Catholic Ireland has suffered a series of moral earthquakes that have shaken it to its foundations. The latest shock arises from the publication of the Ryan Commission Report into the industrial school system that used to be run by religious orders, where appalling cruelty was endemic and institutionalised. Other reports are expected this summer into sexual abuse committed by priests and the efforts by church authorities to cover it up. Although the initiative for these investigations has come from politicians, the present generation of Irish Catholics, leaders and laity, is showing the first signs of a willingness to face up to what went wrong. Not all of them, of course - some of the religious orders implicated by Ryan have displayed a shameful reluctance to admit their full responsibility. But the hierarchy is at last starting to function as it should have done all along, not to protect the Church's interests but to seek out the truth in the name of justice. These are the first green shoots of renewal.

It is clear the problem was not just "a few bad apples" or even a whole barrel of them, but the arrogance of an almighty Church too powerful for its own good. It is useless to blame the state or society for allowing it to happen. The blame lies within the Church itself. The power and the glory that were so badly misused had a theological, even ideo­logic­al, basis. This told the Church that it was "a true and perfect society" (in the words of Pius IX): whatever it did was right, and whatever might contradict that impression had to be suppressed. Only "bad Catholics" would dare whisper it. If the Church has a future in Ireland it will be because it now has the courage to say such things to itself out loud, and ­repudiate the ­habitual abuse of power that lay behind all the other horrors.
There is another Catholicism, which was on display in Westminster Cathedral last week at the installation of Archbishop Vincent Nichols. It can be glimpsed in the newly nominated United States Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who was described by her supporters as a "social justice Catholic" - which invites the question: what other kind is there? Rarely if ever has the Catholic message of the need for a reconstituted social order, harmonising the demands of peace and justice, been so necessary. Catholic social doctrine has a firm grip on human rights just when the rest of the world seems to be losing it; and it can provide a theoretical basis for understanding what has gone wrong in the financial markets and what needs doing to put things right. It can point to the right way to approach racism, poverty, health care, homelessness, ­illegal immigrants and the environment. Catholics are to be found in all those areas, often taking the lead, clear about what they are doing and why.

In a secular culture where moral values are in retreat, the Church and its members provide a striking counter-cultural critique. Unlike in Ireland, where Catholicism and the Establishment were one, British Catholicism has tended to stand apart from the political system and the elites that control it. Nor should it try and do otherwise now; it must retain its critical distance from earthly power. There is a moral authority that comes from that, which is paradoxically all the stronger for lacking the means to enforce it. If only the Catholic Church in Ireland had realised that sooner.