DREGS IN THE ECCLESIASTICAL CHALICE

May God be with you and bless you,
May you see your children’s children,
May you be poor in misfortune, rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

----------Irish Blessing

High Court Justice Sean Ryan of Ireland last Wednesday released a report that was 10 years in the making that stated that from the late 1930’s to the mid 90’s, priests and nuns terrorized thousands of children for decades while government inspectors failed to stop the beatings and rapes. Prominently mentioned as prime offenders were the men’s Congregation of Christian Brothers and the women’s order of the Sisters of Mercy and the rehabilitation institutions they staffed. (The Sisters of Mercy ran the various and infamous Magdalene Laundries throughout Ireland.) Some institutions run by other smaller orders were also named. At least 30,000 children were subjected to a conscious culture of systematic abuse by at least 800 Catholic priests and nuns who ran rehabilitation institutions.

Child inmates were subjected to a continuous and conscious regime of institutionalized torture including molestation and rape, beatings with objects designed to cause pain and injury, being flogged, kicked and otherwise physically assaulted, scalded, burned and forcibly held under water - and a course of psychological abuse designed to make them subservient to the idea that they were immoral sinners, worth nothing in the eyes of God, and that hard work and punishment were the only path to their salvation and eventual release. The inmates were mostly children convicted of petty crimes, truancy, poor kids whose families couldn’t feed them and youths from ‘dysfunctional homes’ which often included girls who became pregnant before marriage.

The priests and nuns who were transferred from institution to institution and often to Australia and the United States when their activities became too well known, to start anew without benefit of being shackled by a criminal record or adverse personnel evaluation.

The Irish Times of May 21 says, in the editorial “The Savage Reality of our Darkest Days” that

“Mr. Justice Ryan’s report does not suggest that this abuse was as bad as most of us suspected. It shows that it was worse. It may indeed have been even worse than the report actually finds – there are indications that the level of sexual abuse (especially) in boys’ institutions was much higher than was revealed by the records or could be discovered by this investigation.”

In 2004 during the time the report was being compiled, the Order of Christian Brothers, forseeing what was to come, approached the then Minister of Education Michael Woods. An arbitrary agreement was enacted whereby the Christian Brothers would pay up to a cap of Euro 127 million in damages in return for the promise that those religious persons complained about would not be named in the report “…since many of them are now dead and unable to defend themselves.” The bill was quickly and quietly passed, perfectly legally, without consultation with the Attorney General’s office, on a day when members of the Dail (parliament) were itching to finish business so they could get home early and watch an Ireland/Germany soccer competition.

If you want to read up more on this, you can find multitudinous information at www.irishtimes.com and a copy of the report in its entirety, or a summary can be found at www.childabusecommission.ie . Reporter Mary Raftery helped edit a Made for TV documentary in the 90’s (and a book of the same name) called Suffer the Little Children as well as writing a series of articles about the scandal. And author Ken Brunen has written a mystery called The Magdalen Martyrs which provides some historical background.

What is happening right now? Ireland, once revered as possibly the holiest Catholic country in the world is in shock and fragmentation. Most members of all government parties are screaming for a review of the Christian Brothers settlement if it can be legally done, with a view to increasing the Catholic Churchs’ financial responsibility, and to criminally prosecuting those torturers who are still alive. There will be much more coming out of this in Ireland, probably exacerbated by yet another similar report to be issued in June about abuse by religious in workhouses in certain Irish cities. There are several hundred victims of the nuns and priests still alive in Ireland today, many being cared for by mental health professionals or homes at government expense. The Vatican, as usual, is silent and may be for awhile, searching for the ‘right’ statement that will sound morally correct and not diminish it’s reputation as the ‘infallible’ leader of millions of churchgoers around the world. The Association of Religious in Ireland, representing all Catholic religious orders in the country maintains that they do not wish to discuss any further financial responsibility as a perfectly legal agreement has been made in good faith.

It occurs to me that rosaries that were sold in Catholic religious stores around the country here in the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s may have been something like the Blood Diamonds of Africa since most were made by abused girls in the institutions run by the Good Sisters. For those who believe in relics and grace, those rosaries must be especially blessed through the forced labor of the child martyrs who today undoubtedly are having birthday parties and eating cake and ice cream in a congenial place in the Universe, to make up for the dearth of kindness and love they never encountered in this life.

One Irish journalist says that the young adults of today have the right, and are going to ask the question of their parents and relatives “Where were you when the religious were torturing the children?”

May God be with you and bless you,
May you see your children’s children,
May you be poor in misfortune, rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

----------Irish Blessing

This true story is too sad for a Ta!

*** next day correction: The 2004 damages deal mentioned in the story was between all religious orders who were to be named in the report, not just the Christian Brothers. Collectively all of them would pay no more than 127 million Euros.