Michael Kelly
We’ve become depressingly familiar with using terms like ‘dark chapter’ to reflect on certain periods of Irish history – particularly the 20th Century. You’d be forgiven for thinking that until the last few years, the story of the Irish State was one solely of darkness and misery. True, the past wasn’t all great – but it wasn’t all terrible either.
Future historians will have a more rounded view, but that doesn’t take from the current piercing need to face up to and acknowledge the appalling treatment of many people in 20th-Century Ireland. Often an unholy alliance between Church and State collaborated to institutionalise – and sometimes demonise – those who didn’t quite fit in, or those who were deemed to be too embarrassing for their families, communities or wider society.
Fr Vincent Twomey, author of The end of Irish Catholicism?, sums it up well: “Traditional Irish Catholicism exuded a sense of superiority, an arrogance that now beggars belief…No one could teach us anything. In addition, we had a society steeped in petty snobbery, so that priesthood and religious life easily became a status symbol, while those at the bottom of the pile (the indigent poor, the parentless, farm labourers, petty thieves, etc.) were seen by Church, State and society as non-persons – just numbers.
“Clerics and religious were all powerful. They were above suspicion – and they knew it. They could act without fear of retribution. Human weaknesses of the flesh – including machismo and sadism rooted in a frustrated sexuality due to repressive Puritanism and no real vocation or spiritual training – were often combined with spiritual arrogance and narrow-mindedness. The dregs of this, the negative side of traditional Irish Catholicism, were in charge of the reformatories, industrial schools and foster homes. The result was the perversion of Our Lord’s injunction: ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’ (Mk 10:13),” Fr Twomey writes.
It’s a damning critique and one that comes again to mind in a week when official Ireland is honouring those women who spent time in Magdalen laundries. While Martin McAleese in his report points out that “there is no single or simple story of the Magdalen Laundries”, what is clear is that many women suffered there. The unfolding story of illegal adoptions and people denied their heritage and history is also one that will have to be faced directly – and immediately.
There are searching questions for both Church and State. But, we must as a society also ask ourselves deep questions about what happened and the complicity of communities in the appalling treatment of our fellow citizens. We must be wary of the temptation to turn either Church or State into a NAMA-like ‘bad bank’ where all toxicity is deposited and we look with a collective ‘tut, tut’ and say “nothing to do with me”.
The advertisements for illegal adoptions were in national newspapers. The story of Magdalen Ireland is also one of families driving their daughters to such institutions.
It was a country where, as Frank Duff put it, people were “shovelled” into institutions. As Irish people, we have a self-perception of ourselves as a universally friendly and welcoming people. Our history shows that this hasn’t always been the case – and we will be all the poorer as a people if we are unwilling to address this. History, as Maya Angelou puts it, “despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again”.
Michael Kelly is co-author of a new book with Austen Ivereigh ‘How to Defend the Faith – Without Raising Your Voice’ – it is available from Columba Press www.columbabooks.com