They tossed the dead babies into the septic tank
Emer O’Toole on the church’s “surprise” about the finding of remains of hundreds of babies in a septic tank at the Tuam mother and baby home:
A state-established commission of inquiry into mother and baby homes recently located the site in a structure that “appears to be related to the treatment/containment of sewage and/or waste water”, but which we are not supposed to call a septic tank.
The archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, says he is “deeply shocked and horrified”. Deeply. Because what could the church have known about the abuse of children in its instutions? When Irish taoiseach Enda Kenny was asked if he was similarly shocked, he answered: “Absolutely. To think you pass by the location on so many occasions over the years.” To think. Because what would Kenny, in Irish politics since the 70s, know about state-funded, church-perpetrated abuse of women and children? Even the commission of inquiry – already under critique by the UN – said in its official statement that it was “shocked by this discovery”.
Shocked shocked gambling in this establishment.
If I am shocked, it is by the pretence of so much shock. When Corless discovered death certificates for 796 children at the home between 1925 and 1961 but burial records for only two, it was clear that hundreds of bodies existed somewhere. They did not, after all, ascend into heaven like the virgin mother. Corless then uncovered oral histories from reliable local witnesses, offering evidence of where those children’s remains could be found. So what did the church and state think had happened? That the nuns had buried the babies in a lovely wee graveyard somewhere, but just couldn’t remember where?
Or maybe the church and state are expressing shock that nuns in mid-20th century Ireland could have so little regard for the lives and deaths of children in their care. The Ryan report in 2009 documented the systematic sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children in church-run, state-funded institutions.
The Ryan report makes painful reading. Generations of children were treated like so much garbage, but sentient garbage, who could feel the torture that was being meted out by the church’s employees.
The same year, the Murphy report on the sexual abuse of children in the archdiocese of Dublin revealed that the Catholic church’s priorities in dealing with paedophilia were not child welfare, but rather secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of its reputation and the preservation of church assets. In 2013, the McAleese reportdocumented the imprisonment of more than 10,000 women in church-run, state-funded laundries, where they worked in punitive industrial conditions without pay for the crime of being unmarried mothers.
All this loathing of women and their babies, in a country that still doesn’t allow abortion.
So you will forgive me if I am sceptical of the professed shock of Ireland’s clergy, politicians and official inquiring bodies. We know too much about the Catholic church’s abuse of women and children to be shocked by Tuam. A mass grave full of the children of unmarried mothers is an embarrassing landmark when the state is still paying the church to run its schools and hospitals. Hundreds of dead babies are not an asset to those invested in the myth of an abortion-free Ireland; they inconveniently suggest that Catholic Ireland always had abortions, just very late-term ones, administered slowly by nuns after the children were already born.
As Ireland gears up for a probable referendum on abortion rights as well as a strategically planned visit from the pope, it may be time to stop acting as though the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of the Catholic church are news to us. You can say you don’t care, but – after the Ryan report, the Murphy report, the McAleese report, the Cloyne report, the Ferns report, the Raphoe report and now Tuam – you don’t get to pretend that you don’t know.
Two members of my family were born in the Tuam home, lived short lives there, and are likely lying in that septic tank – sorry, in that structure that “appears to be related to the treatment/containment of sewage and/or waste water”. Their mother died young, weakened from her time in the custody of the church. Because of this I understand that otherwise good, kind people in Ireland handed power over women and children’s lives to an institution they knew was abusive. And I wrestle with the reality that – in our schools and hospitals – we’re still handing power over women and children’s lives to the Catholic church. Perhaps, after Tuam, after everything, that’s what’s really shocking.
I’d say so.
H/t Maureen
Of course, for a long time children of unwed mothers were treated as though they were tainted and at fault in some major way. Society has treated children for a very long time as though they were garbage just because their parents weren’t married. I don’t think there should be a stigma on this at all, but even if there is, on the child? Why was the child considered illegitimate? What exactly did they do? But in a church that views absolutely no one as innocent, and believes that everyone living today is responsible for the “crime” of a single woman who allegedly lived 10,000 years ago (who, I may add, was guilty only of seeking after knowledge), why should we expect that children should fare any better? To the church, we are all scum, even if they try to cover it up these days with sweet words like hate the sin, love the sinner (please, if you see me standing around somewhere, don’t say that. I beg you for your own sake. I will almost certainly punch you).
Quite frankly, the church has for a long time hated anything that even marginally resembled pleasure. They take a vow of celibacy, and so they think they have a right to punish anyone else who has sex, too. A lot of the sins of the world can be traced back to our strange and horrifying relationship with this one rather ordinary biological activity that every other animal pursues according to their own instincts. We are supposed to be “above” the animals (in spite of being animals ourselves), but so often demonstrate that we may, in fact, be below them. Because with the ability to reason, philosophize, write poetry, and paint astonishingly beautiful paintings, we still manage to turn everything into shit.
Considering a child illegitimate links back strongly to issues of inheritance and property of course. The woman has essentially committed a property crime (as has the man but, well, he’s a man, so…) and the child might attempt to do so in the future, so it’s important to make their position so untenable that (1) they can’t press any claim and (2) it serves as a warning to the next person who considers creating this scenario. Of course, since the men never got any substantive punishment, any opprobrium that went there way was generally worth getting a leg over.
Speaking of that phrase, you may be interested in this interview (http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201835994/'love-and-friendship-make-the-world-go-round‘). The interview is with 96 year old Robin Dalton, who was apparently quite the thing back in WW2. It was lovely hearing her bantering with the interviewer about the relative importance of sex to other factors in war time relationships. She was of the view that you would never have sex with someone unless you were deeply in love, so of course everyone was always saying how much they loved each other and ‘getting engaged’.
if you were rich, important, or rich and important, different rules applied I guess.
I don’t get it. The author rightly points out the nonsense about refusing to call a septic tank what it is, but then lets this one stand: ” … the McAleese report documented the imprisonment of more than 10,000 women in church-run, state-funded laundries, where they worked in punitive industrial conditions without pay for the crime of being unmarried mothers.”
I guess we’re not supposed to call that slavery.
Ireland is not the only country in the world where the Catholic Church has long held sway and/or still does. Is anybody taking a closer look at church-run orphanages, baby farms, hostels for fallen women, etc., in South America, Spain, Portugal and so on?
We still have no accounting of the number of victims in even this first dumping ground. 796 is Corless’ best estimate of the missing. There have only been two ‘test excavations’ and they have withheld any count of how many bodies have been found so far.
And the ‘underground structure’ and the known septic tank are TWO locations. Full excavation, a full body count, forensic anthropologists on the scene, and a police commitment to full prosecution of the guilty. These are minimum requirements of a civilized society’s response.
The fact that today, 2017, Christians are not horrified by this but doubt this news as authentic, is disgusting. The religious right is a collection of morally depraved, self-righteous hypocrites who have not changed in almost a hundred years.
Discarding life is justified when it comes from sin. That attitude is barbaric.
Sam Day @ 3 – hmm – I don’t see that as euphemism or avoidance though, but rather as spelling it out. It’s like the other day when I said Trump is mindless and unwilling to question his own assumptions and a few more items of that kind, and a helpful commenter did the strikeout thing on all those details to replace them with “fucking idiot.” Sure, Trump’s a fucking idiot, but I wasn’t avoiding calling him that, I was painting a more detailed picture. It’s easy to see the word “slavery” and not pause to think about what that entails; I see O’Toole as reminding us of what it entails.
RossR – true. The thing about Ireland of course is that it’s Anglophone, so I can follow news from there without needing translations.
Throwing dead babies into a septic tank is completely alright.
Throwing an aborted fetus into a septic tank, though, is awful. Aborted fetuses have to be given long, expensive funerals (paid for by the mother). This is so vitally important, the state should enshrine this in law. Oh, and we need to teach the mother to regret the Terrible Terrible Crime that she committed. Because… reasons.
[/sarcasm]