Magdalene asylums

[gendjinn]

My father grew up in Gaeltacht park, Whitehall and was an altar boy in the local church and occasionally they'd go over to one of the Magdalenian laundries for a mass on Sundays. When he was about 8 or 9 (mid 50s) he remembers one day a woman jumping over the rails , running up onto the altar and literally clawing the face of the priest serving the mass. When he got home and told his mother the story her response was "Ah the poor girl". Everyone knew, no one said anything. That's how they got away with it, the public endorsed the shower in their odious and illegal behaviour. A few years back when the place was sold off for developers they found 120 unmarked graves with bodies that had never been issued death certificates by the state.

The most scurrilous and unforgivable act of Bertie Ahern was capping the Church's liability in the abuse scandals.

 

[solair]

If the Gardai did return women to these terrible institutions against their will, is there not a possibility that An Garda Siochana would be potentially open to being sued for pretty serious compensation?

Or that individual members who participated in such illegal acts could be prosecuted by the DPP ?

I mean, it's basically false arrest, false imprisonment etc. All of which are highly unconstitutional and illegal under normal Irish criminal law.

Perhaps it's time that some of these women made complaints to the Garda Ombudsman Service?

 

[luther blisset]

t would be interesting to know how many of the critics of Catholicism posting in this thread have read a single book of theology

i have read theology. & lots of it. I am a harsh critic of the RC church. I am neither a Roman Catholic nor a Christian.
I am an anarchist tradition rooted in francomasonic libertarianism which was denounced as infernal for arguing against slavery, and arguing for the emancipation of women.

I wrote above on indenture and enforced labour - I thought not to give the many theological arguments there have been made in favour or against either indenture or enforced labour or slavery
viewtopic.php?f=115&t=37621&start=0#p1235651

I linked not only to the contemporary RC Encyclopedia but a source text of the 1913 encyclopedia which described the process of the magdalenes from that time until their end. Their contemporary successors are now debating when it is ok to turn off a life support machine without any proper scriptural basis for thinking it's ok to switch on a life suport machine in the first place.

Now I presume you don't want to talk theology. But if you do - I leave it to you which tradition we can start from. Pick a "father" or "doctor" of the Church, a reformer or founder of protestantism, or if you prefer to be comparative a rabbi of Judaism or teacher of Islam. We could have a jolly learned discussion. However, I don't really think this website is the place for that, nor is this thread the place. Saint Dominic sent hundreds to be burnt at the stake for heresies which today are now revised and no longer considered dogma. RC Orders nor their founding saints are not really above suspicion of fault. are they?

- ignorantly defending the history of the temporal RC church and its abuses by claiming criticism is based on a lack of theological knowledge - is no more than that : ignorance

 

[Alliance]

It would be interesting to know how many of the critics of Catholicism posting in this thread have read a single book of theology.

Of course, it would be interesting to know, also, how many practising Irish Catholics ever read a book of theology.

Irish Catholicism (like many things 'Irish') tended to be of the mindless variety. Many of the woes associated with the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland can be attributed to this fact.

Some contributions to the present thread illustrate handsomely that such mindlessness was not, by any means, monopolised by Catholicism, and that it has not gone away. :roll:

go away

 

[solair]

From what I have seen and read of it, the Irish public and state adopted the same 'see no evil hear no evil' approach that many Germans did during the 1940s. These were concentration and forced labour camps for women that the church disapproved of. It's pretty much as simple as that.

 

[Aindriu]

From what I have seen and read of it, the Irish public and state adopted the same 'see no evil hear no evil' approach that many Germans did during the 1940s. These were concentration and forced labour camps for women that the church disapproved of. It's pretty much as simple as that.

I would agree with that.

 

[Aggressor]

From what I have seen and read of it, the Irish public and state adopted the same 'see no evil hear no evil' approach that many Germans did during the 1940s. These were concentration and forced labour camps for women that the church disapproved of. It's pretty much as simple as that.

"Simple" being the operative word with this post.

 

[louis bernard]

This makes for sad reading
http://www.oneinfour.ie/services/campai ... cedlabour/

 

[Aindriu]

From what I have seen and read of it, the Irish public and state adopted the same 'see no evil hear no evil' approach that many Germans did during the 1940s. These were concentration and forced labour camps for women that the church disapproved of. It's pretty much as simple as that.

"Simple" being the operative word with this post.

Not at all. What did the people do about the appalling isntitutions of the reform schools and magdalene laundries? I'll tell ye. They did sweet feck all. Complicity in its entirety, just like the majority of Germans did with Hitler. The residents of the village Bergen-Belsen tried to tell my Father that they didn't know about the camp. Given that it could be smelt over 5 Kilometres away and whilst driving through the village was irrelevant I suppose?

The fact is that Irish people were complicit in allowing the RCC to establish, run and keep these despicable places for decades.

 

[Utopian Hermit Monk]

[quote="Utopian Hermit Monk":2lfhzacp]t would be interesting to know how many of the critics of Catholicism posting in this thread have read a single book of theology

- ignorantly defending the history of the temporal RC church and its abuses by claiming criticism is based on a lack of theological knowledge - is no more than that : ignorance

luther blisset, you may have studied some theology , but a little logic might have helped you to avoid interpreting an observation regarding reading habits as an attempt to justify abuse of any kind.

go away

[/quote:2lfhzacp]

Alliance, that kind of response reflects just the kind of mentality that made/makes abuse and its tolerance abiding features of Irish society.

 

[solair]

This has nothing to do with theology, nor has it anything to do with religious belief or anything else. The fact is that these institutions and the people who ran them were committing massive violations of basic human rights and were allowed to do so with impunity by the State at the time.

Their actions were illegal under Irish law, under the Irish Constitution, under the European Convention on Human Rights and under the UN Convention of Human Rights.

From a theological perspective, they must have somehow mixed up their Christian Theology and Philsophy books with a copy of Medievel Torture Techniques and Efficient Elizabethan Prison Systems.... as I really don't see much Christianity in their behaviour!

 

[luther blisset]

ah now.

You're missing something two very important things there.

As any practising RC will gladly tell you. the church is all its members. That's why they boast an exagerrated world population of a billion squillion dozen. So :- since then as now 97% of Eire was RC, it only stands to reason that it wasn't just the nuns and people with dirty washing who were to blame for indenture or a type of slave labour - but everyone. Except of course for the protestants who were to blame for pretty much everything else back then except moral irrectitude thanks to the good decision not to allow Edna O Brien be published and share her thoughts on women's internal feelings, showering after sex and of course shagging protestants.

The other thing you're missing is who wrote the medieval torture handbooks?

Answers on a postcard.

Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger wrote the main torturers' handbook. They were members of the OP (Order of Preachers) or Dominican Order which I referred to above. But you know you can go back before the Dominicans and find one of the early fathers of the church and first apologists for Christianity Mr Tertullian (155 – 222 AD) who is widely credited with making sure illiterates who couldn't build a windmill or dam a river could still get a rack together and stretch a local misfit.

 

[merle haggard]

I wonder how long it will take some of our public house “republicans” to get around to blaming the English (800 years of oppression etc.etc.) for this outrage?

They were all down to Dev's vision of 'Holy Catholic Ireland' and the Catholic Church. People emigrated away from this country for other reasons besides jobs. I knew many families who left because of the RCC and the power it held here.

My fathers father died when my father was about 8 years of age . His wife was deeply religious and a daily communicant whilst he was a republican with a healthy disregard for clerical authority , to the extent that catholic priests were barred from entering the house . A few days after his fathers funeral his mother was sitting in the front room with her children gathered round her when the local preist called . He entered the house and announced he was collecting the parish dues , which due to the refusal of his father to give them a shilling hadnt been forthcoming from that household since the couple married . My grandmother explained to the preist that the small amount of money on the mantlpiece was all she had and that it was needed to feed her family . The preists reply was that the churches needs were grater than hers and he pocketed it and walked out , leaving a young widow and her kids penniless during the depressed 1940s .
Even later in the 1950s the church was so powerful that a fecking parish clerk , a civilian clerk like , took it upon himself during the evenings to confront and denounce courting couples out the back of the Adelphi cinema in Dundalk . This usually resulted in the coupls running away in fear at some little bollix who worked for the church .A freind of my fathers was outside with his girlfreind when the church clerk walked towards them shouting and roaring and pulling at them . My fathers freind told him to take himself off or hed knock him out , whereupon he was informed that any man who laid a hand upon the clerk would see his hand turned to stone by the power of the almighty . The guy told him hed risk it and boxed the jaws off him . But the fact was people believed these guys had real power and you didnt confront them .

While Devalera certainly didnt help matters the blame cant be laid at his door for peoples backwardness or the churches arrogance , it had been ingrained in our society long before Devalera took power . The banning of education for centuries only to have it reintroduced with a legalised church system in which the British chose the Bishops and determined the social ethos taught at the British institution which was maynooth , a unionist institution run by Unionist Bishops led to a society in which people were deliberately put under these peoples control .
Prior to the establishment of Maynooth we had a national literature which talked openly of sexual matters , womens equality issues etc ( see Brian Merrimans Midnight court for example) . We had a clergy that was educated abroad in the european centres of learning and who were a lot more enlightened and cultured . In 1798 we had women in the front lines of the rebellion as fighters . After Maynooth came upon the scene that disappeared to be replaced with a dark ,uncultured, hateful sex obsessed , and arrogant British and unionist institution which was planted there to act as an agent of social control . Its Bishops were appointed by the British governemnt , chosen specifically for their deeply conservative outlook . Social progress went into reverse gear and stayed there . The OConnelite constitutional nationalist movement which intertwined catholicism with Irish identity certainly didnt help matters and nor did a holocaust in the 1840s that left a nation psychologically damaged to the point of a national psychosis .
The roots of their power and our social backwardness which permitted these horrors to occur go much deeper than DeValera , who opted to make a bargain with the status quo in order to cement his power . He certainly did not create that status quo and neither did the Irish people .

 

[CelticAtheist]

It would be interesting to know how many of the critics of Catholicism posting in this thread have read a single book of theology.

Of course, it would be interesting to know, also, how many practising Irish Catholics ever read a book of theology.

Irish Catholicism (like many things 'Irish') tended to be of the mindless variety. Many of the woes associated with the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland can be attributed to this fact.

Some contributions to the present thread illustrate handsomely that such mindlessness was not, by any means, monopolised by Catholicism, and that it has not gone away. :roll:

Reading theology isn't a requirement for criticising a sexist bunch of psychotic control freaks.

 

[the king]

Yes, you're missing a good slap around the jaws every morning and night. Not as much as the rest of us are missing you missing it though.

You are obviously a clown of the highest order, "you probably have no enemies, but your friends all hate you" (Oscar Wilde, for the less well read among us). My god, this site is polluted with public house republicans. Good bye.

good riddence to bad rubbish :lol:

 

[Alliance]

My fathers father died when my father was about 8 years of age . His wife was deeply religious and a daily communicant whilst he was a republican with a healthy disregard for clerical authority , to the extent that catholic priests were barred from entering the house . A few days after his fathers funeral his mother was sitting in the front room with her children gathered round her when the local preist called . He entered the house and announced he was collecting the parish dues , which due to the refusal of his father to give them a shilling hadnt been forthcoming from that household since the couple married . My grandmother explained to the preist that the small amount of money on the mantlpiece was all she had and that it was needed to feed her family . The preists reply was that the churches needs were grater than hers and he pocketed it and walked out , leaving a young widow and her kids penniless during the depressed 1940s .
Even later in the 1950s the church was so powerful that a fecking parish clerk , a civilian clerk like , took it upon himself during the evenings to confront and denounce courting couples out the back of the Adelphi cinema in Dundalk . This usually resulted in the coupls running away in fear at some little bollix who worked for the church .A freind of my fathers was outside with his girlfreind when the church clerk walked towards them shouting and roaring and pulling at them . My fathers freind told him to take himself off or hed knock him out , whereupon he was informed that any man who laid a hand upon the clerk would see his hand turned to stone by the power of the almighty . The guy told him hed risk it and boxed the jaws off him . But the fact was people believed these guys had real power and you didnt confront them .

While Devalera certainly didnt help matters the blame cant be laid at his door for peoples backwardness or the churches arrogance , it had been ingrained in our society long before Devalera took power . The banning of education for centuries only to have it reintroduced with a legalised church system in which the British chose the Bishops and determined the social ethos taught at the British institution which was maynooth , a unionist institution run by Unionist Bishops led to a society in which people were deliberately put under these peoples control .
Prior to the establishment of Maynooth we had a national literature which talked openly of sexual matters , womens equality issues etc ( see Brian Merrimans Midnight court for example) . We had a clergy that was educated abroad in the european centres of learning and who were a lot more enlightened and cultured . In 1798 we had women in the front lines of the rebellion as fighters . After Maynooth came upon the scene that disappeared to be replaced with a dark ,uncultured, hateful sex obsessed , and arrogant British and unionist institution which was planted there to act as an agent of social control . Its Bishops were appointed by the British governemnt , chosen specifically for their deeply conservative outlook . Social progress went into reverse gear and stayed there . The OConnelite constitutional nationalist movement which intertwined catholicism with Irish identity certainly didnt help matters and nor did a holocaust in the 1840s that left a nation psychologically damaged to the point of a national psychosis .
The roots of their power and our social backwardness which permitted these horrors to occur go much deeper than DeValera , who opted to make a bargain with the status quo in order to cement his power . He certainly did not create that status quo and neither did the Irish people .

sick stuff (your families experiences at the hands of priests). Still, it just stresses the question WHY the Irish people/nation was so loyal to Rome? I don't get it. They hated the British for things but turned round, dropped pants and spread every time the pope told them to. They have a history of using and abusing this place from the out break of the reformation (when they used Irelands geographical position to England to launch attacks via Spain and France) without any regard for the knock on effect to Ireland. They were totally supportive of the 1801 Union (when even the Prods were totally againist it!) because they figured they'd get their greasy hands on some political power via London. When that didn't pan out they whipped up separatist movements (clandestinely of course) to get rid of the union. because they weren't interested in any republican movement (which your experiences illustrates), they just wanted a country that they could control and run. They got their power and ran the place (with loads of help from dev and friends) into the ground socially and financially and people still turned up to fill the churches pockets every sunday. Why didnt the irish leave the RCC and become Protestant, not run to Anglican arms I could understand but even have kicked rome out on its arse and set up an independent Irish Catholic church. the priests wanted to keep their power and status but if they've no congregation then no power. i refuse to believe the irish were so chained to the idea that rome was the only true church or that the church managed to keep them all so superstitious that no one saw it all for it what it was. and now today we have this pathetically apologetic gentile RCC desperately trying to save itself from a people who'd rather each cow pancakes than step foot inside one of their dens of inequity. good f*cking riddance I say..the sooner the better.

 

[Utopian Hermit Monk]

Reading theology isn't a requirement for criticising a sexist bunch of psychotic control freaks.

Of course it isn't.
But it might be of assistance in making some necessary distinctions in order to clarify some of the basic issues underlying the behaviour of those "psychotic freaks".

For example, anyone who has studied the liberationist theology that inspired wide sectors of the Catholic Church in Latin America to play in a leading role in the process of political and social change might be less hasty in equating Catholicism, per se, and the kind of deviant behaviour that characterised important sectors of the Church in Ireland.

I honestly fear that much criticism of Irish Catholicism focuses almost exclusively on 'Catholicism', and turns a blind eye to the 'Irish' component.

Sadly, even in post-Catholic Ireland, abusive behaviour (sexual as well as other varieties) remains rampant. Ireland ranks high in world leagues measuring sexual abuse in families, domestic violence, bullying in the workplace, etc., etc.

I sincerely believe that it is a grave mistake to ignore the fact that many of the ills besetting Irish Catholicism have their origins in extra-ecclesial aspects of Irish society. Irish seminaries and convents may have been home to an abnormally high number of sick individuals, but it is not unreasonable to assume that many (the majority?) were already sick individuals, long before they found refuge in ecclesiastical institutions. I suspect that the roots of the problem are to be found in fundamentally dysfuncional aspects of Irish society (and, specifically, Irish family life), stretching back many decades, and perhaps several centuries.

Observing Irish society in the opening decade of the 21st century, it seems clear to me that many of the fundamental problems persist, even without their former Catholic guise. As I observed recently in another thread, while it may well be true that Ireland is well rid of Catholicism, it may be true also that Catholicism is well rid of Ireland.

 

[merle haggard]

sick stuff (your families experiences at the hands of priests). Still, it just stresses the question WHY the Irish people/nation was so loyal to Rome? I don't get it. They hated the British for things but turned round, dropped pants and spread every time the pope told them to. They have a history of using and abusing this place from the out break of the reformation (when they used Irelands geographical position to England to launch attacks via Spain and France) without any regard for the knock on effect to Ireland.

They were totally supportive of the 1801 Union (when even the Prods were totally againist it!) because they figured they'd get their greasy hands on some political power via London. When that didn't pan out they whipped up separatist movements (clandestinely of course) to get rid of the union because they weren't interested in any republican movement (which your experiences illustrates), they just wanted a country that they could control and run.

they denounced seperatist movements and already pretty much had the country under their control

[quote:13r73a6u]They got their power and ran the place (with loads of help from dev and friends) into the ground socially and financially and people still turned up to fill the churches pockets every sunday.

they already had the power , Devalera simply decided to keep that power onside for his own positions sake

Why didnt the irish leave the RCC and become Protestant, not run to Anglican arms I could understand but even have kicked rome out on its arse and set up an independent Irish Catholic church. the priests wanted to keep their power and status but if they've no congregation then no power. i refuse to believe the irish were so chained to the idea that rome was the only true church or that the church managed to keep them all so superstitious that no one saw it all for it what it was. and now today we have this pathetically apologetic gentile RCC desperately trying to save itself from a people who'd rather each cow pancakes than step foot inside one of their dens of inequity. good f*cking riddance I say..the sooner the better.

[/quote:13r73a6u]

remember your talking about a country where a large section of the population still feel deep down that if your renting your house instead of owning it you might starve to death

because by the mid 19th century every last vestige of Irish national life had been destroyed - utterly . After centuries of penal laws you had a population with absolutely nothing , no culture , history , leadership ,political financial or military power , no literature , industry - absolutely nothing . An entire way of life had been systematically destroyed over centuries . All these things are essential for national life and all we had was a half starved half illiterate potato culture and an inferiority complex . We were ashamed to speak our own language in the same way many colonised blacks were ashamed of their skin colour . All the people had left of their national and cultural identity was what they believed to be their ancient religion and that institution itself had been deeply corrupted for political ends , both conservative and colonial . Instead of even being something ancient which would have meant it supported the weight of a civilisation over many centuries Maynooth was a modern ,uncultured , uncivilised alien and foreign construct with an ethos of strict obedience . An agent of social control put there by the powers that be .
The only political leadership the people had left was an OConnelite movement that reinforced the stranglehold the church had , intertwining it again with national identity . And then there was the absolute calamity of the 1840s that pretty much destroyed the people themselves .
After that there was little hope of social progress , the country was simply broken both physically and in spirit . The psychological trauma that left upon an already mental population cant even be guessed at . but the problem was not really catholicism per se but the institution that was maynooth . an alien and artificial institution preaching a brand of catholicism that had been pretty much alien to the Irish character up until then .

up to and after 1916 we had some hope and a radicalised population began to emerge that was prepared to ignore the Bishops and reinforce a national culture that was not led by religion . national life and national culture was being rebuilt in a progressive manner . But by 1922/23 most of that wave had been broken and the most vigorous and progressive elemnts of our society were encouraged yet again to leave the country in waves . Unless you possessed free state army discharge parers you had no chance of employment . Before that soviets were being set up accross the country and pulpit bashing from the bishops was casually ignored . As Cosgrave himslf pointed out things had gone too far and the old order had to be restored , except with an Irish bourgeouisie in charge this time .
and the catholic church were very much part of that bourgeouisie . in the 1930s we had republicans leading and addressing large rallies in the provincial regions which were organised for the specific purpose of telling the ptreists and bishops to keep their noses out of politics and social affairs . but yet again the groundswell of republicanism was turned back , this time by devalera who yet again reinforced the old order .

 

[Aggressor]

Before that soviets were being set up accross the country and pulpit bashing from the bishops was casually ignored . As Cosgrave himslf pointed out things had gone too far and the old order had to be restored ,

So Cosgrave and the bishops got rid of the soviets. I was wondering where we went wrong as a country.

 

[merle haggard]

http://www.limericksoviet.com/