The ugly truth about children born to unwed women in Roman Catholic Ireland:
TUAM, Ireland — That 796 children, mainly babies, died at St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home between 1925 and its closing in 1961 is not disputed. A local historian, Catherine Corless, says she researched the death certificates. What troubled her was that she could find burial records for only one child and wanted a plaque to commemorate the lives of the others.
Ms. Corless surmised that the children’s bodies were interred in a septic tank behind the home, and she then met a local man who said he had seen bones there while playing as a child. While even she acknowledges that the conclusion was a circumstantial leap, once it was picked up in the local press, it was sensational enough to rocket around the globe, becoming a story of a disused septic tank brimming with bones.
Over the years, thousands of children died in the homes from ailments, including typhus, measles and malnutrition. The death certificates Ms. Corless collected list a range of common causes at a time when infant mortality was much higher than today. The death rates at the homes were always well above the national average, according to official figures. In some years, more than 50 percent of infants died, and there is evidence the state knew this; several commentators have called the homes’ problems “a scandal hidden in plain sight.”
We know largely how these innocents died, but I'm having a huge problem with the WHY. Because they were illegitimate and judged deserving of cruelty and neglect. We are not even allowed to know WHO they were because the Holy Roman Catholic Church did not grant them humanity and the individual right to a name and an identity.
I hate religion!
Throughout my childhood, Ireland has always portrayed itself as a very, very religious and God-fearing country
Do you understand why I hate religion?
The hypocrisy and evil cruelty of religion, especially to innocent children, persecuted by an evil church because these children were "illegitimate".
The Roman Catholic Church is illegitimate. Religion is illegitimate.
You do not treat children in this way because they are "illegitimate".
And the ongoing hypocrisy of Forbes Magazine:
In a jaw-droppingly dismissive piece this week Forbes calls the story a “hoax.” Irish writer Eamonn Fingleton, to boost his case, notes that Corless never actually used the word “dumped” to describe what happened to the bodies, and the remaining question of where, precisely, all the unaccounted for bodies may be found. But from there he goes straight to speculation. “Although many of the nuns may have been holier-than-thou harridans, they were nothing if not God-fearing and therefore unlikely to treat human remains with the sort of outright blasphemy implied in the septic tank story.” See, it’s a hoax because he can’t believe it. “The nuns who ran the orphanage have long since gone to their reward but if they could speak for themselves they would no doubt claim they were doing their best in appalling circumstances,” he adds. They were so young when they entered religious life — typically in their late teens or early 20s — that they had little understanding of the secular world and were evidently short on managerial skills.” And while explaining the “positively Dickensian” circumstances of Ireland at the time, he feels it necessary to add, “Very often readers do not have the experience and worldly wisdom to see through the nonsense, particularly in interpreting reported developments in nations whose cultures diverge sharply from those of the West.” On this at least we agree — if there is a “reward” in the afterlife, I sincerely hope the nuns who ran the Home are receiving it.
Obviously those young, dear sweet innocent nuns had heads filled with dark, evil, malicious religious beliefs -- typical, isn't it? The spurious lie of eternal life that seems to always lead to evil and abuse in this life.