Aha!

A perfect example of Jim Carroll's usual legerdemain, the old bait-and-switch trick.

My comment was about "rushing to answer unfounded claims of bodies in a septic tank."

Jim's response: The clerical sex abuse scandals first began to emerge in the 1990s - around 15 years ago - hardly a "rush to judgement" by anybody's standards.

This thread is about the allegation that there were 796 bodies in a septic tank, and the cries for immediate justice that ensued - and have continued even after the septic tank allegations were discovered to be unfounded. There are still indignant cries in the press about the failure of Catholic authorities to jump into the cesspool.

Caught you red-handed, Jim, up to your usual tricks. Why don't you fight fair for a change?

Fionn does the same thing - I don't know how many years he's been trying to prove me a holocaust denier. Fionn's fallacy is so shallow - and so common - that it has a name now: argumentum ad Hitlerum.

Oh, and then (despite the fact I have a negative view of Cardinal Brady), look at Fionn's overblown statement above: A disgusting criminal, Sean O'Brady, sits to this day in pompous office not just as a bishop, or even an archbishop, but as primate of all Ireland and a cardinal to boot. Read here how he helped the monstrous pervert Brendan Smyth pursue a career in child abuse - and then had the brass neck to appeal to the forgiving Christian insticts of the Irish.
Brady's reputation as a "disgusting criminal" apparently stems from the fact that as a young priest in 1975, Brady was present when two of Smyth's victims signed a silence agreement after receiving a settlement of their claims against a diocese for Smyth's conduct. Fionn's flair for drama is indeed remarkable, but the significance of his remarks remains in question.

I see all sorts of rhetoric here, but most of it distorts the facts far out of proportion to their reality. I'm beginning to think that all the allegations against the mother and baby homes, the laundries, and the industrial schools are far out of proportion, too. I have no doubt that conditions in these institutions were harsh - and that was wrong. But then I read a number of accounts from people who had lived in these institutions, and I found that the conditions were about the same level of harshness and cruelty that was experienced by U.S. Army recruits in the 1960s and early 1970s. Recruits were battered with demeaning taunts, worked beyond the point of exhaustion, awakened in the middle of the night for no reason, given physical punishment for the most insignificant failures, forced to do heavy exertion when sick, and generally demeaned and battered until they were forced into submission. The death rate in Army basic training was quite high, and spinal meningitis spread like wildfire. This was done to "build strong fighting men." But it was also cruel and unnecessary. But those were the times - people seemed to think that abuse "builds character."

By the way, there were mother and baby homes in England, too - see http://www.motherandbabyhomes.com/.

No doubt, the mother and baby homes and the other institutions need to be studied in depth - not only in Ireland, and not only those institutions that were run by Catholics.

-Joe Offer-