Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes are a stain on the Catholic church – but this latest refusal to atone is a new low | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

R.Here are some terrifying stories that their details included themselves in your body and chasing you for the rest of your days. The suffering of women and infants-an estimated 170,000 of them-who were imprisoned and ill-treated in the laundries of the Magdalene and the mother and al-Bayaniyah houses that include “fallen women” is one of this story. It is a scandal that is difficult to read without experimenting with a great sense of disgust, from the certificates of abuse and forced adoption, to Collective grave At the former house of Saint Mary near Tawam, Galwai County, which included 796 bodies of children and children. Many nuns put many of them in the sewage tank. There were no burial records.

The efforts of the survivors, activists and historians to shed light on these stories in the face of obstruction and indifference Contract. The Irish government made an official apology in 2021 after a judicial committee report. However, this story was not over, the human misery that caused it, in the last house in 1996. There are holes survivors, and the people who descend from the victims. The residues of the children continue to be extracted, so that it can be determined if possible and given a suitable burial. Then there is a matter of recession.

It is reported this week that among the eight religious organizations associated with mother and child homes in Ireland, Only two It was offered to contribute to the survivor correction plan. Bon Sekors sisters – the arrangement that chaired the sewage tank tomb – presented 12.97 million euros (about 11 million pounds), while the daughters of St. Vincent de Paul suggested contributing to the building in the plan. A third religious body – the sisters of St. John from God rejected the contribution, saying that there was no “legal or moral” basis to do this because “there is no evidence that our sisters acted in any unwanted way,” but they made a donation to the survivors.

The other five – the group of a lady of the charitable lady in the good shepherd, the Holy Hearts Group of Jesus and Mary, the group of the sisters of mercy, the Legion of Mary and the Anglican Church Ireland – I made any offer. Give various reasons – or excuses, depending on your point of view. Ireland’s children’s minister, Norma Foley, expressed disappointment, saying that although the state had recognized its role in the scandal, the church and religious organizations should have been completed.

While the general expression by her guilt was clear and factional, the remorse for the religious side was less clear. Previous data from the concerned orders such as “with deep regret … we admit that there are women who have not experienced our shelter as a place for protection and care” and “it is unfortunate that the homes of the Majdalin should be present at all” that lack a certain tone of regret, we must say. The righteous shepherd sisters, as is now known, used an impressive use of grammatical gymnastics over the years (“We regret sincerely because women could have harm and hardship”). Perhaps this was more shocking: “It was part of the system and the culture of time.”

None of the nuns, or the Catholic Church, is really close to expressing true remorse. Emon Martin, the largest church figure in Ireland, was drafted in 2021, so: “I accept that the Church was clearly part of that culture in which people often were stigmatized, their ruling and refused. On that, and for the long harm and emotional harm that resulted in it, I apologized without apologizing.”

However, the Church was not just part of that culture. He – she He was Culture, all aspect of life in Ireland, the formation of public attitudes towards women and their children, and the encouragement of shame and ostracism. Some activists called for the seizure of the church’s assets unless the institution contributes to the state compensation plan.

Without real recognition of the pain that caused, how do you start moving from a painful thing? Yes, there were souvenirs and gardens – in Dublin, a memorial was revealed on a trip in 2022, and the National Center for Research and Dharmia is revealed in institutional shock, with a museum and a space of the exhibition. Culturally, the scandal was reviewed intelligently and sensitively, from the novel and the small movie like this to the BBC Drama in the Wall, and Sinéad O’Connor was not released by the song Magdalene. Liam Neeson cooperates with Catterine Corlen – the amateur historian who has devoted long hours of strenuous research in St Mary’s, who fought heroic despite the widespread indifference when she tried to make the collective grave – on the movie, The Lost. children From complete.

There is no opportunity for these children and their mothers to be forgotten now, and this is meaningful. I was very young when I saw in 2002 the sisters of Majdalin, a drama that gave me a lifetime of Irish nuns, their hateful and bad behavior towards weak women in their control. Being the granddaughter of a woman who was one day “illegal” – the interest of this term, about the idea of ​​describing a child like this, is sufficient to bring tears to your eyes – may have led to my interest in this dark chapter of Irish history. My grandmother was born in the mother and baby house, but in Wales. It was not a picnic, but if it was in Ireland – the country of her suspected father – was greater misery that would wait for her.

The treatment of children born out of marriage in Ireland as a “lower sub -type” – then the words of Taoiseach Enda Kenny in 2014 – and the insult they were subjected to is a stigma on the history of the church. Corles said in an interview at the time that she lost respect for the Catholic Church. It is not alone in any way in that.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you want to provide a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered to be published in our Messages Please section Click here.