When the history of this awful period for the Catholic Church is written it will be revealed that it was two Irish Catholic women who wrote the unvarnished truth on what had happened and spoke truth to power.

Step forward Peggy Noonan, conservative siren for the Wall Street Journal, and Maureen Dowd, (photo) firebrand columnist for The New York Times.

Both have stated the truth that has been hiding in plain sight throughout this awful period for the church, one that so many commentators have danced around.

That is what the pervert priests did and the bishops and higher ups covered up will be ruination of the church for a generation.

Both Noonan and Dowd, both raised Catholics brush aside all the protestations of anti-Catholic bias made by the Vatican among others and see it for what it is--an attempt to divert people away from the awful truth of the cancer that has eaten away at the moral fibre of the church.

In her column in the Wall Street journal last Friday Noonan writes..." hundreds of priests and bishops thought they could do anything, any amount of damage to the church, and it would be fine. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." That is Mathew 16:18, of course, Christ's great promise to his church. Catholics in the pews have been repeating it a lot lately as they—we—absorb the latest round of scandal stories. "The old church will survive." But we see more clearly than church It is damage that will last at least a generation. It is an actual catastrophe, a rolling catastrophe.."

Noonan makes the point if a similar size corporation that oversaw over 1 billion people on earth as followers was revealed to have the kind of pedophile scandal the Catholic church has had they would hardly still be in business.

Remember, this is a woman who is a devout Catholic herself, yet she has the grace to step back and cast a cold eye on the institution and faith she loves.

Likewise Maureen Dowd has cut to the heart of the matter. Speaking of the current pope's reluctance when a Cardinal to banish a known pedophile in Oakland, California from the church she wrote;

"As in so many other cases, the primary concern seemed to be shielding the church from scandal. Chillingly, outrageously, the future pope told the Oakland bishop to consider the “good of the universal church” before granting the priest’s own request to give up the collar — even though the bishop had advised Rome that the scandal would likely be greater if the priest were not punished."

Both women make clear in recent columns their deep historical and personal connections to the church. Neither minces words when it comes to dissecting the current crisis however.

The Vatican has attacked Dowd for her recent columns. They should thank her and Noonan for speaking the truth