Catholic Church.

The Irish as a whole need to address these terrible events, not just play pass the parcel passing the blame from one to the other.

Terribul, yes, all these great empire builders adopted that strategy . British Empire too.

www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-ann-lovett-letters-sorrow-shame-anger-and-indignation-1.1673920&ved=2ahUKEwiGtcmqqJ7uAhWmTxUIHQadCnIQFjABegQICBAC&usg=AOvVaw3167nhr5Y2xLrslcEtbQK1

I think some churches in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico for example, allow worshipers to incorporate elements of older rituals and beliefs passed down the generations, quite unconnected to Christianity. A way of keeping them on board I imagine. Maybe they copied the example of the Romans who amalgamated their Gods with those of the indigenous conquered nationals.

You get the whiff of whitewash in this business. The Irish Government are playing down the Church involvement so as to not alienate the catholic voter. The Catholic Church was the "fixer" of the problem and should take the lions share of the blame. They lifted the "shame" from these families whom lived in superstitious fear of their doctrines.
In the immortal words of Dave Allen, "Christ would throw up if he knew what was done in his name."

PS see all these letters St Paul wrote addressing special concerns that affected different groups.

We all have to , or should, make special provision and the church is particularly good at it.

It's not a case of Church bashing. The State/Church are trying to sweep this under the carpet. They cannot be allowed to disregard the statements of women who say they were forced to give up their babies or indeed had their babies adopted without their consent. Neither can they dismiss the fact that the bodies of babies and young children were tossed into a glorified cess pit.

Alexa The church welcomes everyone into the church, it does not have to make special provision for any particular group.

These old superstitions were included in church goings-on because it was important to include superstitious people within the body of the church.

Surely we must look at who made those rules and for me it goes back to Church and State. These rules came out of the community, as did the clerics.

I have read story after story of people coming from small and beleagured communities in many countries and time and again you read of community rules, implicit, not formally written out, which to not obey leads to you being ostracised and often expelled from the community. These rules will be endorsed and applied by community leaders, often clerics, whether that is an imam, rabi, or priest.

Gwyneth

What is SM please not on list of acronyms. Incidentally have noticed a few occasions where the acronym used is not on the list. Who is responsible for adding new ones?

I don't think anyone has answered this Gwyneth but I've presumed SM is for step mother.

Not sure about your other question but think it is GransNet admin who might add. You could message them. There are a lot of acronyms/abbreviation/initialism used on the forums that are not on the list.

Let's all have a go at the church again, shall we?

No church exists in a vacuum.

The treatment of unmarrieid mothers in church run homes was no different or worse than what was going on in homes for unmarried mothers that had no religious affiliations at the same time.

Until the 1970's any girl of whom it was said that she had let her boyfriend "go too far" whether she became pregnant or not, was ostracized in most countries of Europe, whether Catholic or Protestant as well as by people who held no religious beliefs whatever.

Until the advent of reliable contraception, society controlled births by making sure that only married people ideally had children. This was done by various rules, some of which can be found in the Bible, where if you look, you can also find a "justification" for beating children, which after all was still practised in our childhood too.

Society as a whole was just as responsible for these norms as any religious denomination, and as we are all children of our times it is society as a whole that should be denigrated for mistakes made in any era, not any particular branch of it.

M0nica I agree and do have an understanding...my family origins are Irish.
As you rightly say obeying all the rules was your greatest protection.
Surely we must look at who made those rules and for me it goes back to Church and State.

paddyanne I should have clarified the North of Ireland. I do still believe though that the Catholic church influenced the North too - alongside other religions.
I believe another long-delayed report into mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland is due to be published this month.

I agree that many women suffered in mainland Britain too - there's a story in my own family about someone being sent to a mental asylum many years ago.

For me it's stories like the person who recounts how she was taken to Bessborough mother and baby home, in Co Cork, as a 13-year-old girl, pregnant after being raped. (The rapist was never charged.) Though her parents wanted her to stay with them, the local hospital refused to allow her to give birth there, after a priest opposed the move. Inevitably, her daughter was put up for adoption by the home. It’s also worth noting that this didn’t occur in de Valera’s Ireland of the 1940s, but in 1977.
The institutional pressure brought to bear on a supportive family contradicts the official line that “society” bore much of the blame for her ordeal. “The one word that keeps coming up in all this is power,” says Mary, as she contemplates the Catholic Church’s influence at the time. “The power they had over the people was mind-boggling.”

We also need to keep in mind the unspeakable figure of 9,000 children dying in the homes

Agree MOnica but I worked for and with Irish Nuns in the
70’s and 80’s, they were all kind, caring women

Dee102 but you need to understand why the catholic chiurch achieved such dominance - and for that you need to go into the Irish history and its centuries of oppression under British rule. Deprived of education, excluded from public office with land ownership rules that enhanced poverty. They clung to their religion which was the one thing they had that separated them physically from their oppressors, priests were the only men with any power or education were there leaders.

With any religion, the different cultures of any country will affect how it is interpreted in that country. English catholicism, although heavily influenced by the huge influx of Irish into the country over the last 200 years has always been very different, although pockets of Irish catholicism, did exist, more open and living within a more diverse society.

The catholic church in Ireland grew out of the oppression the Irish suffered , where clinging to your community, obeying all the rules was your greatest protection. Priests and nuns grew up in ordinary Irish catholic families and took the culture of those families into the religious life when they went. It is very easy to just blame the church for everything and forget that it was only able to do what it did because it was supported, in every way by the Irish population.

Dee can I point out that the most restrictive abortion rules and same sex relationship laws are in teh NORTH of Ireland and thats not run by the Catholic church nor has it ever been .Its not as simple as made out here ,The same "rules" applied in the mainland of Britain ,young women who were pregnant were sent away or had their babies taken off them .Just watch Long Lost Families.

I can remember reading that as late as 2019, 90 % of the 3,200 primary national schools were Catholic-controlled. The State paid the salaries of teachers and the upkeep of school buildings, but the church still owned the buildings, making any change difficult.
Church power remains evident in other spheres too. Due largely to the strong influence of Catholic teaching, Ireland legalised divorce and contraception much later than other EU states. Until the recent referendum, Ireland had the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
Societies are profoundly influenced by the dominant cultural and political forces at play. The Catholic Church was the dominant cultural force in Ireland for most of the last century. It was the church that demanded religious and moral exceptionalism and punished those who fell short of these standards. To resist its influence was to risk disgrace for an entire family. Abandonment of their pregnant daughters to the deliberate and conscious neglect of church-run and State-funded “homes” was the price demanded, and sadly, many parents believed they had no choice but to pay it.

I know someone who only found out after her MiL had died, that she’d been one of the poor Magdalen Laundries girls. It came out after a half sibling in Ireland had managed to trace family in the U.K.

After she’d had the baby the MiL was sent to the U.K. to a pre arranged job - no choice - she had apparently never seen or communicated with her own family ever again.

This all came as a complete shock to her subsequent adult children - their father was long gone, too, and as far as they were aware he’d never had a clue, either. They deduced that she’d been far too ashamed of her ‘mortal sin’ to ever tell anyone. Apparently she’d come up with a very plausible excuse as to why she’d never had anything to do with her own family - she’d married a British soldier and they would have shunned her on that account.

I heard about all this before the scandal of these ‘homes’ was widely publicised, but an Irish friend told me that it was formerly well known but not spoken of, because it just wasn’t done - then - to criticise anything to do with the church.

Thank you vampirequeen I agree the women did not have much choice , they couldn’t go home to their families with their baby . Where could they live ? Social housing wasn’t available .

There was a thread recently on the unkindness of midwives in
NHS hospitals.

No burial was wicked

timetogo2016

It`s called being brainwashed imo.
Mostly made up by priests/pastors/fathers and daft old wives tales.

Absolutely!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55622548

Treatment of the babies....In an interim report, the commission found that some babies were buried in 20 chambers inside what was a larger decommissioned sewage tank.

Forced adoption......The commission said it found "very little evidence that children were forcibly taken from their mothers".

It continued: "It accepts that the mothers did not have much choice but that is not the same as 'forced' adoption'."

The report contains witness testimony from women who said they had not consented to their child being adopted.

As GillT57 says, earlier in this thread, it was good to see an acceptance that all parties were responsible for this dreadful episode, including the church. To shift all the blame on to the parents or to disbelieve what the girls say happened, is not fair.
The nuns were entirely responsible for their own behaviour towards the women who were supposed to be in their care.

I haven’t read this evidence, do they say they wanted to keep
their babies ?