Sins That Cry Out To God
There are certain things in this world that are likely to tip me into molten, incandescent rage. One is cruelty to children.
In Ireland, there is a system of Catholic-run schools for the children of the poor, and these schools were the scenes of utter depravity between the 1930s and 1990s.
One victim’s memory of sadistic torture at the hands of a nun:
I was hit for having red, curly hair. You had to have straight hair like Our Lady. This sister was a monster. She’d drag you into the office and take her long cane and just beat you and beat you. She had a bamboo cane four feet long. She’d be frothing at the mouth. She’d say, “You curled your hair last night,” and when I’d say, “Yes, I curled it,” she’d stop. She had castor oil, she would press it into my head, to make my hair straight. My face would be swollen from the beatings, the oil would be running down my face.
This next testimony is especially appalling:
I was an animal lover. There were wild cats and kittens going around starving, and I used to sneak them into the dormitory. i had a kitten. This nun called me one night. She said, “You see that kitten you have there?” She got me out of bed by the hair and brought me down, they had one of those stoves that you put coal in the top. She said, “Take that top off.” I had to go up on my knees. I had to put the cat in there and put the lid on it — and the screams. Then she said, “Go back to bed.” The next morning, she got me out of bed and she made me rake that fire out. I think I was about twelve at the time.
I am used to praying for God’s mercy on the souls of sinners, especially me. I prayed that God may be merciful to the man who paralyzed, and ultimately killed, my late older brother.
There are, however, some offenses that make such prayers very, very hard to offer. For a representative of Mother Church, a person whose job it is not just to teach the faith, but to model in some way God’s loving relationship with his children, to force an animal-loving, born-into-poverty little girl to burn her kitten to death is definitely in that fucking category. It would have been bad enough for the sister to kill the kitten; for her to make the little girl do it…like I say: incandescent rage.
I try, but I can’t think of an excuse for that nun. I can’t think of anything that might lessen her culpability. I can’t imagine how utterly depraved someone needs to be, how completely destroyed someone’s conscience would have to be, so that she could possibly commit an act of such heinous brutality.
I also can’t find an excuse for a Church in Ireland that allowed such a system to thrive (there’s no other word for it) in its institutions for decades. These two incidents are not the isolated depravity of a couple of demented monsters; they are quotes from a report published by a government-appointed commission. So it was not just “a few sisters” and “isolated cases of a few priests.” It was a system. There was a culture in these schools that let such comprehensive abuse continue for decades, by both priests and nuns. That government report is two thousand six hundred pages long.
I went briefly to a school run by the same order (the Irish Christian Brothers) that ran many (but not all) of the schools in Ireland. There was one brother in my school who took an inordinate interest in the boys’ locker room at shower time, and would find an excuse to make the students do push-ups while naked. That same brother had a fearsome reputation as a “disciplinarian.” I think those two things are related; in fact, I think they are the same sin, expressed two different ways.
The Catholic Church in America has historically been heavily served by Irish priests and religious, and the relatively commonplace memories of Americans of a certain age of brutal sisters and sadistic brothers has very much to do with that fact, I believe. And it was not just in elementary and high schools; seminaries also had their share of bullies and sadists: there was a priest I knew who, when he was a young seminarian and confessed masturbating, was assigned the penance of kneeling on his fingers on a flagstone floor and saying 100 Hail Marys.
We need to pray for the victims of the sadism of these Irish religious and lay priests, brothers and nuns, that they may retain their faith, and their capacity to give and receive tenderness and love. And we need to pray for the perpetrators, and especially for their enablers.
The Church needs to determine what factors caused such a culture to thrive in its institutions, and ensure that such factors are comprehensively rooted out. This must never happen again.
Thank you for expressing these thoughts. When I read about things like this, I find it very difficult to put what I feel into words.
Thankfully, it appears that unlike some Bishops in the United States, Dublin’s Archbishop recognizes the magnitude of these crimes and is sincerely interested in making atonement, not just in practicing the CYA that we’ve seen in some dioceses here.
I agree with you that “The Church needs to determine what factors caused such a culture to thrive in its institutions, and ensure that such factors are comprehensively rooted out. This must never happen again.” Seriously, could our enemies make up any calumny about the Church that would be worse than the ugly facts of this story?
No, they couldn’t, Melody. It reads like something out of a Chick tract.
It’s the Jansenism of the Irish Catholic Church, a Jansenism that also traveled across the Atlantic ocean and found a cozy home in the Calvinist-dominated USA.
I think these religious were, at least in part, modeling their Jansenistic image of God, MM. God the heavenly task-master, who is eager to catch them in sin.
There is plenty of criticism of the government report for those with ears to listen and eyes to see. Your hyperbole here is of no help. The report was an uncritical look at allegations. Many of the allegations are from “repressed memories”, a notorious gold mine of false accusations (See here for instance). One semi-famous author has been exposed as a fraud for her allegations against Irish religious. Of course there are sick and sadistic people out there, and some of them have been Catholic and some of them have even wielded power.
“The Church needs to determine what factors caused such a culture to thrive in its institutions, and ensure that such factors are comprehensively rooted out. This must never happen again.”
I agree, and in part I see this as a consequence of the brutal oppression the Irish lived under.
We see this today too in our own country with the violence that is rampant in some of our minority communities. This is in part a consequence of the oppression of slavery and institutionally imposed bigotry and segregation that lasted–still exists–in our country.
The ugly impact of oppression unfortunately last generations.
We should also remember what these “schools” were. They were often called orphanages but only about 5 percent were orphans. They constituted a system where those aspects of Ireland that did not meet the exacting standards of celtic Catholic purity were cast aside (the evils of nationalism yet again). Specifically, it relied on a set of “industrial school” which could incarate children from as young as 4 to as old as 16, for no crime whatsoever. The peeping toms would make some complaint about the fitness of the parents, and the children could be removed by a court over the parents’ objection.
The basis of the law was the 1908 Childrens Act, long reformed in the UK, but made more draconian by the Irish state. For example, the modified law put no limits on the severity of discipline. These industrial schools were run by the religious orders (never the diocesans) and they made quite a bit of money – forever complaining about the meager capitation grants (which actually were quite generous), while the children lived in a Dickensian nightmare. Starvation was the norm. Severe beating was the order of the day. There was no medical treatment. Hygiene was abysmal – often, the children shared underpants and toothbrushes. These institutions were supposed to be schools, and yet hardly anthing was taught – instead, the children were forced to do strenuous manual labor, including back-breaking farm work. And people knew, yes they did. People whispered in corners, and misbehaving children were threatened with being taken away. It was a horror never talked about, but everybody knew it was a horror.
So who is to blame? Oh yes, the entrire rotten system, the wicked Jansenist theology that told children of God that they were worthless. But let’s not pin all the blame on the religious orders. Let’s point the finger at the state. After all, the state presided over these children’s gulags. The law was not reformed, and in some cases made worse. There was supposed to be an inspection system, but the department of education always turned a blind eye to what was going on. The courts, in direct violation of the law, never allowed for an appeals process. Bottom line – the religious could never have done any of this without the legal blessing of the state.
We should be aware of the politics. It’s a little like Abu Ghraib in the US – the Irish state wants desperately to pin this on a few sociopaths in cassocks and habits. Thus, in his infamous apology almost a decade back, then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern suggested that had the state known of these abuses, it would have intervened. This is BS of the highest order. Just as the torture at Abu Ghriab followed the very techniques laid down by Bush and Cheney, so the behavior at the industria shcools flows directly from Irish government policy.
First: words fail. Thank you for this post of terrible truth.
Second: it’s become a commonplace to associate Jansenism with Irish Catholicism. Yet, what I’ve read about the institutional development of the Church in Ireland in the modern era is that the real dividing line in Church culture is pre- and post-Hunger. That the hierarchy took the opportunity of the Hunger to try to makeover Irish Catholics from pre-modern into industrial era bourgeois Methodist/Prebyterian wannabes, to catch up with the island across the Irish Sea, with a heavy layer of Catholic devotionalism to mask it. The hierarchy used the Hunger as guilt trip to help effect this. Jansenism due to French theological influence in the exilic seminary tradition as such is somewhat less salient in this reading. Anyway, if what I’ve read in this regard is reasonably accurate, then one might directly trace a pattern utilitarian monstrosity in the power structure to the Great Hunger – yet another awful inheritance of that horror.
Liam, MM – thanks for making some sense out of the horror. As a kid, I got a rosy picture of Ireland and the Irish at home, as an Irish-Italian 3rd or 4th-generation Chicagoan. But I noticed somewhere along the way that there’s a hell of a lot of modern Irish lit that seems really depressing, or cynical, or pissed off at… something. The Church, the culture, I don’t know.
Th Ryan report sort of made sense in that context — like September 11th, if you knew anything about prior terrorist attacks, or about Osama, or about issues the Islamic world has with the US — shocking, but not…that…surprising.
I haven’t read everything or studied this very carefully – busy with other aspects of my life – but I was wondering if – whether it’s Jansenism or just the force of history following the Famine – you think the issues in Ireland are related to the clergy abuse issues in the US and Australia? Clerical culture and cultural clericalism being exported?
MZ – I’m sure there’re people piling on with ‘repressed’ pseudo-memories and me-tooism – like the guy who accused Card. Bernadin and then later recanted. Are there enough of those cases to — well, nobody should be convicted, nor a dead person’s memory trashed, based on a presumption of guilt. Nor should Catholics despair, based on this — because human evil has never been a surprise.
Great (but shocking) post! I don’t know why sadism and religion seem so often to co-exist. It still seems to me that, while few would make children burn kittens anymore, there are a large group of judgmental people salivating over the “eternal punishment” awaiting those who disagree with them (like liberals:-).) I guess the mentally ill tend to be drawn toward religion.
MZ–
A common investigative route in Ireland is the judicial tribunal — this the powers and evidentiary standards of courts, but has no power to impose penalties. The Ryan report is the result of such a tribunal, completing the work of Justice Mary Lafoy, who chaired the initial tribunal. In other words, the allegations have been substantiated. But let’s not get bogged down with sexual abuse — this was there, but not the real issue, and not as common as many seem to think. The real issue was prevailing physical abuse. It was a gulag, pure and simple.
“Child care” draws, in addition to many good people, perverts and sadists. What makes abuse by priests, nuns etc. worse is the “spiritual” dimension, used to terrorize, cajole and sexually abuse children. They preferably go for the “true believers”, children from broken homes etc. This seems to be worse than physical abuse, as the priests use their office to cruelly manipulate children. Heck, many used confession as a means of access and control. You don’t have to go to Ireland, just read the book Sacrilege, unless you mind vomiting. I wonder if the particularly heinous American situation stems from the fact of a historically Irish-dominated organization.
“In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule,
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
“Son, fear is the heart of love”
So I never went back”
(Deathcab for Cutie)
” Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. ”
(Frank McCourt)
This near-absolute rule the Catholic church had in Ireland is also the reason for its rapid fall from grace. The only Catholic country left is Poland. It’s also Europe’s most reactionary country, with antisemitism and homophobia in full bloom. I’d say that in the case of those two countries religious affiliation was tied to political resistance – against the UK and the Communists, respectively – and not so much the extraordinary piety in those countries. Maybe they just misunderstood the “Suffer the little children unto me”….”Make the little children suffer under me”
Of course, when we’re talking about Ireland, one should not forget the Magdalen homes for “fallen” women. Not exactly your much-maligned “hippie nuns”. Of course one mustn’t conclude that all nuns are monsters. In San Diego was a darling 80something Sister of Mercy, for example. One of the nicest, warmest, radiant people I’ve come across.(of course she’d be labeled a “dissenter” by idiots like the guy who ran “The Cafeteria is Closed”. Haven’t seem him around in a while thankfully :-P)
The Times:
Ireland, a country that used to export its Catholic clergy around the world, is running out of priests at such a rate that their numbers will have dropped by two thirds in the next 20 years, leaving parishes up and down the land vacant.
One-hundred and sixty priests died last year but only nine were ordained. Figures for nuns were even more dramatic, with the deaths of 228 nuns and only two taking final vows for service in religious life.
of course she’d be labeled a “dissenter” by idiots like the guy who ran “The Cafeteria is Closed”. Haven’t seem him around in a while thankfully :-P
:)
I miss the Closed Cafeteria. The menu selection was limited and predictable, but the clientele was quite interesting.
Katherine, my favorite was the guy who said he’d report me to the Knights of Columbus. I kept looking out the window, but no men in feathered hats wielding sabres showed up :(
I hate to break it to you, but those sabres are fake!
However, the Knights might cancel your life insurance policy. Watch out.
I’m with State Farm ;-)