Irelands Slave Women

[imokyrok]

The recent Ryan report highlighted the abuses of children by the Catholic Church but there seems to have been much less focus on the experience of women who were "put away" in convents on becoming pregnant. Recently The Guardian carried one womans story. Heres are some excerpts but the whole is a must read.
The Catholic church sold my child | Life and style | The Guardian

Such was the power of the church, and of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that the state bowed before its demands, ceding responsibility for the mothers and babies to the nuns. For them it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence. .......

After giving birth, the girls were allowed to leave the convent only if they or their family could pay the nuns £100. It was a substantial sum, and those who couldn't afford it – the vast majority – were kept in the convent for three years, working in kitchens, greenhouses and laundries or making rosary beads and religious artefacts, while the church kept the profits from their labour.

Even crueller than the work was the fact that mothers had to care for their children, developing maternal ties and affection that were to be torn asunder at the end of their three-year sentence. Like all the other girls, Philomena Lee was made to sign a renunciation document agreeing to give up her three-year-old son and swearing on oath......

Philomena says she fought against signing the terrible undertaking. "Oh God, my heart. I didn't want him to go. I just craved and begged them to please let me keep him. None of us wanted to give our babies up, none of us. But what else could we do? They just said, 'You have to sign these papers.....

Finally, without telling anyone, Philomena embarked on a lonely, desperate search to find him. She went back to the convent in Roscrea several times between 1956 and 1989 and asked the nuns to help her. Each time they refused, brandishing her sworn undertaking that she would "never attempt to see" her child......

Early on in the search I realised that the Irish Catholic hierarchy had been engaged in what amounted to an illicit baby trade. From the end of the second world war until the 1970s, it considered the thousands of souls born in its care to be the church's own property. With or without the agreement of their mothers, it sold them to the highest bidder. Every year, hundreds were shipped off to American couples who paid "donations" (in reality, fees) to the nuns. Few if any checks were made on the suitability of the adopting families – the only condition laid down by Archbishop McQuaid was that they should be practicing Catholics......

Separated by fate, mother and child spent decades looking for each other, repeatedly thwarted by the refusal of the nuns to reveal information, each of them unaware that the other was also yearning and searching.......

But he could never be at peace. He went back to Roscrea, first in 1977 and again in 1993, to plead with the nuns to tell him how to find his mother. They turned him away.

On his return to the US, he plunged into alcohol, drugs and unbridled sexual indulgence. His behaviour brought with it the terrible fear of exposure that would destroy him as a senior Republican official, but he could not stop himself. On one of his lost weekends he became infected with HIV.......

Michael's health began to deteriorate. Fearing the worst, they flew to Roscrea in 1993 to make an emotional appeal to the nuns ... but still they refused to tell him where he could find his mother, or indeed that her sisters and brother – his aunts and uncle – were living just a few miles down the road......

This tragic story of a mother and son taken from each other and kept apart against their wishes for decades even as the son was dying is hard to read and even harder to understand. How could people who consider themselves Christians be so hard of heart even in the 1990s when society had become so much more caring? Is it true that these women were not allowed to leave the convents for three years unless their families paid £100 - a massive sum of money in those days? How could such a thing be legal? And why did the convents wait until the children were three years old to tear mother and child asunder? To bond with a child for three years and have him/her taken away is cruelty beyond comprehension. Why has the country refused to acknowledge that it made slaves of women for the enrichment of the Catholic Church. So many questions and as usual no decent answers.

[cactusflower]

Some women as we know never got out but worked all their lives in the laundries. Compensation is due to those still alive. All the assets of the orders should be sequestered until their debts are paid.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

These people were running gulags. The profit was being returned to Rome and the Vatican bank accounts via the money the religious orders were paying over.

If we'd heard about this happening in another country or seen a documentary about it in another European country we would have been shocked. So what the hell is wrong with us that these people and their organisations still walk around unprosecuted?

What is wrong with Pat Cox's head that he sits as a trustee on the board of for example the new trust set up to 'hide' assets of the christian brothers?

How many of these Vatican orcs infest our legal, educational and other civil service systems?

People go on about internment by the British. This was WORSE.

[the king]

These people were running gulags. The profit was being returned to Rome and the Vatican bank accounts via the money the religious orders were paying over.

If we'd heard about this happening in another country or seen a documentary about it in another European country we would have been shocked. So what the hell is wrong with us that these people and their organisations still walk around unprosecuted?

What is wrong with Pat Cox's head that he sits as a trustee on the board of for example the new trust set up to 'hide' assets of the christian brothers?

How many of these Vatican orcs infest our legal, educational and other civil service systems?

People go on about internment by the British. This was WORSE.

yet the Irish flock to their church every sunday,

[imokyrok]

The Women need to be assisted to demand the wages they should have been paid with interest and the money the convent got for selling the child should be returned to the mother with interest. They should be offered counselling services by the state to help them move past their lifetime of trauma. The legal implications of this need to be clarified, Where these women falsely imprisoned? If that can be proven there should be compensation for that also. The records need to be opened if they haven't been all ready and social workers allocated to assist in reuniting families. These women are in their final years and before they die they should hear Ireland say Sorry.

[the impossibilist]

yet the Irish flock to their church every sunday,

I think that is rather out of touch.

[COLOR=white]In the back of my mind I have the impression that you're a trolling gimp.[/COLOR]

[Mar Tweedy]

One of the difficulties with redress is that most of these women were given up by their families - perhaps with the best of intentions given that most of them were poor and may have thought their daughters would be better fed in the laundries and they may not have realised how hard it would be to get them out. Nevertheless families did resist. I am aware of a case in the history of my own family which was handled differently. Many of the families have a great degree of culpability for buying into a corrupt version of christianity and deserting their daughters.

Where any of these women incarcerated on court orders? The State might have some responsibility there. However given that Batt O'Keeffe referred to the laundry slaves as "employees" in the last week, clearly the State are deluded on the matter. Rody Molloy's pension is apparently more important.

The sale of the babies by the religious to "good" Catholic families who paid for babies is such a crime.

That some revisionists these days try to portray these times as good for women also beggars belief.

They deserve to be remembered as so few of them were in their life. A friend of mine recalls visiting his elderly aunt in a hospital and there was a woman in the same ward who had never left the laundries so institutionalised was she. She had no visitors.

These years of our history post-independence which saw women and children being treated appaulingly by the State and Church (two sides of the same coin at the time) need some sort of memorial. Perhaps a day of Remembrance with a memorial where the President can lay a wreath. So their suffering is not forgotten.

Any survivors should be paid compensation but seeing as though the religious orders have been backward in coming forward in paying compensation to the children who they were legally responsible for, the chances of the orders concerned showing humility and generosity to these women are slim.

[Thranduil]

Criticism of the religious orders has to be matched by criticism of the governments of the day, they could have intervened and put a stop to this if they had wanted to. The political leaders of the 19thC were more sophisticated in some ways - acknowledging the influence of religion as negative when it is taken too far (in their struggles to define land rights, democracy etc they often stumbled upon the fact that the clergy was often one of their perennial opponents) and agitating first and foremost for the rights of Irish people, to go from that to hardcore religiosity with the rights of the Irish supressed beneath it is not positive change, so to say 'those were the times that were' is no excuse really.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

yet the Irish flock to their church every sunday,

Oh do they? Strange that because I have a report from the Irish church which has graphs in it showing a very different story.

Hold on there now Mr King and I'll see of I can root that out for you and we'll see whether we have another professional church liar on our hands.

[LiquidPaddy]

It's no wonder the Pope isn't visiting Ireland, this is just shameful (again), but I am pessimistic it will ever be adequately dealt with. Strangely, the Church seems to still think it will 'go away', as it were. Instead, if the Church decided to make a clear break, to fess up and redress the problems, it might restore some credibility, tho' I think it is too late now.