Agree with all this.
Utterly abhorrent.
But don't forget the role of parents in all this - they were often the ones sending their daughters (and grandchild) away to these horrific existences. Just to avoid 'the shame'. I would fight to my last breath to stop anything bad happening to my daughters, and everyone from neighbours to kiddy-fiddling priests could go fuck themselves. I cannot even begin to understand the mindset of these parents who would subject their daughters to that sort of suffering.
Irish society itself similarly can't be absolved, either. Thankfully there's been a belated societal renaissance and the insidious influence of 'der Church' has faded a fair bit. But it's only a couple of generations ago when the vast majority allowed themselves to be subjugated by the evil of organised religion, with all the oppression and denial of personal freedoms that comes with that.
To blame people for the sins of their leaders is a bit harsh. The church was part of the elite establishment of Ireland (De Valera had a part in this). The role of the church in Liverpool during my childhood was crazy. People panicking when the priest knocked on the door - usually on pay night in order to scrounge a few coppers off the poor. If you go to the cathedral there is a display about how the poor Catholics of Liverpool (usually of Irish descent) raised funds to build a cathedral. Buying a brick, raffles and collections, all from the poorest sectors of the city population whilst priests sat in luxury, waited on by a housekeeper and nuns.
Refusing to baptise children because the parents were divorced or mixed religions was another petty disgusting abuse of power, intended to beat down the people.
I’ve mentioned before on here how a mate in infants school was damned to hell for all eternity because he tried to blag that he had been to mass and got the colour of the vestments wrong. The Jesuit was full of rage at a 6 yr old.
That level of control was forged over years, playing on the lack of education of the people. The church ensured that only the establishment could read the Bible by copying it in Latin. Monks and Priests were in control of knowledge because they taught the lords how to read. The establishment used the clergy to keep the masses subservient. A mate of mine told me the only way his family in Ireland could get him and his brother a decent education was to send them to be priests. Neither went into the church, he recalled the Christian Brothers and their brutality as a major reason.
De Valera was faced with the fact that he had to deal with socialist and other assorted factions who had fought for Irish Independence and wanted to set up a secular state. The church was his natural ally in suppressing any challenge to his own ideal of a Republic.