The Catholic Church in Ireland must be getting a bit punch drunk from the number of historical revelations that just keep battering it.

The news that Father James Chesney was responsible for the IRA bomb in Claudy which killed nine people is no surprise to anyone connected with the Church hierarchy or the people of Claudy.

We can disregard the widely held belief in Norn Iron that the Vatican was in a conspiracy to destroy the Protestant state in alliance variously with The Kremlin, the Freemasons or Peter Mandelson. The historic reality is that the Irish Catholic Church has been one of the bulwarks of partition and has done very well it of it.

All but a negligible number of children born to Catholic parents go to schools which the British state pays for but which the clergy effectively manage. They are run by the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools an organisation which makes no bones about what it wants from anyone looking to work in one of its institutions.

• Applicants for primary and nursery posts must hold a recognised religious education certificate.
• All applicants must be committed to the religious and pastoral development of a Catholic school.

Try dodging that question in an interview and it’s just one example of how the Catholic Church remains a major instrument of social control in Irish society and its close working relationship with the British Government makes this possible.

Where the Church has intervened in politics it has always done so with the express aim of demobilising the mass movements like those around the prison struggles and civil rights. When Pope John Paul visited the country his principal message was that the struggle against British imperialism had to end. That goes some way to explaining why he was so well liked by the British and Irish ruling classes.

Chesney was a maverick whose actions were exceptionally stupid and murderous. The fact that a tiny handful of priests got involved with militant Republican does not change the fact that for almost a century the Catholic Church has been actively working to retain the partitionist settlement.