Sinead O'Connor Vs. Catholic Church... Again

Sinead O'Connor has lashed out at the Roman Catholic Church again after an Irish bishop made calls for parishes to raise money to help compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland.

Denis Brennan, Bishop of Ferns, asked parishoners to pay €60,000 (about $84,000 Canadian) every year for 20 years so the Roman Catholic Church can raise the funds to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse.

According to Agence France Presse, O'Connor wrote a letter to Irish newspapers in which she called Brennan's appeal "outrageous" and is urging Irish Catholics to refuse to make donations to help the Roman Catholic Church raise the funds.

"If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican," O'Connor wrote in her letter, according to Agence France Presse. "And I for one would be helping him."

Ferns was one of the worst parts of Ireland for sexual abuse, according to the Irish Independent, with over 100 allegations of child sexual abuse made between 1962 and 2002 against 21 priests in the diocese.

"I would be grateful for whatever ways you might be able to help me," Brennan said in a diocesan financial report last Tuesday (March 2), according to Agence France Presse.

"It will be necessary to invite the parishes to become part of the process financially."

Willie Walsh, Bishop of Killaloe, said he would also consider instituting such a measure in his diocese if it became necessary, according to the Irish Independent.

Forty-eight sexual abuse cases have cost the Roman Catholic Church 10.2 million Euros (about $16,800,000 Canadian) and 13 still have to be settled.

The Bloomberg news service states a report revealed "endemic" sexual abuse in Ireland when it was published last year, and another 2005 report discovered Ferns authorities did not take any steps to stop the abuse.

That angers O'Connor, who in her letter said she'd been the victim of "extremely severe child abuse" through her mother, but pointed out she'd had the money to go therapy and most people don't.

"How long do they expect us to restrain ourselves? We have put up with this bull dung for hundreds of years," she wrote.

"A true Christian is someone who, in any given situation, is supposed to ask themselves what would Jesus do, then try to do that.

"How an organisation which has acted, decade after decade, only to protect its business interests above the interests of children can feel it has the right to dictate to us what Christians should do is beyond belief."

Of course, this isn't the first time O'Connor's criticized the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1992, she performed a version of Bob Marley's "War" on Saturday Night Live as a protest against sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on air, throwing the pieces of the photo at the camera.

In 1999, O'Connor was ordained as a priest of the breakaway Latin Tridentine church as a protest against the Roman Catholic Church's refusal to ordain women.

She said she was going to leave music in 2003 to become a catechist, or someone who teaches children about religion in the Catholic church.