reach levels which the culture did not previously allow for.
Another aspect is that there is often in such matters a time lag between public consciousness and official admittance. It is not that the scales have suddenly been lifted from the eyes of those in power, rather that, as a result of the altered public mood, those in power have reached the point where there is more to be lost by continuing to deny than by beginning to acknowledge.
Most citizens of this State have long since known that industrial schools were appalling places. Thirty-five years ago the threat of Letterfrack was one of the most effective instruments with which to subdue an unruly child's spirit. Those who had eyes to see, had every opportunity to be aware that the spirit of Irish Catholicism had long since flown the coop. The dissonance between the ruling piety and the spiritual vacuum that was the true character of Irish religiosity caused many to walk away from the church.
Only now, it appears, when sufficient slack has been provided by the wave of scandals involving church personnel, can the broader span of Irish society give itself the freedom to be outraged. This places in context why, as Mary Raftery has pointed out, we seem willing to admit to abuse in the distant past, but not to that of recent times, still less that which may still be going on.
Our latter-day zeal about dealing with these matters has little to do with protecting children. It has, of course, a great deal to do with our pretence about caring for children, but that is a rather different matter. We welcome these dissections of the past, because the past has been rendered safe by our relentless prejudice about it.
Whistle-blowers on the past require, of course, to be in tune with the pretences of the present, but they also, ideally, need to be offering more than harmony with the platitudinous consensus. This kind of whistle-blowing delivers a number of things: one, it helps us to achieve that which is desired in the present (in this case a few more kicks at the departing backside of the Catholic Church); and two, it feeds our present-centred superiority over the ignorance of the past. Exposing injustice is all very well, but it is so much sweeter if it can be employed to score off a few demons.
The Sheedy case was pursued with such zeal, for example, not because of any great sense of an objective injustice (far worse things happen every day), but because there was a strong smell of a Fianna Fail connection.
Abuse is a symptom of power, but power is rarely made accountable until it is on the wane. By definition, power is accountable only to itself, and so it is the whistle-blower rather than the abuser who tends to get punished. This is why whistle-blowers who report what happened to them as children can in the 1980s be dismissed and 10 years later, when the church is in decline, be met with gasps of horror on relating precisely the same experiences.
Our society today is no more hospitable to whistle-blowing on the present than Irish society of 40 years ago. The last thing we want is that somebody start drawing attention to abuses in or close to the now.
In 10 or 20 years, I have no doubt, enterprising television producers will make documentaries about Irish psychiatric hospitals, or the family court system, or the quality of life in our urban ghettoes, and Irish society will again give itself the right to be outraged.
But if we stop to think, most of us know victims of all these tyrannies today. We accept such obscenities as part of the furniture of our society. Why? Because, just as the lives of children were discountable in the past, the lives of marginalised parents, mental patients or the dispossessed are discountable in the present.
Our desire to create present reality is equalled only by our desire to deconstruct and discredit the past. We will die in denial about the reality of the present but have no vested interest in protecting the past. Apart from an arid collection of "facts" in history books and a few dog-eared files in public libraries, the past has no media in which to make its case.
It provides, however, a ready stock of demons, many conveniently deceased. The present is less expendable than the past, being held together by many compromises, vested interests and loyalties, the very things which the whistleblower endangers. To inquire too closely into the present would not be containable in the manner of even the most rigorous examination of yesteryear. We might have to stand for something. We might have to confront those who make us afraid. We might have to grow up.