Paul KeenanSensationalist reporting must be questioned
A leading Catholic theologian has cautioned against the risk of “scapegoating” religious orders in examining the history of mother and baby homes.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic this week, as the Murphy Commission of Inquiry gears up for its investigation of nine religious-run homes, Fr Vincent Twomey, author of The End of Irish Catholicism?, said any focus on the religious orders alone, on top of recent sensationalist reporting around the homes, would distract from the greater questions of how Irish society treated its most vulnerable citizens.
“The media created such a horror story of nuns dropping babies into septic tanks,” Fr Twomey said. “It serves to make the nuns potential scapegoats.”
Fully acknowledging that the Murphy inquiry “has to be done” while stressing that he did not want to prejudice what Judge Murphy and her team may do, Fr Twomey said it was time for Ireland to “look as dispassionately as possible at matters while being ready to acknowledge where things went wrong and where things went right”.
This, the theologian added should include “what kind of society it was, how it came into being, what kind of Church it was at the time”.
Self-examination
As he has argued previously, Fr Twomey said that a valuable starting point for such self-examination would be the content of the Ryan Report into Ireland’s industrial schools, which included State failures in addition to abuses by members of religious orders.
“There is sufficient material there for reflection and, if required, an act of repentance,” Fr Twomey insisted of that report.
Such an examination, he said, would serve also to highlight much good done by religious orders since the foundation of the State.
“There is much to be grateful for,” Fr Twomey said, referencing the education and healthcare provided for Irish people, “much of which was provided unpaid by those in religious life”.