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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Catholic Church is now associated with four "mass graves" in Ireland
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/05/319100479/amid-horror-at-mass-graves-of-children-calls-in-ireland-for-an-inquiry(BTW NPR, way to bury the lede...)
At what point do we stop talking about memorials for the "wee ones" and start declaring these sites crime scenes?
At what point do we prosecute the Vatican for crimes against humanity?
Imagine if a foreign government, say Iran, was found to have operated homes for unwed mothers in this country, and four "mass graves" were discovered with corpses of abused/neglected infants and children. How long before those sites would be crawling with the FBI? How long before the FBI descended on every single religious school run by Iran with picks and shovels? How long would churches. under the direct control of Tehran and operating in the U.S., be allowed to remain open?
(And before anyone casts aspersions, I am an ex-Irish Catholic from nuns, to altar boy, to Confirmation, et al)
n2doc
(47,953 posts)But because they were born, no one there in the Church gave a rip.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)unforgiveable
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)Many were left to die slow and horrible deaths from malnutrition, disease and neglect, rotting in nappies filled with putrefying diarrhea.
The Blue Flower
(5,439 posts)According to the report I read, they weren't considered deserving of baptism. One more nail in the coffin of another foul system.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)I would have thought they would at least have gone through the motion of "saving" them.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)It's doubtful the story would have legs at DU.
Bryant
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)But I will note that in the article published today in the Belfast paper, "Another home where the scandal of unmarked graves was uncovered is the Protestant Bethany Home in Dublin, which was found to have had 222 infants die before being secretly buried.
They have since been re-interred and a memorial placed on the new plot in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross.
A spokesman for the Bethany Survivors Group said: "It is imperative that the Government takes action to face up to this shocking episode in the history of the State.
"The issue is gathering a momentum and becoming unstoppable." http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/mass-baby-grave-in-tuam-galway-sisters-of-bon-secours-nuns-have-no-burial-home-records-30333786.html
ALL of these horrible crimes should be investigated. ALL of them.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)And the Catholic Church and civil authorities should do a full investigation and punish those responsible. And they probably won't (the Catholic Church at least probably won't).
I agree that all of these crimes should be investigated - but I've also been around DU long enough to know that the presence of the Catholic Church is going to give this story extra legs. A story about a civil orphanage doing similar things wouldn't receive the same level of interest.
Bryant
Demit
(11,238 posts)And demands fealty from Church members to adhere to its dogma under pain of being cast into the everlasting fires of Hell if they don't? Civil establishments don't do that. This is a horrifying story.
tblue37
(65,269 posts)ultimate sin while allowing and covering up the sexual abuse of children and the sort of abuse and neglect of children that is revealed by the evidence in these graves is the sort of extreme hypocrisy that troubles people. The fact that the Church has such power and wealth and that it has been used to promote RW causes in the US is also a bit troubling, don't you think? How many civil orphanages could sway voters against a candidate like Kerry by denying him communion because of his stance on reproductive rights?
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)It's that some hit closer to home than others.
For example, here is a list that outlines just a fraction of the threads I myself have posted on the subject of such abuse, just within the past month:
Indias Shame: Women's Rights
Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China
Religion, Feminist Politics And Muslim Womens Rights in India
Iranian Journalist Denounced as Whore Amid Womens Rights Campaign
Two India girls 'gang-raped' and hanged in Uttar Pradesh
Nigerian woman fearing daughters' FGM wins reprieve on deportation
China: Eradicate, Prevent all Forms of Violence Against Women, Girls
Why India's sanitation crisis kills women
Why do families kill their daughters? ("Honor Killings"
The plight of Niger's child brides (Video)
Resources: "Honor Based Violence Awareness" website
A tragedy in womens history and the birth of a guardian
Girls in gangs leading desperate lives, says UK report
Violence Against Women Is a Global Pandemic
WV school punished rape victim by moving her back a grade, attorney general says
(And this list doesn't include any threads on the Nigerian kidnappings, reproductive rights, etc.)
Am I disappointed that such threads garner so little interest here? Do you think I don't get frustrated seeing these threads die, sometimes without a single response to show that people even care? How many of the crimes on that list of threads I posted are connected to religion-sanctioned persecution of women and girls? ALL of them. If these are issues important to you, post about them rather than just pop in to defend the Catholic church when it's their turn to explain themselves. If you care about the church as much as I know you do, your voice above all should be the most forceful in demanding an investigation into this atrocity.
But you know, as much as we are all outraged by the kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria, the rape and hanging of little girls in India, the honor killings in Pakistan et al, nothing perhaps touches a nerve more than the war on women that is being waged right here at home. The one being conducted by the Catholic church and its evangelical allies among the Protestants, funded by millions of dollars and waged by its Washington lobbyists via scores of lawsuits, to deny women the basic right to contraception and reproductive rights. A war that, if successful, will punish poor women more than any other. Women who will be pushed even deeper into poverty or in desperation, to a back-alley abortion. Whose "sanctity of life" are we talking of here?
We will not go back. The women and children who suffered and died at these Irish homes for women and babies serve as a stark reminder of what we're fighting for.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)You think that if this had happened with the Mormon Church no one would mention it? If a mass grave was found at Liberty University it would go unremarked on? The corpses of 800 children found on the grounds of some anti-abortion home for unwed mothers would not be noticed at DU?
Seriously?
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)There's evidence that they were warehoused and forgotten. Even in death they were treated like sin.
Do you think these children even had rites of Christian burial before they were discarded like waste?
La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)or mosque or temples. the catholic church is not the victim here.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)malaise
(268,844 posts)Yet again the Catholic church gets away with murder.
One more ex Catholic.
Warpy
(111,222 posts)available hole in the ground like so much garbage and call them on all the maundering they do about the "innocents" in the womb?
Wherever women and children lived on the kind charity of the church in Ireland, there will be mass graves of brutalized children.
I can point out that there were also such graves across England from the workhouses and northern Ireland from the Protestant equivalent, but nowhere did those vicious places operate with more impunity than theocratic Ireland.
The church has a great deal to answer for. Until it does, its pronouncements on morality should be completely ignored. It has none.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)messed up. She was born in Dublin, raised in Catholic girls schools, and fled the country by marrying an American serviceman from West Virginia. That went over like a lead balloon on BOTH sides of the Atlantic (especially the part where my father, a Protestant from a the hills, converted to Catholicism to marry my mother).
These religious orders of nuns were not in service to God, they were Sonderkommandos exterminating anyone deemed inferior by the church.
Warpy
(111,222 posts)and the subject has come up, you will learn the true meaning of the word "rage."
I've met a few. They were soft spoken, ordinary coworkers until the subject has come up. Their hatred of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy in Rome puts my rather tepid disgust to shame.
I can't imagine how horrific those places were. The nuns who came here to teach Catholic school were bad enough.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)I discover I have been foolishly naive.
Warpy
(111,222 posts)I am grateful for such a generous yardstick against which to measure all religious nuttiness.
Nobody else has come close to the crap I was raised with.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)They have been sickening hypocrites since day 1, and it only continues. Will the Catholic Church ever own up to its crimes?
jwirr
(39,215 posts)bus. These nuns who ran the so called homes deserve it but the theology that allowed this kind of action came from those males.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)Just another atrocity that will be swept under the rug.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Imagine a nationwide day care center that had the child abuse scandals the RCC had? As I recall, we utterly ruined peoples lives and sent them to prison on FAR less evidence, including "testimony" coerced from children to support crimes that never happened.
And yet, these monsters walk free.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)I can't believe there's only four unfortunately...
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)was quoted as saying he was "shocked and saddened".
I was shocked and saddened as well. Shocked that as cynical as I am, I wasn't cynical enough. And saddened that these monsters still roam free.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
Kablooie
(18,619 posts)It was the true story of an Irish mother searching for the illegitimate child the Catholic Church took from her.
The child wasn't killed because he was about 2 years old but he was taken from her and sold for profit.
in later years the church refused to tell her where he was.
Judi Dench was nominated for best actress for this role and the movie for best picture.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)(i.e. abusing and neglecting women and children) and slavery of same.
I am trying to understand why people continue to provide aid and comfort to this institution.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)"Liberals" continue to support this vile, murderous institution that has been so harmful to women, children, and gays over centuries.
They say: "Oh, but the Church does good work, too!" Well, so do a lot of charities. People can support those without supporting the Vatican and its corruption and its plunder.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)"And Hitler liked dogs, so I guess we can him a pass on that whole genocide thing."
This tends to really piss them off. Then I point out that if you attend mass and/or donate money to the church, you are aiding and abetting the abuse.
This doesn't improve their mood.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)There is a group that people choose to belong to and support. It has a homophobic, misogynistic outlook and a terrible history of oppression. Women are shut out of power in this organization. It lobbies against progressive policies, such as birth control funding. This is a political group. On DU, you can criticize this group until the cows come home. You can say the people who buy into the beliefs of this group are supporting a terrible agenda -- no one will blink an eye.
There is another group that people choose to belong to and support. It has a homophobic, misogynistic outlook and a terrible history of oppression. Women are shut out of power in this organization. It lobbies against progressive policies, such as birth control funding. This is a religious group -- the Catholic Church. On DU, you can't say jack without getting pushback or alerted on. Why? Because it's "faith." So, if you attach magical thinking and supernatural beliefs to your group, you give yourself a protective bubble, even here on a presumptively liberal website.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)It is somehow excluded in by a grandfather clause that make it impervious to modern judgement. If I claim to talk to an invisible alien only I can see and hear, I am in need of psychiatric treatment. Claim that the alien is "God" rather than Captain Zoltan of the planet Palatai and it's all cool.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)But, please don't criticize Captain Zoltan -- I have accepted him as my savior.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)A little slow, but pretty nice none the less.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)Nailed it.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)was a bunch of nuns, not the church. What they forget is that theology led to these ways of thinking. It is the church just like it is today.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)it was just a few bad apples, they, and the RCC as a whole are not to blame. The minions claim they were just following orders.
I think we need a public hearing to sort this out, some place where we put everybody under oath and get their story.
I hear Nuremberg is still available.
Ilsa
(61,690 posts)I knew a woman, adopted in Louisiana, by a Catholic family in early 1960s. Thing was, though, when the family went to the Catholic charity mothers' home, a nun gave them the wrong baby girl. They took her home. A few days later, the nuns showed up on the family's doorstep to take back the baby and give them another one. Well, the family had already bonded with the baby they picked up. The father whipped out his checkbook, wrote a check for $5,000 (this was a fortune in the early 1960s), gave it to them and told them to go away. They took the money and left.
I don't think she realized when she told me her story how it was a reflection of how corrupt the Catholic mothers' home operators were.
1000words
(7,051 posts)Xithras
(16,191 posts)Nobody is alleging that these children were murdered. Only that they weren't buried according to common practice. A century ago, the child mortality rate in Ireland and the poorer areas of England varied between 35% and 50%. Among the poorest in Ireland, those numbers varied from 40% to 60%. No convents or evil churches needed...up to 60% of children simply DIED before their 5th birthday. Lack of hygiene, the fact that modern medicines and antibiotics didn't exist yet, appalling living conditions, and chronic hunger all played a part, but the result was that the poorer areas of Ireland were hell on small children.
It's no surprise that an orphanage in that sort of environment would have a cemetery and a huge number of graves. The allegation, as far as I can read, is simply that the church didn't bury them in individual graves. That's hardly a crime against humanity.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Seems to me that these children were neglected and abused from what I am reading. Some died of malnutrition according to death certificates. How do you die of malnutrition under the care of the Catholic Church?
We now have evidence surfacing that the children were subject to illegal vaccine trials by Burroughs Wellcome in the 30's.
Taking children into your care, abusing them emotionally, physically and by neglect are crimes. If this happened in the U.S. the place would be crawling with FBI agents.
The bodies need to be exhumed and examined forensically. Every site in Ireland where these monsters operated need a full criminal investigation. I do not give the benefit of a doubt to a religious organization which only got out of the slave trade in 1996!
Xithras
(16,191 posts)Take a few minutes to look up the history of orphanages right here in the United States. It's not pretty. Kids starved, kids were tossed out into the street by day to beg food, because the orphanages could only afford to feed them once daily. We even had a novel system here in the U.S. called "orphan trains". From the 1800's into the 1900's, orphans were cleaned up and piled onto trains in cities like Boston and New York and were sent west. Whenever the train stopped in a town, people would come onboard and pick out an orphan like we'd pick out a puppy at a pet store today. Most of these kids were put to work in de facto farm and household slavery until they grew old enough to leave. Some were picked up by pedophiles or worse. Many girls ended up in the hands of brothel operators where they worked as servants and servers until they were old enough to "serve" the customers in other ways. I once read about a bidding war that broke out over a "pretty 14 year old girl" that may have included up to 12 men. I doubt they were looking for a maid. While the exact number of children shipped off this way are unknown, most researchers put the numbers at AT LEAST 200,000.
Historically, our (and by "our", I mean all of humanities) treatment of orphans has always been horrific. These children were often treated as cattle...or worse, as liabilities to be disposed of as quickly as possible. The notion that they have rights, or that families should be kept together, or even that they are DESERVING of food and a bed, are a relatively recent development.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)in Ireland, we are talking about places that closed as recently as the 60s. When we talk about the RCC's slave trade (i.e. the Magadeline Laundries) we are talking about places that just shut down in 1996.
The RRC's actions are more egregious than what happened in U.S. orphanages in that the Church consciously singled out for specific abuse and neglect a subset of orphans in their care, specifically "children of fallen women".
The U.S. and various state governments over the years have answered in court for a variety of these sins and paid compensation and apologized. The RCC is, to this day, fighting doing what is right and refusing to apologize or make restitution. Even now, over a decade after evidence has proven clearly and unequivocally that the sexual abuse in the Church was systemic and tolerated, they still duck and weave around their moral and legal responsibilities.
Yes, this type of behaviour happened "in the past", but we should no more excuse the people (if still alive) or the institutions responsible any more than we would excuse ex-Klansmen involved in lynchings or Nazi prison guards.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)hedgehog
(36,286 posts)"As required by section 5 of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act, 2000, the Commission published its First Interim Report on 22nd of May, 2001"
http://www.childabusecommission.ie/
The investigation has been pain staking and open.
Those responsible for the abuses are mostly all dead. (If someone was 35 in 1970, they'd be 79 years old today. I'm guessing someone would have had to have been at least 35 to be in charge of such a place, and that by 1970 they were closed.)
It's very easy to blame the Catholic Church as an institution for these crimes, but people were aware of conditions back then. Some approved of the way women and children were treated. Those who didn't approve faced an elected government tied very closely to the institutional Church. As an example of the fusion of government and religion, take a look at the story of the Mother and Child Scheme:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_and_Child_Scheme
Some of the survivors are receiving monetary compensation:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/just-33-of-magdalene-survivors-get-redress-259185.html
The only new information that has come to light is not that children and babies died, but that they were buried in unmarked graves. Still, this news has brought about its own reaction:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/kenny-treatment-of-many-women-in-mother-and-baby-homes-an-abomination-633040.html
If it's any consolation, these crimes may have had a lot to do with the ongoing collapse of the institutional Irish Catholic Church:
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/numbers-in-irelands-catholic-church-continue-to-drop-stigma-attached-to-attending-mass-200315991-237575781.html