One of Ireland’s
wealthiest religious orders recently said this about the Magdalene
laundries/prisons that they ran for profit: “It was part of the system and the
culture of the time.” This explained everything away in the past and of
that yet to come to the light for this sadistic bunch of nuns, and by extension
the Catholic Church as a whole.
The fact is it was the Irish Catholic
version of that religion that was the system and culture of the time for you
could not separate one without the
other wrapped within a constitution similar to an Islamic state. It had pervaded every
crevice of Irish society: the arts, education, sport, and health, that in turn
fostered a twisted prejudice and interpretation of what was morality was.
Quickly a two-tier system of castes sprang from it. The joy of flesh against
the sin of it, the child classed to being illegitimate to give a moral
legitimacy, the whore mother to the bastard child. There were places you could
put these lower castes and like the prostitutes of today, they or their
children would not be missed, and for the most part it was true.
The fever from fear of the
untouchables spread: Mother and father turned against daughter and their very
own grandchildren whether boy or
girl. Hope only lay in moral servitude and to give up your child. Those
children that did not make it any further than that childhood were consigned to
the mass graveyards of anonymity; for the still living the drudgery and
indentured slavery went on amid the sounds of the Industrial farm Institutions
and Magdalene laundries that boosted upward the coffers of the Irish Catholic
Church both here and abroad. A whole legal system protected it and the rights
of the child was less than that of an animal.
This was the system and culture of
the times that lasted until 1997 in Ireland when the last Industrial/reformatory for
children closed its oak and metal barred prison doors for the last time. Their
secrets are only now coming to light with each one darker than the last and subject
to great resistance from the faithful for the promise of everlasting life can
make you deny anything that threatens it.
Yet the Church is still largely in charge of Ireland today; still running the schools, the universities, the colleges, and
the main charities. They have re-invented themselves too. Fr Trendy’s with
communication and marketing degree’s fronting companies that have more to do
with dodgy banking than presiding at Mass. Apologies for their past sins are
couched in removing themselves from the scene of the crime by still blaming the
system and the culture of times past yet that hold only them alone in the frame
of it.
Scant compensation has been paid relevant to what they have gained from
that past and indeed present and the beat goes on. Their tentacles are wrapped
too tight now to be made accountable for they are in many ways bigger than most
Governments, Catholic ones anyway. The Church even claimed that it was them
that did the most to combat child abuse though they stand among a select group
who engaged in it and hid so well.
It is not a hopeful note but one that
I carry for once, for many more gravesites will be found, more hand wringing
will be done, more apologizes and trembling lips will banner atonement without the
sincerity behind the eyes, before change itself comes. That change will only be the
beginning of the end for this religion as we know it for it cannot stand on its
own lies and currency of superstition any longer. Take away the oxygen of money and it will die sooner.
Barry Clifford
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