Despite the allegation from our unknown Guest, I haven't seen any recent statements from the Catholic Church denying the conditions at the mother and baby homes. Indeed, Archbishop Martin of Dublin called for an investigation of Tuam and the other Mother and Baby Homes. It really doesn't pay the Catholic Church to deny anything that's factual anymore, so they've stopped doing that for the most part.

We of the Catholic left want to know the facts of the conditions in these institutions, but we can't make use of unsupported allegations or information that is clouded by slanted language. We think the Catholic Church should be a place that fosters critical thinking and supports free will and a spirit of generosity. We don't want to go back to the authoritarian atmosphere that existed before Vatican II. I think it is that authoritarianism and the clericalism and judgmental spirit that goes with it, that fostered the harsh conditions in the mother and baby homes and the Magdalene Laundries and the industrial schools. There is a strong conservative movement in the Catholic Church. I don't know why, but they want to gain back the severity that was so prevalent in the Catholic Church before Vatican II. They made great advances during the lengthy reign of John Paul II, 1978-2005. They lost some ground during the reign of Benedict XVI, and they've been really worried since Pope Francis took over in March 2013.

But you born-again know-nothings* who make such a ruckus here, make no recognition of the different forces active within the Catholic Church, and you see it all as monolithic and therefore uniformly to blame for everything bad done in the name of the Catholic Church.

I don't think the conditions in these institutions were quite as dramatically bad as some of you would like people to think, but I think it's clear that these institutions were deplorable. There are strong forces within the Catholic Church fighting to see that such deplorable situations never happen again in my church - but to win that fight, we need to make use of factual information, not Know-Nothing propaganda.

-Joe-


*Know-Nothings, for those of you who don't know: Wikipedia will tell you the Know Nothing movement was an American political movement that operated on a national basis during the mid-1850s. It promised to purify American politics by limiting or ending the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativism and anti-Catholic sentiment.