BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns

Subject: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 01:15 PM

Just as you might think we have seen the worst of it Ireland is rattled by the revelation the remains of 796 babies are found in a septic tank in the grounds of a former home for unmarried mothers run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam Co Galway between 1925 and 1961.

Irish Times article (one of many).

Some sources speak of malnutrition as a cause of death for many of the children found.

There's obviously a great amount of anger at the revelations. What I can't get my head around however: a priest, spokesman for the church one presumes, speaking out (on RTE news) and saying that times were different then. Well times may have been different, stuffing dead children in a septic tank was never right. It was as wrong fifty years ago as it is today. And don't make it sound as if it was please.

And then there's the Bon secours sister who made 'a small financial contribution' towards a memorial to be erected.
Well, that's that solved then.
Words fail me.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 02:06 PM

Peter, I am completely with you in this. I live across the street from a Catholic Church that periodically fills its lawn with white crosses for "a million murdered unborn". and I cannot help but wonder if those crosses, and the Church's often morbid and obsessive "Right to Life" movement really represents a denial of these horrors, and others yet to be discovered.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,#
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 02:27 PM

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/irish-catholics-under-fire-over-mass-grave-201463215031168337.html

There's a bit more.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 02:32 PM

They were doubtless killed by Islamists- as Keith will explain, Christians don't do such things.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 03:01 PM

It's mind-boggling that 796 (or more, according to the story I heard on the radio this morning) babies DIED in this setting. Over a period of 36 years they lost an average of 22 babies or children a year. And no one noticed? Or rebelled?

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said the culture that arose out partition was partially responsible for the kind of Irish society that tolerated mother and baby homes.

"We have made the case many, many times and we could be accused of engaging in a doctrinal Republican issue, but there were two conservative, closed states established in this island and the small elites who used to rule us were replaced by a very conservative domestic elite, and the Church hierarchy wasn't about the liberation of souls. It was about power."

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said Tuam was not an isolated incident "no matter how shocking it has been".

She said the mother and baby homes have been excluded from the redress schemes, but that now needs to change.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 03:55 PM

It's an interesting contrast with the attitude towards abortion as maintained it is in the same quarters, isn't? Every life is sacred, yeah right.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Rog Peek
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 05:45 PM

For many, many of these children, the cause of death on their death certificates was given as "Marasmus". Such a degree of wickedness seems incomprehensible. On top of this, it was reported on the radio today that the state was paying the nuns to perpetrate this atrocity. Beggars belief!

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 06:42 PM

I want to know if and/or how much money was skimmed off to go to the Vatican under duress...THere needs to be a financial accounting because there was state money and they apparently competed for it..perhaps..if the state paid them enough to feed and clothes the babies, and money disappeared, it needs to be traced.

but here is a song...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RomFfK33v3U

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 07:09 PM

Marasmus is a form of severe malnutrition characterized by energy deficiency. A child with marasmus looks emaciated. Body weight is reduced to less than 60% of the normal (expected) body weight for the age. Marasmus occurrence increases prior to age 1, whereas kwashiorkor* occurrence increases after 18 months. It can be distinguished from kwashiorkor in that kwashiorkor is protein deficiency with adequate energy intake whereas marasmus is inadequate energy intake in all forms, including protein.

*Another, similar, disease.

In short, starvation in one form or another.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 08:16 PM

So you're trying to blame this on the Vatican, Mary? There's no evidence presented so far that they starved these children because of lack of funds.

"Every life is sacred". Yup. Fersure. Indeed.

Dear Lord, protect me from your "Christians".

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 09:50 PM

People always seem to forget about time frames when they encounter information like this. There's no doubt that this was a terrible thing, no matter how those infants died. And I suppose that it's natural when something like this comes to light, people want to be able to blame somebody. But it happened 1927-1961. I'm sure most of the people responsible are dead, so what good does it do to try to find somebody to blame? And to whom does the blame rightly belong? To the Vatican? To the Catholic Church? To the Irish Government? Or to all the people of Ireland who allowed this terrible thing to go on under their noses?

MG's usual conspiracy theory is, as usual, preposterous. Local church organizations are not required to send money to the Vatican, since the Vatican is self-supporting. Parishes and religious orders use the money they earn, to cover their own expenses. Dioceses do assess parishes a percentage for diocesan expenses.

And Stim's tie to the hypocrisy of modern anti-abortionists is a bit anachronistic, I'd say. I'd agree that hypocrisy is alive and well in the so-called "pro-life" movement, but modern pro-lifers are unlikely to be in favor of burying dead babies in a septic tank.

As in any crime, the people to blame are those who committed the crime. And all of us are at least partly complicit to the extent to which we failed to prevent the crime or stop it from continuing. But before we point the finger of blame for such a crime, perhaps we need to examine how much our parents or grandparents and aunts and uncles were involved in these things. Maybe we can deny responsibility because we aren't Catholic or we aren't Irish - but what if our ancestors were Irish and Catholic?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 11:35 PM

Abortion and the death of these children are not comparable, Peter. This isn't a sliding scale. Given access to abortion many of these young women might have taken it up, but I suspect a lot of these young women would have liked to have kept and raised healthy children had the society of the day left them alone to do so. These women sound like they had no say in the matter of the health of their children.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Jun 14 - 11:51 PM

I spent the day dealing with the issue of mass incarceration in the U.S., which has the has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world - mostly of racial minorities. Seems like every generation has its own sort of institutionalized societal cruelty. I suppose, though, that it will make us feel better if we spend our energy examining and condemning what happened in County Galway between 1925 and 1961. Then we won't have to worry about what we're doing now that is unjust.

On the other hand, it's not wise for us to yearn for the "good old days." They weren't all that good.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: LadyJean
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 12:51 AM

There are fewer quicker, more efficient ways to kill a baby than to place it in an institution. Infants died in the Ideal Maternity Home in Nova Scotia, no one knows how many are buried there. Georgia Tann didn't like to spend money on antibiotics, so babies died in her Tennessee Children's home too.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Teribus
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 01:45 AM

Listened to this on the news this morning and the interview with the two men who when they were boys discovered the remains. The explanation given then was that it was a mass grave for famine victims, which is rather strange as one would have thought that some grown up in the community would have asked the apparently obvious question regarding how "famine" victims ended up inside a disused septic tank emptied in the early 1920s when the building ceased to be used as a workhouse.

Also heard the local priest saying how times were different then and that we should not judge.

Local people are collecting for a memorial and were I one of them I would refuse any donation from the Church whose "sisters" saw fit to bury the mortal remains of those children in the manner that they did - I would tell the archdiocese of Roman Catholic Church in Galway thank you but no thank you you have already done enough, we will take it from here, your money cannot buy you absolution.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 01:56 AM

The reason why this is news today is quite simple.

We are in danger of yet again judging an organisation that sees itself as fit for judging the morals of others.

The brainwashing, especially in Ireland as in Latin America, is such that the Catholic Church is often above scrutiny.

Even on these threads, if you scrutinise any Christian ideal, there are those who run out to defend the indefensible by questioning your integrity. The same characters then have a field day dismissing Islamic communities.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 01:59 AM

Trouble is, Teribus, everyone in Galway was Catholic at the time these things happened. So, who, then, is worthy to contribute to such a memorial?

I'm not sure the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galway would consider such generosity, anyhow. I went to Mass at their cathedral a couple of years ago, and was appalled. I had to go to Mass at a Church of Ireland church an hour later to make up for it.

The point, though, Teribus, is that the people who did this crime are most likely dead, so there's nobody left to try to buy absolution for themselves.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Teribus
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 02:09 AM

Very true Joe.

The "Church" as an organisation's best option would have been to restrict themselves to clearly stating their regret over whatever had happened coupled with a promise to co-operate to their utmost with any subsequent investigation.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 02:11 AM

Joe--There has always been a creepy fixation on dead babies amongst at least some of the "Right to Lifers", and a fondness for pointing the accusing finger at the "Pro-choicers" and screaming, "Murderer!"--and, perhaps not so much now, but not that long ago, many of the priests and nuns who handed out those awful pictures and pointed those baleful fingers also knew where the bodies were buried.

And you do have a a strong point about each generation having it's own societal cruelties, but how can we confront the evils of the present if we are hesitant to look at those of the past?

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 02:12 AM

Musket, I think your statement is short on both factual data and logic - not to mention unfair.

Everyone who witnesses injustice has both a moral right and a moral duty to speak out against injustice. There is no "fitness test" to determine whether a person or group is of sufficient moral fitness to speak out against injustice. If such a fitness test existed, we all would fail. So, are you saying that since I'm Catholic, I have no right to question the American addiction to mass incarceration?

The Catholic Church is mostly out of the business of passing judgment on the morals of others, although individuals within the Catholic Church may think otherwise and may claim that right to themselves. Those people are widely known as "hypocrites." I suppose, though I have to admit that I have passed judgment on capital punishment and mass incarceration and racism and corporate greed and militarism, and I find them all to be profoundly immoral. Have I no right to oppose these things, even though I may not be completely right in all my thinking?

"Brainwashing" if such a thing ever existed, is not commonly practiced in the major churches nowadays outside of certain cults.

You say, "if you scrutinise any Christian ideal, there are those who run out to defend the indefensible by questioning your integrity." Well, yes, I suppose there are idiots everywhere. I do wonder, however, what Christian "ideal" you seek to criticize.

All that being said, yes, I do admit that churches have more than their fair share of lunatics.

respectfully,

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 02:28 AM

And I say again, with genuine respect to what you hold dear, that you are reading about others and applying the test to your own interpretation of faith.

Like it or lump it, Papal leaders from the pope down don't pick up microphones and ask people to find their own moral compass. They supply it, lock, stock and barrel.

The "don't judge the past" stance of the priests over there is all well and good if you have evidence that their world has moved on. The very recent abuse of children and the attempts to cover it up suggest the word "trust" needs attention here.

My first impressions of Ireland many years ago was child poverty amidst churches dripping with gold.

Would that be gild or guilt?

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 02:31 AM

Unbelievably, this may be breaking news, but problems with Tuam orphanage have been known about by the Government since 1944.
"A 1944 government inspection recorded evidence of malnutrition among some of the 271 children then living in the Tuam orphanage alongside 61 unwed mothers."
It in disingenuous to put this down to the ethos of the time, or to say that we should be concentrating on what is happening today.
This is about the power wielded the Church over the State institutions which could have dealt with it at the time, but didn't.
Any sociaetal cruelty that existed in Ireland (or anywhere the church held sway) came from that power and to infer, as some people have, that ordinary people might have known it was happening, but did nothing, is beneath contempt.
The sooner the Church is removed from all State influence, especially in connection with children, the better.
Some years ago here were reports of a large number of unmarked and unregistered graves at another religious childrens' institution - I don't think it was Tuam.
It seems to have been forgotten in the rest of the avalanche of horrors.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 03:49 AM

It [is] disingenuous to put this down to the ethos of the time, or to say that we should be concentrating on what is happening today.

Why, yes, Jim, it is far more important to dwell on the past misdeeds of dead people, than it would be to question our own conduct in the present.

Yeah, right.

It was a bad thing. The people who did it should be punished, but they are now dead or in retirement homes. To my mind, it appears that you and Musket at very good at the same moralistic judgmentalism you accuse the Catholic Church of.

If things are wrong or if harm is being done, it must be stopped. When things have happened in the past, I think we need to stop and question what good will be done by opening those wounds all over again. I think twenty years is a good number. If it happened more than twenty years ago, there's little you can do to fix it, so maybe it's time to drop it.

I admit that I am still angry at the constant harassment I received from a coworker from 1981-1999. It made my life at work hell a lot of the time, and it gets me angry all over again to think of it. But that was another time, and it's best for me to let it drop.


-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 04:03 AM

More for Musket, who says I am reading about others and applying the test to your own interpretation of faith.

I suggest that you read a few documents at the Vatican Website, vatican.va, and inform yourself on what the Catholic Church actually teaches. You will find far more condemnation of American militarism and corporate greed, than you will find of gay marriage. And while the Vatican opposes gay marriage, it is quite respectful in what it says about homosexuals. And when asked about homosexuals, the Pope answered, "Who am I to judge?"

And again Musket says: Like it or lump it, Papal leaders from the pope down don't pick up microphones and ask people to find their own moral compass. They supply it, lock, stock and barrel. That's very dramatic language, Musket, but not really true. Church authorities teach, they don't dictate. Two of the most important issues the Catholic Church is emphasizing now, are the rights of migrants and human trafficking. I think you actually might agree with most of what the Catholic Church says about actual moral issues nowadays (and for the last 150 years at least).
Believe it or not, the Catholic Church says very little about sexual conduct.

But you don't really want to know what the Catholic Church actually teaches, because that would destroy all the misconceptions that you are so comfortable with.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Rog Peek
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 04:18 AM

Joe - 20 years? I afraid I cannot agree with this, I believe that there should be no statute of limitations on such crimes. The likes of Byron De la Beckwith, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Thomas Edwin Blanton were tried and convicted 30 to 40 years after their crimes were committed, and in my view rightly so. People who commit such atrocities should not be provided with the comfort of knowing that after twenty years they can never be called to account.

Hardly comparable with harassment by a co-worker!

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 04:41 AM

The last time Rome found kids killed on this scale, they burned the guy responsible at the stake. Gilles de Rais, Nantes 1440. The fact he was the richest man in France, a war hero (one of Joan of Arc's chief lieutenants) and had done so researching early chemistry, to develop improved gunpowder for the new artillery they had just acquired, didn't enter the picture. He's gone down in history as Bluebeard.

A synopsis of th report which exposed this is to be found here. It shows the line published even now is full of lies. St Mary's Mother and Baby Home stood close to St Mary's Cathedral, and its first Chaplain was a grandnephew of a former Bishop. I think, therefore, that the only conclusion we can reach is that the Diocese was fully aware of the situation.
A government inspection of the home in 1944 described the children as "fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated." The cover on the cesspit collapsed in 1975, revealing the charnel house beneath, and it was then that the "famine" fabulation was invented.   

To claim that this was just"of the times" is patent nonsense. Are there cesspits full of dead infants elsewhere? Not aborted, born living but starved to death: how dare Europe criticise Ruanda when something like this has been hidden. somebody knew of it and failed to raise the question. Unhallowed, unshriven, a true whited sepulchre of hypocrisy.

We should not judge? How can we not? Times were NOT different then, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley saw out their days in prison for killing five children. How many nuns were there in that convent? Is this five apiece?

The doctrine of the time was that these children were the fruit of sin and the Church would not therefore baptise them. Because they were not baptised, they could not be buried in consecrated ground. But that is a mile away from starving them to death and burying them on the midden.

The home stood on the Athenry Road. The Fields of Athenry takes on a whole more horrible meaning.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Rog Peek
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 05:25 AM

"Initial research suggests that this systemic neglect of non-marital children was not contained to just the home in Tuam and suspicions arise in relation to at least three other large mother-and-baby homes, where mortality rates topped 56%, when the national average for marital children only reached 15%."
Irish examiner June 5th 2014."

Complete article.

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 05:30 AM

Rog, I agree that there are many reasons for certain crimes to be punished 30, 40, or 60 years after the event - but there is a time when punishing a criminal just doesn't really do any good, no matter righteously deserved the punishment may be. There has been a recent rush to prosecute German concentration camp guards before they die off. World War II ended 69 years ago, and the people they want to prosecute are over 90. Does that really do any good? I realize that my 20 years may seem overly generous, but I personally just can't imagine any good being done by prosecuting a 20-year-old crime (I also can't imagine legislation being passed to enact my 20-year statute of limitations, so it's just my opinion).

And once the criminals are dead, I think it's time to leave well enough alone, even though they may have represented an employer (or church) that is still in business.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 05:51 AM

And here's another opinion I have that won't be popular - I don't really think that a person is capable of making an adult decision until he or she reaches the age of thirty. For so many people the late teens and the twenties are a time of confusion and anger and horrible judgment. Most people seem to settle down by the age of thirty, but I don't think people should be punished 30, 40, or 50 years later for things they did when they were under the age of thirty.

The situation we're talking about ended in 1961, 53 years ago. We don't know what actually happened, and we don't know who did what that was a crime. I think it is important to investigate the matter fully so we can know what happened and prevent it from happening again, but I see no value in chasing down 80-year-old nuns and sending them to the electric chair.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Musket
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 06:26 AM

So, let's get this straight. The Catholic Church opposes marriage between two loving people yet it's chief executive says "who am I to judge?"

Which Vatican "truth" do you wish to educate me with Joe?

By the way, talking of sending nuns to the electric chair is fine till you notice you called me dramatic for suggesting the pope uses a microphone.

The more I hear your excuses, the more I see the danger of perpetuating organised religion. If it can blinker an educated reasoning person such as yourself, what is the "teaching" doing to the millions of ill educated poor that it feeds on for its gold?

20 years as a statute of limitation? Tell that to the nazis in their '90s being brought to book still. The value is reminding would be tyrants that they will not be allowed to get away with crimes against humanity. If the international court in The Hague has a purpose, dissuading this sort of behaviour is it.

Do they have cesspits in purgatory?

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 06:30 AM

Joe: re your comment at 2.12 "Brainwashing, if such a thing ever existed, is not commonly practised in the major churches nowadays outside of certain cults"

The week before last I attended a wedding held in a catholic establishment. Throughout the wedding the Dominican brother who conducted the service made constant and repetitive references to God and his (note: HIS) role in the marriage of the couple and in the lives of the assembled company.

If that is not brainwashing I do not know what is. If something is repeated often enough people will start to absorb what is being said without giving it due consideration.

I should add the Dominican brother is a passing acquaintance and I occasionally have a pint with him and I should also say that as a child I was educated in catholic infant, junior and Grammar schools.

I rejected the church at an early age because the priest who used the visit our house (and drink my Dad's whisky) made frequent unsavoury comments about the "black sheep", my father, who like most young boys I hero worshipped.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 07:38 AM

Any serious institutional crime, and especially one that is within the living memory of those who may have suffered from it, is worthy of pursuing in court.

I believe that atonement for great acts of evil, is a cathartic - psychological and even spiritual - necessity for both the individual victims and the collective victims (ie: society as a whole) of those corrupt and powerful organisations that perpetrated them with impunity.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Greg F.
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 07:56 AM

Sorry Joe, but

1. There is no statute of limitations on murder, nor should there be.

2. RE: once the criminals are dead, I think it's time to leave well enough alone: You feel they should be given a pass because they're old? Age is a defense against murder? I don't think so.

3. RE: prosecution of Nazis who perpetrated war crimes (Or Nuns who committed murder) "does no good", I would call your attention to George Santayana and that his famous aphorism "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is inscribed on a plaque at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 08:07 AM

"It was a bad thing. The people who did it should be punished, but they are now dead or in retirement homes."
Joe
You still don't get it, do you?
This has never been about "punishing dead people" nor should it be; it is about ascertaining that it should never happen again and making sure that the organisation that allowed it to happen should be removed from the positions it still hold which would allow such things to occur.
As far as the actual perpetrator, those who were a part of these obscenities should be exposed as the monsters they were, dead or alive as an example of extreme influence gone wrong.
Last year, two Magdalene nuns spoke of the Laundries – they referred to their job as "a calling from God", their victims as "sinners" and "the sweepings of the street" and they swept aside any suggestion that they had done wrong otr that they should, in any way, recompense those who suffered in their 'care'.
Their extremely wealthy order has so far refused point-blank to contribute to any payment to the ex-slaves they beat and abused for so long.
A bit rich for those to whom the confessional was an essential step on the 'pathway to Heaven'
The documentary, 'Mea Maxima Culpa' took the child abuse scandals far beyond 'a few bad apples', and showed conclusively how the Church hierarchy facilitated the rape of children over generations, and how the Vatican continues to deny possible closure (it can never be closed for many of those victims) by refusing access to contemporary documents.
Despite all the revelations, the Church is still demanding, (and holding on to), the right to educate the nation's children and it is still exercising malign influence over our laws and our lives.
Last year, politicians who chose to vote for new pregnancy termination laws which have brought Ireland reluctantly, somewhere into the middle of the twentieth century (still a way to go yet) were threatened with excommunication.
Girls are still leaving Ireland in their thousands to undergo medical procedures they can obtain legally on the other side of the Irish Sea.
The suggestion that the church rarely interfere in sexual affairs is a sick joke.
My generation, and generations before me, were brought up to regard sex as a necessary evil and to actually enjoy it is a sin ( I never received a religious education, but the influence of those around me who did was virtually impossible to avoid).
Regarding homosexuality, the 'modern' Church has yet to come to terms with the real world.
The Church, as an institution has lost any rights to influence our lives, especially the lives of or children, other than to offer spiritual advice – some of its members have lost any rights to describe themselves as human beings
The Church has given the phrase "Suffer the little children"
Jim Carroll
Breaking news has just revealed that another order of nuns has agreed to cooperate in enquiries on other sites of unmarked graves in three different locations in Ireland.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 08:10 AM

Concerning aged murderers (be they Nuns or plumbers) and the electric chair. I think we all know that there is no such thing in the UK and Ireland. Murderers don't go to the electric chair over here, they go to jail.

Also, I don't think crimes like this should be 'about the criminals' but rather about the victims, in this case the victims were the babies that were starved to death, the incarcerated mothers whose babies were starved to death, and Irish society which was unwittingly being duped into paying for and supporting such crimes.

In cases like this, it's not simply a case of justice being done (locking up aged killers), but justice being *seen* to be done. We need to hear the stories of those who were victims of corrupt institutions like this, and the perpetrators (where possible) need to give an account of their actions. Punishment has a symbolic function as much as a practical one.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Stu
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 08:38 AM

"but I don't think people should be punished 30, 40, or 50 years later for things they did when they were under the age of thirty."

Seriously? You might want to consider the implications of that statement would have in the real world. If you need it pointing out, then I don't know what to say.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 08:52 AM

'It was a bad thing. The people who did it should be punished, but they are now dead or in retirement homes. To my mind, it appears that you and Musket at very good at the same moralistic judgmentalism you accuse the Catholic Church of'


Speaking for myself here I think I am most outraged by the fact the first priest to be seen commenting on it was sweeping the whole thing under the carpet. Nothing to see here, old stuff, move on please. It wasn't considered wrong in those days. Letting babies die and stick them quietly in a septic tank? Not considered wrong? Really?

The church should have at least the decency to acknowledge what has happened and maybe give an apology to the surviving parent of these children. Along with an assurance nothing like it will happen again.
That would be the decent thing. Acknowledge the sins and repent what has happened. But there's nothing of the sort. The Bon Secours order promised 'a small financial contribution' towards the erection of a memorial. And that's it. And there lies the outrage.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Musket
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 09:44 AM

Speaking for myself,...

Well, everybody on this thread after me has said it all.

I read an in depth article in The Guardian today about it. I fully agree with the author in that the only reason this isn't wall to wall top news coverage around the world is that we see the level we expect from the Irish Catholic Church. The theocracy they ran over the Irish people questions the right of such organisations to even exist in a civilised world.

The more you think of the "sin" declared on young women, the more you see the sin of the churches. I am used to dramatisations accentuating and sensationalising issues, but on this subject, Philomena and Quirke appear to be watering it down rather than making it look worse.

A church entrusted with children throwing them in a cesspit.

Just keep repeating it to yourself and then ask yourself why our governments allow these superstitious crime rings to run schools and be left alone with vulnerable people.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 09:55 AM

"An assurance that nothing like ir will happen again"?
The whole thrust of the priestly intervention is exactly to ensure that what has happened in the past is happening again, sweeping it under the carpet. The only thing we know is that it will happen again. My grandmother was sexually abiused by a Roman priest a hundred years ago, in Belgium. The society scandal which resulted was covered up with the promise Rome would not inflict itself on the family again. That counted as nothing, however, when a Mother Superior General saw fit to attempt to abuse my daughter for her own profit.

The one thing we know is that the only reason it's being covered up is not simply because it happened, but that somewhere it or something like it is still happening. If it were not, Rome could come clean with a Truth and Reconciliation clean-up to put the past behind it. One has to have a certain sympathy, as the problem may be so big it is unmanageable. The Pope has tutted, but will be off the scene before anything happens at this rate.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 10:05 AM

I do not know how many people posting here have actually read the article in The Irish Times. I suggest that you do so. A lot of assumptions are being made, yet there has been no investigation at this point. I do hope that a propmt and thorough investigation will be made. Then we can respond to facts.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 10:51 AM

@HiLo
You can find the link to the original FB thread the Irish Times worked from in the synopsis link on my 05 Jun 14 - 04:41 AM posting above. This is the main source.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 10:56 AM

As the situation stands, 796 children stuffed in a septic tank without any acknowledgement, a proper burial or even an administration to show they ever existed, the sheer inhumanity of it, isn't that quite enough for starters? And I'll say it again, that all coming from the crowd telling us at every junction that every life is precious?

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Musket
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 11:07 AM

I have already referred to The Guardian coverage and The BBC News website is giving an unsensational account, including to be fair, a promise by a leader in the church to get to the bottom of this. The snag is, he has already put his cards on the table by saying they have no record of the children....

Until the irish authorities are no longer impressed by dog collars, we may never get to the bottom of it as reverence to such people and their organisation is far too deeply ingrained. After some priests had been seen to be fucking children, the largest protest outside the courts was from church run groups accusing the authorities of victimising priests. Even questioning whether priests should be subjected to law...

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 11:27 AM

I was gobsmacked by the revelation that these children were denied baptism. Their subsequent treatment seems to have been a natural consequence of this initial exclusion - the priests had decided they were demons or animals.

Catholic missionaries the world over were quite prepared to baptize killers and cannibals. Where did the Irish church get the idea that illegitimate children could not be permitted to become Christians?

is this still official Irish Catholic policy?

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 11:31 AM

@Peter Laban
The starting point of the trail which came to this conclusion appears to be the public documentation of the deaths - Mrs Corless was researching the Home as an Institution, and started talking to the residents of the Estate built on the site. From that she learned of an "angels" graveyard, supposedly of babies dead before baptism, and went to the Galway Registrars, where she learned of nearly 800 deaths, far more than could regularly occupy the space as normal burials. That then lead to the discovery of the 1970s exposure.

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: Rog Peek
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 11:44 AM

Joe - I think we shall simply have to accept that, on this we are bound to remain miles apart.

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 11:50 AM

Jack, there are several angles on this as I understand it.

The Corless investigation received the 796 deaths from the Galway registrar, the church (and I use this term here as a blunt catch all nomer)by their own admission doesn't have any record of these deaths. The children were in the care of the institution. Out of the number in the official registry only one burial was registered, a little boy who was buried in a family plot.

The term 'babies' is maybe a bit misleading, I realise now children aged between a few weeks up to nine years were among the 796.

There was also the instance of two men who were interviewed on RTE news who when children themselves discovered a mass grave in the grounds, piles of bodies put in a watertank. I didn't see that item in great detail so I won't comment although I had the impression that discovery was not followed up at the time.

Subject: ADD: Irish Babies (Mary Garvey)
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 12:45 PM

I have no desire to execute elderly nuns who were caught up in the system themselves...I am struggling to understand how the Vatican is self supporting...I know they sell postage stamps and long long ago, as much as four months probably, used to launder Mafia money...and rent out their massive real estate holdings...but I do believe cash makes its way there..or did...I want historians to tell me where the wealth came from and how much was appropriated wrongly and how much was extracted by people to poor to feed starving children. And there are certainly people old enough to have had children in 1940 who are living and certainly the children are living and we have begun to hear from survivors..in fact, I believe one was called Peter Monaghan..I found this after I got this song..

Anyway, here is a song..tune is wearing of the green

Irish babies..tune Wearing of the Green

My name is Maureen Monahan my age is 93
I had a little baby that they never brought to me
It might have been a daughter it might have been a son
I never got to see it so it so it could be either one

If a boy I named you Paddy if a girl I named you Claire
And yes you had a father and his name was Jack O'Hare
As for you old Mother Ireland how could you treat us so
When we were young and pregnant and had nowhere else to go

800 little babies and children eight or nine
All starving in their little cots and one of them was mine
And when you drew your final breath in that workhouse cold and dank
You were wrapped up in a shroud and thrown into a septic tank

So farewell little Paddy and farewell little Claire
If I'd have known what might have happened I'd have never had you there
I'd have sold myself for pennies to sailors on the street
But by God and all that's holy you'd have had enough to eat.

Subject: BS: irelands shame
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 12:52 PM

Mass Grave of 800 Babies is Too Uncomfortable for Official Ireland
Ireland's public outrage unmatched by media and state response

796 tiny bodies, squashed into a septic tank. Bones upon bones; the bones of 1960s babies mingling with the bones of 1950s, 40s, 30s, 20s babies in untold layers of misery, layers of starvation, layers of neglect.

The horror of the discovery, or rather re-discovery, of the mass grave at the old site of the Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway last week caused no more than a flinch for some, an involuntary turning away.

On the day that the tireless work of local historian Catherine Corless and her colleagues became known to the wider world, RTE News devoted their time to the story of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's honeymoon in Cork. In an age of instant information and desperate press oneupmanship, it is impossible that the revelations in Tuam escaped their notice. It is also unlikely that a conspiracy was afoot at the state broadcaster to keep this unfortunate story quiet.

The most likely reason for RTE's inexplicable blindness, along with that of many other major news outlets, is much more prosaic and much more terrifying.

It was ignored because it wasn't a story. It wasn't news. It no longer surprises us that these things have happened.

Almost 800 babies shoved into a septic tank, uncared for, unmarked, unremembered? Of course they were. What else would you expect from the organisation that presided over the rape of thousands of children, the forced adoption of thousands more, untold years of slave labour, and the incarceration, brutalisation and shaming of women?

The story, which is gaining traction days later as news outlets recognise their terrible oversight, has garnered little more than a shrug from the established press, barely a mumble from the State, and a defensive, sidestepping statement from representatives of the Catholic church.

What can explain this reluctance to report, to engage, to imagine?

Certainly, no-one wants to imagine it.

We would prefer not to think about those women, removed from their homes and families, giving birth under the gaze of disapproving nuns, watching their babies starve, or die from a preventable disease, or disappear one day into a car to be sold to a new family. We would prefer not to think of disabled babies slowly dying in lonely, shabby rooms. We would prefer not to think about exactly how those babies' bodies ended up in the septic tank. We would prefer not to think of the symbolism of that tank, of what those babies meant to the people who were meant to care for their tiny souls. We would prefer not to, but perhaps we should.

That said, Irish people now outstrip their official mouthpieces. Many of us don't share this reluctance. Given the opportunity, we react. In floods of outrage on social media, in the comments section of online news, in conversations on the street, in letters to the paper, people freely speak of things that we would prefer not to think about, but that it would be worse to forget.

With anger and disgust, people condemn the actions of a church that claimed to love and a state that claimed to care. The story goes global, but at home, fringe media and even satirical news sites provide coverage more hard-hitting than anything in the Irish Times. The attitude of ordinary people on this island toward the Catholic church has changed swiftly in the wake of scandal after scandal, while traditional media and government spokespeople still struggle against decades of ingrained deference and outdated modes of public engagement.

This week, Pope Francis, seeming concerned about the world's chronic underpopulation, lamented the fact that some married couples choose not to have children. He accused these couples of selfishly preferring their holidays and dogs to the propagation of loyal young Catholics.

These future children, we can be assured, would be cherished. The children of marriage. The children of devout followers. Not the children of unwed mothers, the children of other religions and none, the unbaptised, the unwanted. Times have changed since these children were left to die of neglect and disposed of in septic tanks, but they are still not the right kind of children for the church to cherish.

The church that still reaches deeply into Irish lives and psyches is not the church of Jesus Christ, a man who by all accounts simply wanted people to care for one another without reservation or prejudice. It is an organisation that thrives on power, that runs on secrecy, that entangles itself in the lives and deaths of its followers.

However, revelations about babies in septic tanks, no matter how slowly they filter into the mainstream, are unforgettable once lodged in the public imagination. Ireland has changed, and continues to change, while the press and government struggle to keep up with the outrage of the people.

Some members of government suggest a memorial might be in order. The Archbishop of Dublin thinks that the matter is possibly worthy of a social history project. What neither of them wants is an excavation.

Why? Because an excavation means bones. Bones that will be brought to light, touched, examined, photographed. Bones that will reach the front pages of papers and the corners of the internet. Thousands of tiny, fragile bones, permanently engraved in the minds of Irish people everywhere.

We couldn't be having that.
Written by

    [Gwen Boyle]
    Gwen Boyle

    Freelance writer and editor from Cork, Ireland.

Your audience awaits. Tell a story on Medium today.

Subject: RE: BS: irelands shame
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Jun 14 - 01:05 PM

Well put. The alliance between the roman catholic church and the Irish state has been a terrible, terrible source of oppression.