Drawing on his personal experience growing up in Ireland, having been educated by the Christian Brothers and witnessing at first hand as a broadcaster the dramatic transformation of Irish society since the early 1960s, Gay Byrne goes in search of the history of the Irish Catholic Church since the penal law era right through to the present day.

As he travels around the country Gay discovers how priests, nuns and brothers strove to liberate the poor through education and to create a strong, confident Catholic society. The Christian Brothers, founded by Edmund Rice for example, educated over 100,000 boys, many of whom went on to become leading lights in Irish society – in this moving and insightful immersion into 200 years of Irish social, cultural and religious life, Gay attempts to discover why it all went so terribly wrong; how the reputation of the Church went from proud and positive nation-building to one tainted by abuse of the vulnerable, cover-up, corruption and hypocrisy.