84.2% of the population describe themselves as Catholic. Don’t see the problem myself.

@Tom Burke: Father “Tom Burke” I bet you don’t see any problem. You enjoy a special moral blindness.

Agreed religion needs to be taken out of the school system. The silver lining was they did educate generations of Irish people who would never have received it from the state otherwise. The church without had an agenda of control, and u control the education system you control the culture and hence the state to an extent. Up north its worse, the only way they will ever solve their problems is through integrated schools. The catholic church is trying to block this at every turn to keep their monopoly on half the population at the expense of building a better society. Society and the culture at the time is to blame partially for this but where did this culture and society get formed, largely through the church. I lived in middle east for few yrs and it reminds me of what ireland was probably like in ireland in 50s 60s where conformity to social rules are influenced by religion.

Tony

If it was a problem for most people we would see the protests.
10,000 people might read this thread. Only 30 different people will respond. Us commentators on the journal are not representative of the majority.

Confine catholism to the catholic schools. Problem solved.

If 82% of Irish people say they’re Catholics then there are an awful lot of liars in Ireland. I know virtually no one who is a Catholic or anything else for that matter.

@Tom Burke: Confine Catholicism to privately funded Catholic Schools but remove it from state funded schools. That’s actually the ‘Problem Solved’.

@Tom Burke: Why not confine it to churches?

Because less than 1 in 5 people claiming to part of that nut-wackery actually attend mass, if you confined worship to actual places of worship they’d be gone in a week.

William
You live in Ireland and don’t know anybody who is catholic? Do you get out much?

@sean o’dhubhghaill: You will never be able to separate the church from the Irish state as long as they have control of school education. The church dominates most of our lives from the cradle to the grave.

@Tom Burke: Don’t forget in your 84.2% that members of the Church of Ireland also regard themselves as reformed catholics.

So priests raping kids and babies been thrown in a septic tank isn’t a problem, typical Catholic delusionary nonsense

Where did I say that Willy?
Remind me please.

@Tom Burke: Of course you don’t see the problem Tom. You just don’t want to see it and I know I am wasting my time talking to you :)

The Church ruled Ireland, the country was effectively a theocracy and government was an illusion, no major decisions were passed without the consent of the Roman Catholic Church, a prime example being the battle for Dr Noel Browne’s Mother & Baby scheme where the church didn’t want mothers and children to have access to the public health system like they did in the North with the NHS so they could ensure they maintained complete control of women’s bodies.

@OpenBorders: why as a people did we let an Italian based church control our country? As a people we are not great at questioning or challenging our culture.

@Biróg: We were ignorant, brainwashed and indoctrinated by centuries of religious rule. We must remove this organization, from our country and seize their assets as punishment for their evil deeds.

@Tony Daly: I personally think in light of what has transpired in the last few days … Now is not the time for a Papal visit ..Show some respect to all these babies that were treated like animals by the church….

@Paulo mclawlor:

But he is 100% on the money.

Have to agree with brid Smith.
Bríd Smith says she is sick of hearing that we are all at fault for Tuam.
She says it was all paid for by the State.
“It was systemic abuse – the Church and the State worked together,” she says.
She hits out against Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, for opening up a new Bon Secours hosital just a few days after the Tuam revelations.

Very few paedophiles break into homes to molest children, they generally get themselves into positions of authority over children. So does that somehow absolve them in any shape form or fashion for their evil deeds.
Hang your head in shame Kenny and anyone who would give you or your party any further ‘ authority’ in this country.

Or related MBowe. I suspect it is a bigger problem than any of us imagine.

@lavbeer: Enda Kenny’s father Henry was a TD from 1954. I just thought that was worthing mentioning.

You mention that because you think he and his father are of a certain mindset that this was okay behaviour by church and state?

The State was ruled by the Roman Catholic Church.

Dr Noel Browne discovered that in no uncertain way.

Littleone it could be perfect timing if we could keep the outrage going till then, we might get a decent number to protest his visit. But the sheeple are easily distracted, the outrage will fade and we’ll all move along to the next scandal.

@Biróg: You can thank King Henry II of England for that back in the twelfth century.

@Tony Daly: Actually Tony while the Roman Catholic church was by far the dominant Church it was a stigma promulgated by most Christian religions including Protestantism.

But what I find most amazing about some of the comments here is the rush to criticise the Taoiseach for his statement which is quoted above. He is spot on. Some people are so determined to apportion political blame and religious blame that they don’t want to focus on a broader responsibility. The fact is Irish society colluded in what happened to these children – our own children, our sisters, our aunts. Some people seem to get angry when this broader responsibility is mentioned.

In the past Irish society rushed to judge certain types of people. Usually women. They were convenient scapegoats for our perceived moral failings and “sins”. This conveniently allowed us as a society to ignore the responsibilities of others. It was a nauseatingly hypocritical society that was judgmental and blind. I’m not convinced we have changed that much. We are still seeking convenient scapegoats. It’s all the fault of the religious, the politicians – but never our fault. We were brainwashed. We were controlled etc etc. Excuse after excuse by the same type of moral cowards who in the past pointed fingers at women who were pregnant outside marriage. Anything to avoid looking in the mirror.

So let’s be honest, both the Church and the State were actively supported by a large number of Irish people who shared the perverse sexually repressed shame filled misogynistic values of the time. Am I to believe that they were all brain washed? No. They took the easy route, surrendered their own power and colluded because this was the easier option. “We were just following orders” doesn’t wash with me. The people of Germany faced the same reality after WW2.

But it’s easier to finger others for your hate and to blame others for societal wrongs. In this sense what has changed? We are still scapegoating. Still avoiding responsibility and all under the new religion of “right on-ness”. The Catholic Church were toppled long ago which is why so many people feel happy to attack them. If they still had the same power as long ago the moral giants populating these boards would be hiding under their beds.

I have no sympathy for the Catholic Church or for any others involved. They deserve what they have coming to them. But is it too much to ask that we also take a good long hard look in the mirror at our own failings, the moral cowardice, the group think, the fear of sticking our head above the parapet which still plague us to this day? Irish people colluded on a mass scale with the Church and State. It was a symbiotic relationship. Let us at last deconstruct that relationship and own our own end of things. Let us grow up.

Great post John R

@John R: You are right, the same stigma still controls ethos in Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland primary education through asking parents for proof of a childs baptism.

@John R:

Very good comment, except for the misogynist reference, but that can be forgiven.

Especially when he went to visit the Catholic Bishop of Galway in 1951…… He offered Noel Browne hand made cigarettes in a silver casket “These I have to have made in Bond St…. I always like champagne in the afternoon ”
And this was the same church that opposed the mother and child scheme ???

John R, maybe if the RCC cared for the people who society had hidden (because of the RCC’s doctrines) in their institutions instead of brutalising them while they were in their care you might have a bit of a point. These crimes were committed by nuns and priests, and encouraged by the Church hierarchy. Blaming society as a whole is generic and too simplistic and does a gross injustice to the victims of Catholic abuse.

Why ??? Does the truth hurts you that much , as much as l cant stand the man everything he’s saying is correct,

John R, Are we the majority colluding now in the system which throws families on to the streets to enrich vulture funds or forces children with scoliosis twisted spines to wait in agony so that bondholders suffer not the slightest twinge for their failed gambles? Apportion blame where it belongs. On the shoulders of the ruling class which enforces a system of brute exploitation of the majority to elevate the few.

The same system of couse misinforms the many as to the nature of the socioeconomic system which exploits them. So for example those who vote for FF, FG , Labour and bogus Independents are in fact complicit in their own exploitation though many are unaware of that reality.

‘No nuns broke into our homes to steal our children’ says Kenny. Alas he is wrong on that score because in a massive way the Church penetrated itself deep into the lives of so many thousands of Irish families, the Church screamed of sin and sin and sin and hell and brimstone and MORTAL SIN and we had decades of it from every angle, from the moment of birth SIN!
The Church hacked its way into the population, much like the regime in North Korea has done to their people and the people are afraid to breathe, they wilfully betray each other out of fear, just like Ireland under the cosh of the Church, reverence was essential in both. The Church is to blame 100% Kenny is very wrong on that score, because he supports the church, they respect each other, he is a believer in their nonsense. His government still hands our children over to the 98% of schools still overseen by the church, he still has reverence, that is the problem now, nothing will change until that changes.

@John R:

So your point is
“we are all to blame”
reminds me of Kenny talking about the celtic tiger

Enda and his ilk want us to flagellate ourselves now for the sins of his ruling class. It won’t wash. The weak ruling class depended on the authority of the church to preserve their power and privilege and so gave them carte blanche to pursue their murderous doctrine. Another force on which the establishment depends heavily is the police. And we see exactly the same instinct today as they stand full square behind an utterly discredited Commissioner. And in a few years FF and FG will be inviting us to blame ourselves for the systematic attacks on whistleblowers in the Gardai now.

It’s the equivalent of the risible “we all partied” lie as they bailed out the corrupt and delinquent banks with € 100 + billion of the people’s money.

@Les Boyd: you are heartless like Kenny and sick,

@John R: Agree 100%. What will we look back in horror at, in Irish society, in 25 yrs time?

Do you really think that the Church or politicians would let that happen.
So sad that all those poor little ones suffered such horrors an at the hands of ‘caring’ nuns. Shame on all involved and on you Mr. Kenny.

Interesting!

@John R
You hit the nail on the head.

@John R: in reply, I take your points and answer them.

1. The primary culprit in Ireland in a causal sense is the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Blaming all of society and all of the Irish people is too vague and non directed. Roman Catholicism is the preponderant religion in Ireland. It’s influence, cultural, historic, values and mores permeates every organ of state and almost every social institution in Ireland, the legislature, the judiciary, Givernment, An Garda Siochana, schools, hospitals, media, schools and universities.

2. Misogyny is firmly, deep,ply and inextricably embedded in all dimensions and aspects of the Roman Catholic Church. It is a core cause of the notion of illegitimacy and the concept of the “fallen woman”.

3. The stigma of illegitimacy was originally a feudal type notion and later embraced by Roman Catholicism and and some Protestant faiths. Illegitimacy in a moral and social sense finds it most extreme and hateful manifestation in the Canin Law and Catechism of the Roman Catholic religion. Contrast this with the milder admonitions in the Protestant faiths.

4. The social values, mores and norms of Ireland, its legal system and its culture are primarily set in the public sphere by Roman Catholicism. The Roman Catholic Church looms over all public issues, especially those which involve, procreation or the lack of.

5. The Religion of most of the “baby farms” , euphemistically called Mother and Child Homes, was Roman Catholicism. The religion of those who condemned pregnant mothers to such homes was Roman Catholicism. The Dustruct Judges who made the judicial orders were Roman Catholics. The medical practitioners were Roman Catholic and the Guards were Roman Catholic. These were all dutiful Roman Catholics performing a non negotiable religious duty.

6. Avoiding the identification of and acknowledging the full and pervasive extent of the role and influence of Roman Catholicism is to scapegoat the wrong people and to avoid confronting the real causal factor, the Roman Catholic Church.

7. The Roman Catholic Church remains a hugely powerful, influential force in Irish public affairs. Our two largest political parties are Roman Catholic dominated, FF and FG, and the Taoiseach shows his Roman Catholic credentials at every available opportunity.

8. Irish people have been habituated and conditioned to follow the diktats of a a highly dogmatic, authoritarian and assertive Church an institution which has elements of fascism in an institutional sense.

9. Looking at Irish people or Irish society or other vague categories is to ignore the giant herd of elephants and to focus on the mere incidentals.

10. We need to focus on the true causal factor, the repressive and authoritarian role of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

@Paulo mclawlor: Agreed Paulo. The context of this is, that families were advised and shamed by the catholic, so called religious clergy and their supporters, to hand over their illegitimate babies to these horrible institutions.
The nuns did not break into homes to take the babies but they and their organisation played a large part in facilitating it to happen.It’s disgraceful statement by Kenny, totally ignoring the context of the situation.

Excellent comment. Well done.

@John R: Yeah sure John let’s blame the people. It’s a well known political tactic. Let’s focus away from the institution that are really to blame like the church and the state.

@Tony Daly: Spot on Tony

Fabulous post, so good to read sense in these comments, happens very rarely

Minister Zappone and Mary Lou are Strictly Dancing. Katherine is afraid to put a foot wrong and Mary Lou is skating on the thin ice over the ‘Disapeared.

The first I ever heard of the Magdalene laundries was the 1998 channel 4 documentary, Witness – sex in a cold climate.
I was shocked, and angered to learn about it. I know that none of my peers, who I spoke to at the time, had heard about the Magdalene laundries either.
Following the broadcast on British TV, an article in the Irish Times described the program as unbalanced, since it did not give the nuns’ side of the story.
An attempt to respond to this by Dr Frances Finnegan, consultant on the Channel 4 documentary remained unpublished “due to pressure of space”.
(http://www.broadsheet.ie/tag/sex-in-a-cold-climate/)
(http://congravepress.com/article/)
Some years later, the documentary was scheduled to be shown on Irish television. I set my video, but the broadcast was cancelled.
RTE finally broadcast the documentary in 2013, 15 years after it was first shown on British television.
The Irish media was involved in, and had a policy of, covering up abuse in this country.
Politicians were aware of what was happening.
Doctors, psychiatrists, police, judges, etc, would all have had some awareness of what was going on. In many cases, for example, the courts were involved in sending victims to these places of incarceration, and the police were involved in returning escaped victims to these awful places. Psychiatrists and other doctors would have dealt with the victims and abusers. Certain of these people are still working today.
I myself was sexually abused on various occasions at the age of 8 by the headmaster/priest of my school, a Fr. Casey. My family were abusive.
I resent any implication that as a member of society, I had any responsibility for the Magdalene / mother and baby concentration camps.
It would be nice if Enda was to say that his party, and the other shower, bore a lot of responsibility for what went on in those places, rather than shrugging off any blame.

@Tony Daly: Good on you. Quite right.

@Gerry Ryan: He’s protecting much more than that, by trying to lay the blame on society. It is why the reports into sex abuse have been buried for 75 years.
All these “concentration camps” for women and children, or the industrial schools for children, were no more than knocking shops for the great and the good in both church and state.
Grace is one ugly issue, Mary Boyle another, and there are enough questions about the disappearance of Philip Cairns being linked to a powerful pedo gang.

@Soccer T’s: At least with workhouses it was part of the state institution, without church interferance.

@RMcG: “But again he’s blaming society, society alone is not to blame, the Catholic Church is, but he’s too chicken to call them out.”

You’re actually wrong. Society alone is not to blame you are correct but they have a large part of the blame. Perhaps you don’t remember the times. I remember what it was like even in the 1970s and 1980s and that was but a pale reflection of what it was like in earlier generations. Ireland was a conservative society that sucked the life out of people and it placed all authority on a pedestal. It as also a poverty stricken society.

As for Kenny, he is certainly no chicken. He was the first Taoiseach to come out in the Dáil and criticise the Vatican in very direct terms previously unknown. Give the man some credit.

So many people posting here on this issue are posting in an era when it is easy to make these statements of condemnation. The war is over. The Catholic Church lost. Thank goodness. But the terms in which many people are posting here reminds me of a different times when that bile was reserved for women and other non-conformists. It was easy to condemn such people because it was popular just as it is now popular to do the same to the likes of the Catholic Church. Can we please open our eyes and stop living in denial?

Irish society supported the Church with great fervour. Many in Irish society were even more extreme in their views. We also elected the politicians and punished them when they stepped out of line by speaking anyway harshly of the Church. Our sons populated the ranks of all the repressive Irish institutions. But its all the fault of the Church? Are we so blind and so unwilling to admit that our own parents, grand-parents and ancestors colluded and offered up their own daughters to the torture?

But no. It is all the fault of the Church and everyone else but us. I see little has changed in Ireland except for our choice of convenient scapegoats. How can we change if we can’t admit that our own choices and non-choices gave power to the very institutions that destroyed the lives of these poor women and children and that when we, eventually, took back that power these institutions crumbled? Because that is what happened.

A Fine Gael-er and apologist if ever I saw one! Kenny has repeatedly shown himself to be a spineless and lickspittle coward, the hypocrite even reopened The Vatican Embassy so his condemnation of them was hollow posturing and nothing more.

John R .excellent comments

Sorry John you have a typo there Irish society supported the church with great favour! It should be “great fear “

Adrian it was both. They are not mutually exclusive states. Quite the reverse in fact. We often support what we fear.

@Adrian: John’s a naive little fella, trying to cut his jib with the big boys on here, and failing, let him have his waffle comments, it’s almost his bedtime now.

As opposed to now “NO fear” where it’s quiet fashionable

@Ava Stapleton: His true colours are emerging. He feels the need to defend his religion over his people and the bodies of dead babies.

@Mr Snuffleupagus: Actually he isn’t defending the Church and Ava’s story is horrific but not untypica of the times. So many people liek Ava suffered and were judged, especially women. It was not a nice society. That was Ireland and it only ended when people rebelled and took back their power and support from the Church.

@Jumperoo: that is a far and justified criticism. Thanks you for your courtesy.

I typed that very long and even tedious comment as closely reasoned rebuttal of the point that it was not Roman Catholicism or religion were to blame but society and parents and grandparents.

I consider that Roman Catholicism and the status of illegitimacy are responsible for what happened.

I have a short comment above sets out my conclusion but not how I arrived at it.

Tony.
You have too much time on your hands.

@Tom Burke: I have tine fir the truth and no time for your dishonest comments.

Sinead there were a few groups fighting against these injustices. While there were groups before it the IWLM (Irish Women’s Liberation Movement ) led by Margaret Gaj was probably one of the most famous. Today they’d probably be derided as “liberal feminists).

Good man Tony. That’s much better.

Many countries had a stigma against illegitimacy at the time not just Catholic ones….Like Ireland or Spain…..In England or protestant countries in Europe there was a similar stigma against having a child out of wedlock… There were homes for such women not as bad as the Irish ones…..In Muslim countries today there would be terrible shame to be pregnant out of wedlock…. The woman would be forced to marry father of the child or in some cases an honour killing would happen..

So you’re saying all Religions are responsible?

Well all cultures in Stalin’s Russia they were also intolerant of single mum’s….. In communist China single mum’s would be forced to have an abortion in present times…However yes when any religion gets political power can be dangerous …

Here’s the condensed version of Tony’s comment.
‘All Catholics are guilty’

Agree with every point you made here Tony, but you are presenting just one side of the coin. Would it not be true to add that for Irish society, the church and its rules were a convenient vehicle for us as a people to act in a despicable way.
Look at today’s scavenger funds hiding behind the law to steal homes, or today’s children being allowed to suffer painful illnesses in the name of fiscal responsibility . Any system based in idealism can be used in perverse ways to suit what society really wants for itself.. Our main concern (then and now) is personal wealth and stability, with an ‘at least it’s not me’ outlook. We did not want the drain of ‘sluts’ with ‘bast**d children’ hanging about
Many Germans did not want other races polluting their ideal racial profile, allowing the Nazis to take care of this out of sight. .Siberia was a good place for sending those without a true faith in soviet system. The English and French had the colonies to send their problems to.
While it’s true what you say about the Roman Catholic Church, they were our ideal dance partner, but we would’ve found another.

@Greg Blake: it was the Roman Catholic Church which formed and informed our sense of morality, which set the tone and values of our republic and which influenced the state and all of the agencies of the state.

The State and its servants and agents were dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and were beholden to it. The State was utterly and completely in thrall to the Roman Catholic Church and to its judgmental and discriminatory ethos.

Gradually, the Roman Catholic Church is receding and the new gods are the money interests.

@John003: some countries had a feudal and early Christian notion of illegitimacy but nowhere else in Europe was the stigma of illegitimacy so highly developed as an instrument of social control and financial exploitation as it was in Ireland.

Illegitimacy in Ireland, especially in rural communities, packed a powerful and vicious punch.

@Tony Daly: Are you for real, comparing the Roman Catholic church with Calvinist ideology. The opposite I would have said.

@Greg Blake: “While it’s true what you say about the Roman Catholic Church, they were our ideal dance partner, but we would’ve found another.”

Excellent post.

Very good post Greg and bang on point. You have to be wary of those posters who simply have an anti-Catholic church agenda and will find the root and cause of all problems in the church. Their hatred clouds their judgement unfortunately. The mere fact that this abuse spans religions, 227 children disposed of in an unmarked grave at protestant Bethany, the trafficking of children across the border by protestant homes, the putting up of children for adoption in the US by church of Ireland homes tells us all that this was not a specific religious order problem. The state dumped it’s responsibilities for taking care of these children by decreeing that religious bodies should run these homes. Would the outcome have been any different if only the state ran these homes, I would suggest not. You only have to look at resent state record on care homes to see this. Society didn’t care for it’s children back then. They were an unwanted burden on society, an inconvenience, a cost. They were to be disposed of one way or the other. It didn’t matter by whom. Surplus to requirements. What parent could ever give up their daughter, and grandchild to be, to a prison run by strangers knowing what the likely outcome would be. Shame on our citizens of the era who stood over this; parents, politicians, religious heads, doctors, gardai etc. People knew about this.