Taoiseach Enda Kenny's extraordinary broadside at the Vatican would have been unthinkable in Ireland just a handful of years ago.
It certainly stands out as being most extraordinary to many who grew up in the era when the political leaders of the republic would get on bended knee at just about every opportunity to kiss the ring of a senior cleric.
Kenny's angry words amounted to almost a new declaration of independence for a republic that was once chided by the likes of northern unionists on the grounds that home rule would be nothing less than Rome rule.
That was never quite fully the case, even in the time when the Irish Constitution (since amended) recognized "the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of its citizens."
It is certainly not the case now in the wake of Mr. Kenny's words, prompted as they were by the latest shocking revelations about clerical child abuse contained in the report on such abuse in the diocese of Cloyne.
The taoiseach, given reaction in Ireland and around the world, has struck a nerve. He has said in a most public way what many, indeed "the great majority of citizens" living in the republic have been thinking.
His scorn has been directed at the upper reaches of the Irish Catholic clergy and the Vatican which, as most citizens would observe, has been moving a lot more slowly on the matter of child abuse than it has against, for example, priests and bishops who dare suggest that women might be priests.
Enda Kenny was speaking to a Vatican that has lost, or is fast losing, its highest sense of moral purpose. But he has been careful to make the point that he was not attacking the church per se, or its most devoted servants, those religious who have selflessly gone about their duty and have lived their lives outside the cabal that abused children and/or has looked the other way as this outright evil has stalked the land.
Mr. Kenny, speaking over the weekend, said he had been "astounded" by the number of clergy who had been in touch to say it was "about time" someone in his position had spoken out.
"I like to think that part of what we do in government is to create the environment where the innocence of children can develop naturally through their formative years," Mr. Kenny told reporters after he addressed the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, County Donegal.
The Vatican is a seat of government. One would assume that the same line of thinking would apply within its cloistered walls. Unbelievably, and tragically, there have been varied, nuanced and outright dubious lines of thinking from the Vatican in recent times, not all of them unequivocally focused on the innocence of children.
The papal nuncio in Dublin has been recalled to the Vatican for consultations.
It can only be hoped that he imparts to his superiors the heartfelt desire of the citizens of Ireland - and indeed the great majority of those citizens who are in the religious life - that the church's leadership finally faces up to the enormity of its most grievous fault in the scandal of evasiveness and ill-chosen priorities that have only compounded the scandal of child abuse in Ireland, and other countries, including the U.S.
The Vatican has needed to hear something like this. Enda Kenny has, thus, done the Holy See a service.
It remains to be seen if those atop the church, right up to the pope, realize and accept that these words are well chosen, sincere, and a long time coming.
If the Vatican sees it otherwise, the "great majority" of citizens will deliver a judgment even more scathing than Mr. Kenny's.
