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The mothers who Ireland forgot How do you tell the story of women betrayed by the state?

Horrific: The Woman in the Wall (BBC1)


October 9, 2023   6 mins

Bernard Canavan has spent decades searching for information about his life before he was adopted in 1948, when he was nearly four years old, from St Patrick’s Guild in Dublin. When I visited him at his home in Willesden, the artist showed me a huge ring-binder filled with documents: copies of birth and baptismal certificates, letters from his parents promising to find the money to pay for his keep, correspondence with religious charities, newspaper clippings, photographs, and scores of printed-out emails.

It reminded me of the box of documents that sits on the table in an inner room of Lorna Brady’s house in the TV series, The Woman in the Wall. Lorna’s box contains newspaper articles about the mother and baby homes scandals, polite denials from officials she has begged for information, and a whole series of birthday cards she has written year after year — and never been able to send — to the daughter who was taken from her when she gave birth, in the mid-Eighties, in an institution run by nuns in the fictional village of Kilkinure, County Mayo.

The real-life Bernard Canavan searching for his mother and the fictional character Lorna Brady (played by Ruth Wilson), searching for her daughter, are two sides of one bleak story — about institutional power, and a society inured to the sacrifice of women and children to religious dogma. It’s a story that the Irish public is still struggling to come to terms with.

It was Peter Mullan’s 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters that brought Ireland’s female carceral regime to an international audience. The drama followed the young women and girls sent to the infamous Magdalene Laundries in the Sixties because they had been raped, or because they had boyfriends, or because they had fallen pregnant outside marriage, or — very often — because they were the children of single mothers. Because, in short, the church deemed them “fallen”. The last of these institutions only closed in the Nineties.

Then, in 2013, came Philomena, based on Martin Sixsmith’s best-selling book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. The child in question was like Bernard Canavan: adopted from a Mother and Baby Home at age three, against his mother’s wishes — though in this case he was adopted to the United States, and he never saw her again.

These stories had long been the subject of public debate in Ireland. In the mid-Nineties, journalist Mary Raftery’s exposé of the treatment of children in orphanages and reformatories, States of Fear, caused a national scandal. There have been multiple autobiographical accounts of the cruelty meted out to the incarcerated women and children, and a number of campaigns for justice and reparation. A series of Irish government commissions have investigated state involvement with the Magdalene laundries and child abuse in state-run children’s homes. In 2014, the bodies of nearly 800 babies and small children were discovered in a septic tank on the grounds of a former mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway; the scandal was met with promises from the government to make amends. And in the past few years, best-selling novels by Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, and Claire Keegan have all explored the legacies of this inhuman system.

The Woman in the Wall is the latest take in a long line, then. And, like other attempts, it has come in for some criticism. The use of both gothic horror and police procedural in Joe Murtagh’s telling has been deemed inappropriate. There are certainly sensationalist elements: a woman gets plastered inside a wall, there’s a haunted house with poisonous weeds and otherworldly screaming, a flock of crows lead to a dead body in an attic. Lorna’s home is poorly lit, with an ethereal red glow — especially the room containing the box of documents. And she’s suffering the kind of post-traumatic stress that leads her to sleepwalk and attack people and things while unconscious of her actions. But the viewer’s sense of dread seems appropriate to me. The horror genre becomes a form of realism when capturing the trauma of these institutions’ survivors, who are not living in a world where rational choice will save them. Something else is needed.

Murtagh makes this clear by flooding the daylight scenes with media debates about the violence of the history and the claims of survivors. There are radio call-in shows, meetings with politicians, conference halls and reports of discussions in parliament about the Laundries and mother and baby homes. There’s even a scene in which a group of women debate whether or not to sign compensation forms. In this Ireland, nothing seems to be hidden. The nation has turned its back on the cruelties of the past, and no one, apart from a few ancient nuns with a shaky grip on reality, is trying to defend the defunct institutional regime. Still, this is a detective drama — there are elements of the 2015 sexual abuse cover-up film Spotlight — and the viewer naturally asks, what more is to be discovered?

Several things, it turns out. First, that despite all the media coverage the ordinary inhabitants of Kilkinure still don’t think all that historical unpleasantness has much to do with them. They have a lot to learn. We watch the slow realisation of the local policeman — a sympathetic, at times comic character — that he was part of the system that kept young girls imprisoned against their will.  The implication is that the whole town colluded in choosing not to acknowledge what they knew was going on in the Convent. There’s knowing and there’s knowing, says the sergeant.

The series would have us believe that, in addition to incarcerating young women and girls, and forcing them to do unpaid labour, the homes offered up their children for illegal adoption, in exchange for money. The claim that mother and baby homes colluded with Irish adoption societies to sell children, often to the United States, was not substantiated by the Report of the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. In 2021, a group of ten adoptees sued St Patrick’s Guild — from where Bernard Canavan was informally adopted in 1948 — for facilitating illegal adoptions. The home was accused of “kidnapping, forgery…and conspiracy for wrongful concealment”, in the course of a series of “well-practised and systematically perfected child abductions”.  At least 126 illegal adoptions between 1946 and 1969 have been verified and there are estimates that the true number could reach 15,000.

And beyond the scandal at St Patrick’s there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that babies were sent to the United States from homes across the country in exchange for donations in the Forties and Fifties. But Murtagh’s drama goes further, depicting a shady extreme-religious outfit that is involved in stealing babies from mothers against their will, and selling them to fund their organisation, right up until the Eighties. It’s a system that echoes the Franco-era Stolen Babies scandal, currently being investigated by Amnesty International, in which thousands of babies were taken from their mothers and given to families supportive of the regime.

The claim that a similar system operated in Ireland, and maybe still operates, seems so outlandish that it nearly topples the fictional world Murtagh has built. But when the guards uncover a link between the Irish baby-selling business and the bombing of an abortion clinic in the US, the viewer is reminded of today’s network of extreme Right-wing religious groups, powered by an absolute sense of the rightness of their moral mission even to the point of committing murder. In a bold move by Murtagh, the Irish version of these ideologically-driven conservative family warriors masquerades as a harmless lobbying group, that sits right at the heart of the political establishment.

When The Magdalene Sisters was screened in 2002, the focus of the scandal was on the cruelty of the nuns and priests in overall charge of the institutions, and the secrecy with which they operated; in Philomena it was on the terrible legacy of a mother losing a child and a child losing his mother. Now that the Irish media is awash with public debate about this history, and has grown used to government commissions, state apologies, and reparation scheme, the focus of the story has shifted – to the way that all those words of regret and sorrow may be just another way of covering up what really happened.

Survivors of institutional abuse still find themselves struggling to be taken seriously — having to argue through the courts for the right to access their own records, for example, or for their own evidence of their experience to be accorded the same weight as that contained in institutional records. In 2021, Philomena Lee was one of several high court challengers to the claim in the final report of the 2020 Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes that there was “no evidence” to suggest her consent to her son’s adoption was not full, free and informed. She was given no time to consider a document that she was told to sign, which relinquished her rights to her son.

The backdrop of the latest versions of the story is the disturbing possibility of a coming backlash against the women and children who suffered. After all, in the United States Amy Coney Barrett has argued against abortion provision on the grounds that women should be required to give birth in order to give their children up for adoption to families that want them.

In the face of this bleak future, these empty apologies, victims of institutional abuse have little to hang on to, besides the ring-binders and cardboard boxes which hold evidence of experiences that they know to be true.


Clair Wills is an author and academic.


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Martin Dunford
Martin Dunford
11 months ago

This implies the Church arrived on your doorstep and had the legal power to “send” women to the laundries. They did not. Many families forced them to go to avoid the stain of a “fallen” woman. Many families stood up for their girls too. The legal system could also force those convicted of crimes to go. Sure the Church was bad but only with the collusion of the people !

Juozas Domarkas
Juozas Domarkas
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Dunford

I wanted to write something in a similar vain – authority, be it State or Church – did not “kidnapped” anyone against the will of the family or society in general. If family – mothers and fathers – stood by their daughters in whatever situation, it would not have happened. Authority actors tried to solve the problem of abdication of duty of care by family and wider society in general by means not acceptable in today’s views. People criticizing these means today should suggest alternatives, available at the time.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago

This, and the comment you’re responding to, completely ignores that the institutionalised corrupt religio-mania preached into those people and families from birth would be the reason they thought the way forward was to disown their daughters and children, through the sense of “shame”.
In other words, pretty much in the same vein – not vain (sic) – that the Muslim community perpetrate so-called “honour” killings.

Last edited 11 months ago by Steve Murray
Juozas Domarkas
Juozas Domarkas
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Thank you for spelling correction. I find that blaming exclusively authority – the Church and State – removes the agency from people who, paraphrasing a hymn, are the hands of God (and Devil) for all their works in the physical realm. Exploiting prison like work-houses were accepted by society, nothing to be proud of, certainly, but, probably, in some minds, a better solution than an abortion/suicide, that would just solve the “problem” Stalin’s way – no person, no problem…

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago

Ah, the “agency” issue… the “free will” which simply adds to the guilt trip with the threat of heaven/hell/purgatory; and of those three, i’m not sure which i’d find the worst!
I prefer to consider evolutionary psychology, which we as humans are still exploring and which also accounts for the attraction of religion as a means of explaining that which isn’t understood. There’s spirituality to be had in full measure without the authoritarianism of religion, which results in the problems the Irish (of whom i’m a descendant} and many others are finally having to face to up.

Juozas Domarkas
Juozas Domarkas
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I didn’t mean “agency” as the “free will”. The point I was trying to make was that without tacit approval of parents and “boyfriends”, created by whatever means – organized religious brain washing, indoctrination, etc. – it would not have been possible, therefore, it is not a fault of Catholic Church or State alone. Unlike Communism, which has “never been tried/executed properly” to bring the promised heaven on Earth, Christianity, has improved human condition compared to available alternatives, at least, it is what I believe. The wrong done needs to be recognized, but it is too easy to put the blame on institutions and, in process, whitewash one’s own conscience. People living in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones and, morally, we all live in a glass house, such is the fallen human nature…

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
11 months ago

Yes, the Pagan world, rather than putting unwanted babies up for adoption, simply disposed of them

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

Lies.. some places did which were far more into their authoritarianism than their paganism. Church propaganda..

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

’tis true for ye!

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

You forget the immense power over every aspect of life the RCC exercised in the Ireland of the 1950s and beyond.. like a plague it infected everyone.. people had to be very brave indeed to stand up to the church’s tyranny.. the very rich and very poor were most likely to do so.. the middle 50% had no chance.. still a few sacrificed everything to uphold their true Christian values, bless ’em!

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Religio-mania? My my.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

There is an obverse mania now in the States, for some Democrat states to propose legal abortion up until birth, (and maybe even after)

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

Families were indoctrinated and shunned of they didn’t kowtow to the church”s wishes. Some did but it was (literally) a dreadful option.. I knew of a case where a girl’s mother feigned pregnancy (worn a cushion) in order to appear to be mother to her own daughter’s child.. carried it off too!

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Dunford

In the Magdalene Sisters, one of the women is rescued by her brother who I think moved out on his own or something like that as I’m guessing the parents didn’t want her back (been a while since I’ve seen it so could be wrong). I’m guessing that was a gesture to highlight some families/relatives did oppose what was going on.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Dunford

The church was a lot smarter than that. Like Dracula it recruited its slavish sycophants from all walks of life most especially the government, national and local and the teaching profession. Like the black plague it permeated the entire God forsaken country ..not 100% correct of course; there were always the hold-outs, those who clung to the true Christian faith and saw the RCC for what it was, anathema to the teachings and example of Jesus Himself!

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

I presume that’s an attempt at humour?

B Moore
B Moore
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Dunford

Correct Martin. In fact many families paid the laundries to take their “fallen” daughter.

Last edited 11 months ago by B Moore
Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
11 months ago

The claim that a similar system operated in Ireland, and maybe still operates, seems so outlandish that it nearly topples the fictional world Murtagh has built. But when the guards uncover a link between the Irish baby-selling business and the bombing of an abortion clinic in the US…

The Woman in the Wall sounds like progressive bingo. Are there climate-change denying MAGA republicans in the show? Or is that in season two?

Last edited 11 months ago by Lennon Ó Náraigh
Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
11 months ago

Season two in which a quirky but sensible English woman (of unspoken sexuality) puts the backwards mick back on the right path. Charlie Stanhope would love it

James Sullivan
James Sullivan
11 months ago

After all, in the United States Amy Coney Barrett has argued against abortion provision on the grounds that women should be required to give birth in order to give their children up for adoption to families that want them.

This is taking that argument massively out of context, and lying by implying that Barrett is arguing for forced adoptions in lieu of legal abortion – this is an absurd lie.
And which is better for the child or the mother? Abortion? No child at all in that case, and (though is taboo) very often a life of regret for the mother. Adoption? At least the child lives, and the way to deal with the regrets is by way of reforming adoption laws. But your statement here is suggesting a monstrous lie.

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
11 months ago

The latest solution to this sort of problem is abortion. There’ll be no more similar sad tales to tell. Should we be grateful? I can’t think of a satisfactory answer.

Arthur G
Arthur G
11 months ago

I think the vast, vast majority of the children of these women would prefer not to be dead.

Kevin Dee
Kevin Dee
11 months ago

Exactly correct. People today are so self righteous, I hope history judges us harshly.

Arthur G
Arthur G
11 months ago
Reply to  Kevin Dee

Correct. The West has “fixed” this problem with over a hundred million abortions. To me, that doesn’t seem morally superior to what the Irish did in these cases.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Arthur G

Doesn’t stop them BOTH being reprehensible though does it? There is a 3rd way, curiously the true Christian (as opposed to the RCC) way, namely non judgemental love as preached and exemplified by Jesus.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

In the United States, and I suspect in nearly all western countries, this “non judgemental love” is provided by the state, so fathers are no longer needed at all, and no religion, too, to quote John Lennon.
Pregnant women are given free housing, food, health care, and possibly a television, and their children and descendants are lovingly, non judgementally trapped in appalling, dangerous, squalid public housing units forever.
Said children are fed, barely educated (& generally indoctrinated) by the indifferent, unaccountable, and nonjudgmental social services bureaucracies, that now service large swathes of the poor.
There are good reasons for nuclear families, good reasons to avoid unplanned pregnancies, and good reasons to put limits on the state, rather than churches and charities, providing support for millions of people. A tour of any large US city’s poorest areas – which are quite large in some areas – displays this almost indisputably.

Last edited 11 months ago by Andrew Vanbarner
Nancy Kmaxim
Nancy Kmaxim
11 months ago

It’s mind boggling that segments of the population have concluded that no life is preferable to a hard life, and the people who are truly virtuous are those who stop off at the clinic for a highly profitable “procedure “ to brutally murder the imperfect or inconvenient. It’s so much more humane than the messy business of caring for the vulnerable with limited resources. No wonder young people want to give up before they give life a try.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago

Do the Irish authorities regard the former Bon Secours Hospital in Tuam*, and its septic tank containing the remains of circa 800 babies as a Crime Scene, or an Archeological Site?

How many other Tuam’s are there? And is ANY effort being made to find them?

(*Co Galway.)

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago

The septic tank was a Romish altar ‘pon which the papist horde sacrificed free-thinking protestant tots.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

I presume that’s an attempt at humour?

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
11 months ago

The children all died of natural causes in the days before antibiotics. There was no crime as such

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

That sounds a very reasonable explanation, thank you.

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago

Don’t be gulled by that duplicitous bogtrotter! Even in his crib the papist is taught to weave webs of deceit by his Romish masters, beguiling the unwary Englishman with Jesuitical tricks. The rosary-addled Irish sacrifice babies according to their barbarous superstitions, at the command of the Antichrist in Rome.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

Thank you. I shall have to do more research!

Last edited 11 months ago by Charles Stanhope
Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago

Please consult the following text: Popery in this Excremental Isle, a treatise on priestcraft, nunnery and Romanist Devilry among the Irishers by Methuen De Walberswick, Dublin, 1752

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

Whilst Paul Devlin Devlin Esq maybe correct in saying that the ‘babies’ died of natural causes, throwing their corpses into a SEPTIC tank hardly conforms to the norms of a civilised Christian burial.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

No actual evidence of “throwing”.. nor of what ceremonies were performed, if any. The nuns involved were hard hearted, cruel and certainly devoid of Christian love.. but we need to be accurate. While the tank was designed to be used as a septic tank, we’re told it was never used for that purpose, ie it was a new, clean, never used receptacle..It’s bad enough! ..no need to add in lies to make it any worse.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

Sounds like the type that would have a balanced view alright.. the title might give a hint as to the mental stability of the man? I must read it fir a laugh.. can’t be much worse than your appalling rants can it.. you sound like a really nice person McGloan..

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

..sadly, the internet never heard of the Book or the Writer.. My guess is you wrote it yourself! ..or dream up the title the last time you visited Hell?

Peter Avena
Peter Avena
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

Seriously? How did the Orange Order handle its pregnant daughters?

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

I note my use of they term b¡tches merits scrutiny by the watchdogs but your unholy and scurrilous rant sails through.. funny old site this..

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

..if you’re in forgiveness mode, the septic tank had never been used for any other purpose we are told, ie it was simply a cean new tank, of a type usually used as a septic tank but not exclusively as was indeed the case here.
Still a callous, cruel action by callous cruel b¡tches.

Last edited 11 months ago by Liam O'Mahony
Phineas
Phineas
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

Thanks Also if a baby died before baptism it is not allowed by the Roman Catholic church to be buried in a Roman Catholic graveyard. Hence the septic tank.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Phineas

I wonder what ‘Jesus’ would have said about that?

B Moore
B Moore
11 months ago

I think the nuns misunderstood “Suffer little children to come unto me”

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  B Moore

Were they not regarded as the children of SIN?

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

Yes.. the notion of original sin was a big deal back then.. if you loved children you beat the wickedness out of them! Mind you, if you happened to be a child abuser and/or sadist that was a nice coincidence.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

He wouldn’t be happy.. that’s for sure. I’m guessing it’d be whip mode ala the money changers in the Temple.. nothing better than a well whipped nun in my opinion..

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Please stop drinking, or if you’re posting soberly, consider taking up the drink.

Antonino Ioviero
Antonino Ioviero
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

True, but it was exacerbated by the babies not receiving immunity from their mothers’ milk. (Unknown at the time).

The well-documented lack of funding from the Irish Govt. (the children were wards of the State) also contributed.

In this context, the complaints about lack of expenditure on burials seems….bizarre.

B Moore
B Moore
11 months ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

That’s a load of rubbish. The state commission found
56,000 women were incarcerated, 5,616 of them under 18. Some were as young as 12 Approximately 9,000 of the 57,000 babies born in these homes diedIreland had the world’s highest proportion of women sent to mother & baby homes in the 20th centuryIn the 1930s and 1940s, 40% of babies in the institutions died before their first birthdays 75% of the children born in Bessborough in 1943 died in their first year. In that same year, 62% of babies born in the Bethany Home diedFrom 1946-55 mother and baby homes accounted for 39.6% of deaths of ‘illegitimate’ childrenNo findings of widespread physical abuse despite a number of testimonies of beatings and brutalityChildbirth was traumatic with poor medical assistance Recommends a referendum to change the law to allow adoptees find their families
How anyone can defend this is beyond me as an Irishman raised as a catholic.

Last edited 11 months ago by B Moore
Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  B Moore

At last some actual FACTS! I thank you.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  B Moore

I’m not aware anyone is heartless or stupid enough to defend it.. I sincerely hope not. The RCC was a poisonous, all pervading, malevolent influence in the country.. infecting politician and educator alike.. only the rich and poor survived. The middle was struck down like the black death was upon them.. terrified of being denounced from the pulpit and shunned by all – that’s when being ‘cancelled’ really meant something!

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

Many have been “found” ..in fact never hidden but still rude mass graves with barely a mark. It was a dreadful, frightful and utterly shameful period in our history. Sadly, the execution of our socialist revolutionaries – leaving only the rabid Catholic DeValera – meant that instead of Ireland emerging as a socialist state it emerged as a Theocracy (albeit closer to Molach that Theo) to effectively rule. The country went from one oppression a greater oppression!

B Moore
B Moore
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

I mostly agree, except for the socialist bit. Connolly was the only real socialist, Michael Collins had quite a head for business and not much time for the church and would have had Ireland roaring into the 20th century.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  B Moore

Ok.. not all were socialist but few if any were craw thumping RCC nuts like deValera.. what better socialism than pragmatic socialism, eh?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Hence my calling it the ‘Kerrygold Republic’, but I agree the loss of Michael Collins was a tragedy for both England and Ireland.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

As a pacifist I’m not a big fan of Collins but I’m not sitting in judgement either. Connolly was my preferred choice.. the poets and dreamers were okay as well.. (Vaclav Haval did okay in The Czech Republic was it?)
Anyone but bloody Dev!
Religion + nationalism – never a good mix! has a whiff of N¤z¡¡sm about it!

Antonino Ioviero
Antonino Ioviero
11 months ago

There are *loads* of tombs in the West of Ireland.

It is a disgrace that Unherd repeats the Tuam garbage – which was a precursor of the ‘mass graves’ hoax in Canada.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago

What exactly is the “garbage”?

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
11 months ago

And then we have the Family Law Courts throughout the west.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago

Father Quinlan where are you?
We miss your erudite contribution!

Last edited 11 months ago by Charles Stanhope
Phineas
Phineas
11 months ago

The film Philomena did not make clear why she went to the convent in Roscrea to have her baby. Parental pressure? Or did she decide to go to the convent. Wonderful film.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago

A dreadful and frightful time (absolutely literally) in our country all caused by the wickedness of a Satanic religion that bore no resemblance to Christianity. Indeed it was in every way anathema to the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. It is a time best remembered lest we ever be tempted to return there or anywhere close to it. What would be really good would be a return (or should I say a ‘turn’) to true Christian values, universal love, real joy and compassion.

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
11 months ago

Ah, the Magdalene Laundries again. I always pronounce their name “Mawdlin”, like the Oxbridge colleges. Everyone should.

It would obviously have been better for those girls in trouble to have slept on the streets, wouldn’t it? They would have had better lives as the beggars or prostitutes that they would otherwise have been, wouldn’t they? They would have been so much better-treated over here in those days, wouldn’t they? 

The work of a washerwoman is beneath human dignity, isn’t it? Leaving school at 14 and going into work was otherwise unheard of among people now in their seventies and eighties, wasn’t it? No one else of that generation ever experienced violence at work, did they?

South of the Border, insofar as there was wrong done, then the Irish State, and not the Catholic Church, has clearly accepted the blame for it, since it is the Irish State, and not the Catholic Church, that has paid out to the victims of it. But now attention has moved to Northern Ireland. Get out of that one.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  David Lindsay

The RCC ruled every aspect of life in the Ireland of the 40s-60s as effectively as the CCP does today. If you stepped out of line, be you govt minister or anyone else, woe betide you. Noel Browne Minister for Health, learned that to his cost with his laudible Mother & Child scheme. To be denounced from the pulpit was akin to today’s “cancelling” only worse!

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
11 months ago
Reply to  David Lindsay

I’m pretty sure the town of Magdalen, in Aramaic or Hewbrew speaking Palestine, was never pronounced Mawdlin.. but what do I know?

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

I suppose we all form our own knowledge, partly by selecting those accounts that agree with our prejudices.
In the United States, the Church lifted Irish Catholics out of poverty through formal education, and by encouraging responsible life choices.
Irish Americans are no longer an underclass, in large part because they were brought into the middle class by the Roman Catholic Church.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-dagger-john-saved-new-yorks-irish

Last edited 11 months ago by Andrew Vanbarner