"I guess that is true for Atheism as well!"
Not really Sailor Boy - Atheism comes with argument and discussion and not with "the fear of god" and the threat of "eternal damnation".
"I am not attacking Atheism here"!
Yes you most certainly are, and you are carefully avoiding all the brainwashing features of all religions, the threats, the humiliation, the "Give me a child for for his first seven years and I'll give you the man" aspects that is part and parcel of what your religion brings with it.
A few weeks ago there I heard part of a radio interview with two ex-Magdalene nuns (who wisely chose who be identifies as "sisters X and Y) who talked of their victims, who as young women, had been put into their care for "getting into trouble". The nuns described the girls as "prostitutes" and proudly declared that by taking them in they were "cleaning up the streets of such people". When asked did they apologise for the horrific treatment now known to have been meted out to these unfortunates, they replied "for what?".
Last night I watched an interview with some of their victims; constant humiliation, crippling beatings, sexual assaults by priests, including an appalling description of one priest who would regularly sexually assault one girl then masturbate over her.
The the total and lifelong destruction of these womens' lives was a common feature of the interviews.
One interviewee, not a Laundry Girl but of an orphan in a Magdalene-run home, described how she attempted to make contact with one of these 'slaves', was discovered talking to her and was taken to the Mother Superior's office, beaten with a purpose-made rubber belt and had her hair sheared off and her head shaved bald, leaving her scalp covered with bleeding cuts. She was then forced to stand in front of a mirror for hours to witness the "results of her sinning".
Far from being "a thing of the past," the troubles of the church in Ireland have only just begun.
Jim Carroll