Late last week an extraordinary thing happened in Belgium. About thirty police officers descended on a meeting of the Belgian bishops taking place at the offices of the Archdiocese of Malines-Brussels. The bishops were held there for nine hours and had their mobile phones confiscated while police searched for files related to clerical sex abuse.

In an incident that shocked many Catholics, including Pope Benedict, they drilled holes in the graves of at least one, and according to some reports two, deceased archbishops of Malines-Brussels, and inserted cameras into the graves in search of hidden documents.

The graves were reportedly those of Jozef Ernest Van Roey, and Leon Joseph Suenens. Suenens was famous in his day as one of the leading lights of the Second Vatican Council.

Removed

The police also raided the home of the former Archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels (pictured right). The police removed Cardinal Danneels' personal computer to search it for files related to clerical abuse.

Finally, the Belgian police seized roughly 500 confidential files from the office of Peter Adriaensses, president of the independent commission dealing with cases of sex abuse by priests. The commission is located in Leuven (also called 'Louvain') - famous for its Catholic university.

The best way to put this in context is to imagine several dozen members of An Garda Síochána descending on Maynooth during one of the bishops' quarterly meetings and holding the bishops there all day with the press gathered outside, and in addition to this raiding the home of Cardinal Desmond Connell, while also breaking into the graves of Archbishops John Charles McQuaid and Dermot Ryan.

The Vatican has expressed its ''intense shock'' over the incident and the Pope has sent a message of support to the Belgian hierarchy.

Communist

The Pope's number two, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, compared it with some of the actions taken against the Church by communist regimes in the past and indeed Belgium is home to some of the strongest anti-Catholic feeling in Europe.

Professor Adriaensses condemned the seizure of confidential files from his offices. He said most of the victims who had spoken with his commission did not want their details given to the authorities.

Most of the victims are now in their 60s and 70s and had only spoken to the commission on condition of confidentiality. One obvious effect of removing the files is to hugely undermine the work of the commission because no victim seeking confidentiality will now be willing to speak to it out of fear that the police will raid their files too.

What helped to set the scene for this raid was the resignation in late April of Belgium's longest-serving bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, after admitting to having sexually abused a young boy.

The controversy embroiled Cardinal Danneels after a former priest, Rik Deville, said he warned Danneels at least 15 years ago that Vangheluwe had abused a boy. Danneels said in April: ''I cannot remember such a discussion.''

Cardinal Danneels retired in January and was one of the most liberal members of the College of Cardinals. As a consequence he was popular with the Belgian press.

His reputation is now damaged by the allegation that he knew about Bishop Vangheluwe (pictured below).

Headlines

The Vangheluwe revelation propelled the issue of clerical abuse back into the headlines in Belgium.

Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office, said the raids followed recent statements to police ''that are related to the sexual abuse of children within the Church''.

However, the raids do raise a number of questions that call into doubt their justification.

For example, it has been pointed out that in Belgium the Statute of Limitation lasts only 10 years meaning crimes that took place longer than 10 years ago cannot be brought to trial.

The vast majority of abuse cases involving priests took place over a decade ago meaning the majority of the files seized cannot be used.

In addition, even those who take the most cynical view of the Church would have to admit that if a cleric was going to go to the extremes of hiding abuse files in a grave he would simply burn them instead.

This means the de facto desecration of the deceased archbishops' graves looks suspiciously like a crude publicity stunt, something that indeed resembles an incident that might have been carried out by one of Europe's radically anti-clerical governments of the middle decades of the 20th Century.

Finally, and as mentioned, the seizure of confidential files from the independent commission investigating abuse in the Church also seems without justification because it will surely cripple the work of this commission and because it violates the wish of most of the victims who contacted it to have their cases remain confidential.

However, what the raid does show once again is how badly the clerical scandals have damaged the credibility of the Church. Public anger is at such a pitch that it has made an incident like this possible, right down to breaking into the graves of deceased prelates.

On the other hand, this raid, or rather raids, looks so extreme it may lead some Catholics to ask whether the scandals are being used to justify something approaching a persecution of their Church.

They will also wonder whether other European governments will follow the Belgian example although presumably none would go quite so far as to break into the graves of deceased prelates.