Today I’m embarrassed to be Irish. Reading about the widespread abuse in children’s homes and other Catholic institutions is sickening but sadly not surprising.
I haven’t lived in Ireland in almost a decade. I believe that much has changed in the intervening years, especially in relation to the stranglehold the Catholic Church had over all aspects of society. But I still remember the crap I had to put up with at school and from my mother’s extended family simply because I was born ‘out of wedlock’.
The so-called national schools (i.e.: state schools) are mostly run by religious orders. When I was in school, we still had a fair few nuns teaching us, although the majority was comprised of lay teachers. Ironically enough, the kids were mostly fine about it, as were the lay teachers, with the notable exception of the evil Miss O’Sullivan. There were quite a few bitchy nuns, though, including the school principal.
The sex education could politely be described as a joke. We had a right-wing lunatic come in and tell us all about how contraception was not only against God’s will, but utterly unnecessary as we could time intercourse around ‘the safe period’. Ouch! And this was in 1990.
Magazines imported from the UK had the ads for abortion clinics blacked out. My own GP wouldn’t prescribe the pill, so I had to go to the Well Woman Centre to get it (I was 17 at the time, by the way). Thinking about it now makes it seem surreal, yet it really wasn’t all that long ago.
I still remember watching ‘The Late Late Show’ (popular evening talk show) interview Annie Murphy, one of the first women to come out and say she’d had an affair (and a child) with a member of the Irish Catholic clergy. They fucking savaged her on live television, calling her a liar and a whore, and implying that she was mentally unstable. While I can’t see that happening today, again, that was only 16 years ago.
After the Annie Murphy-Bishop Eamon Casey affair became public, sex scandals involving priests seemed to come out of the woodwork. The comedy series ‘Father Ted’ might be over-the-top, but it contains more than one grain of truth in its depiction of the Irish clergy.
My former childminder was always a devout Catholic. She attended mass every day, and not merely to pay lip-service. She was a genuine believer. Yet when I met her a few years ago, I was shocked to learn she’d stopped going to church because she was disillusioned by all the corruption and abuse. Although I’m an atheist myself, I felt sorry for her. It must be awful to have to question beliefs you’ve held your whole life.
In light of the Ryan Commission’s report, I can only hope that further victims find the courage to seek help. The report cites the figure of 2500 abuse victims but I’m sure the true number is much higher. I’d like to think that modern children’s homes are appropriately supervised but I’m not that naïve. Children in care are amongst the most vulnerable members of society. I hope the Irish government takes care to ensure their safety, and not dismiss the problem as having been solely related to the Catholic Church.
