I didn't even know about this until last weekend when it was discussed on a radio rerun. I'm not Irish or Catholic and have zero skin in the game, but it's still just frickin' amazing.

It's been said that the Vatican will rarely discuss things like this –or our own horrors here in the States–because even though so much of their budget comes from the western democracies, the Pope is always playing to a *global* audience.

There are still teachers in my hometown who'd I'd spit at if I saw them again, simply because they looked at me crosseyed once, fleetingly, in 1968. I can't imagine how children so systematically abused can contain their rage.

I grew up listening to my grandmother telling horror stories about the "home" in Ireland. (Church run orphanage/boys home) This shit has been going on for generations.

If she, a VERY protestant child and woman in a Roman Catholic town knew, you bet everyone else knew and were such fucking sheep they did nothing. Let the church and the fucking taxpayer pay. Maybe next time, they will step up and say no more, but somehow, I doubt it. There is that fear of loosing their immortal soul to worry about and all.

I strongly urge anyone interested in this to rent the Irish film, The Magdalene Sisters.

Excellent post Amy.

A growing interest of mine as I get older is trying to understand what is was like growing up throughout the past generations.

Note the bit in the first article where the new Archbishop of Westminster praises the kiddie-raping priests for their courage & reminds everyone not to forget all the good they did. It's not mentioned here, but on the same day, his predecessor declared that for Jesus, atheism was the greatest of all evils:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6334837.ece

Think how lucky all those Irish children were to have wise men like these to show them right from wrong.

I'd love to know what Frank McCourt's comments might be about this story!

Regarding 'The Magdalene Sisters' which is a very disturbing film, there is a french film, (I can't remeber the name) of girls suffering abuse in a Convent in France.
It wasn't just Ireland, abuse happened in other countries where Chatholicism was the dominant religion. Just wait until reports of abuse come out of South America...and they will.

> Regarding 'The Magdalene Sisters'
> which is a very disturbing film,
> there is a french film, (I can't
> remeber the name) of girls
> suffering abuse

Um, doesn't this, ahhh.... Isn't there are risk that the interest in this can turn somewhat pornographic?

We want to know about these events so that we can stop them and punish offenders, right?

Wanna watch a movie? As of noon Pacific, there are 18 hours to go, and the sun has just set..

(As of an hour ago, there was so pavement breaking loose at the exit of Mulsanne).

The Church is, first and foremost, a business -- a profit center. They've made that completely clear with the way they've covered up molestation of children by priests in the USA and elsewhere, and how they simply relocated the sick fuck priests who preyed on children...leaving them free to molest a whole new crop again and again and again.

I don't think this observation suggests that conclusion. If the Catholic Church were first and foremost a profit center, they would sequester or excommunicate everyone who molested a child because the bad P.R., legal fees and victim compensation will cost more in the long run (and the Catholic Church is all about "the long run".) The semi-slavery aspects, on the other hand, do suggest a profit motive.

The coverups can be more easily explained by a combination of complicity and cluelessness. Abusers in positions of power naturally would be inclined to hush up abuse by protecting lower-ranking abusers, and leaders who believe foolish things (like "surely he won't do it again") can be expected to make the kinds of decisions that we have learned were made.

Saying that people are shits is one thing; saying they should be expected to behave like shits is a bad habit.

"Saying that people are shits is one thing; saying they should be expected to behave like shits is a bad habit."

Damn straight. I keep hearing more of it lately, too, and am tired of it.

Saying that people are shits is one thing; saying they should be expected to behave like shits is a bad habit.

Word!

It makes me think about subtlety of the word "expect," though. I heartily agree with the above sentiment if you're using "expect" to mean a standard that when not met should be punished either legally or socially. From the context I think you are. On the other hand, I wouldn't agree with it if "expect" meant literally anticipate.

You can call it nitpicking if you want. I seriously believe that children and zombie liberals do terrible damage with casual wordings, and then are surprised when the world turns to shit.

Consider that McElroy post of Amy's a few weeks ago:

| A legal marriage is whatever
| contract for a committed
| relationship is agreed to
| by the adults involved.

Got that? The community is expected to support, as strongly as it would a marriage, any arrangement that any number of adults of any composition could dream up for any purpose.

Now, maybe she didn't mean that. Maybe she's not stupid. But that's what she what she said, that's the part Amy was eager to quote, and that's what dreamy children will hear as they're forming their beliefs about the world.

Things are as complicated as the need to be, and it's wrong to make them more or less intricate than they are.

> Not what I'm saying or what
> anyone's saying

Amy!

Amy amy amy...

It's exactly what she said.

You typed it into your own blog, for chrissake...

| A legal marriage is whatever
| contract for a committed
| relationship is agreed to
| by the adults involved.

> Because we give tax benefits...

Yada yadawuddev-var. Not only as that not the topic, but it's, um, not the topic. My point is that so far as we know, while she was sitting quietly in a room and under no rhetorical pressure whatsoever, McElroy said what she said. Now you're arguing that it's not what she meant. But it's what she said, and she oughta be held accountable for it. At the very least I think there are Freudian implications, as the popular expression used to go... In some corner of McElroy's mind, her daydreamy wording must have seemed perfectly comfortable.

Similarly, if Psuedy made a habit of wordings like what he used when defending the Catholic church from a simplistic –but I think well-targeted– accusation of corruption, then I'd think he was on the side of the bad guys as well.

Y'know, even if you believe in and love a Christian God, it couldn't be more obvious that the enduring, professional administrative backbone of the Catholic church did it's absolute best to carry medieval horror into the modern heart. This can't be excused as a broader defect in human nature. Why the Irish taxpayer is on the hook for a billion is hard to fathom.

Europe's wacky.

Bless this man's heart.

My Uncle committed sucide at 25 years of age (1977). This exact thing happened to him in Argentina when he was around 5. No one did shit.

My family doesn't talk about it. I've only got pieces of it here and there from my Mother - the family moved to the U.S. a year later.

Listening to this, is just absolutely heartbreaking, I can't possibly imagine the demons my Uncle was facing when he took his own life - and what it must have been like for this dear heart as he suffered through his darkest of hours contemplating his own suicide.

What a fucking mess.

I miss my Uncle.

Signed,

The Grateful Recovering Catholic.

> Just wait until reports of abuse come out > of South America...and they will.

I didn't see this before I posted. I hope you are right.

But it's what she said, and she oughta be held accountable for it.

Absolutely. Words mean things.

Similarly, if Psuedy made a habit of wordings like what he used when defending the Catholic church from a simplistic –but I think well-targeted– accusation of corruption, then I'd think he was on the side of the bad guys as well.

I'm not defending the Catholic Church: complicity is worse than being motivated by profit. Cluelessness isn't worse, but it's no excuse.

"...Yet, when the final bill for compensating the thousands of victims of that abuse is counted, the cost will be shouldered, in the main, by the Irish taxpayer rather than the Catholic church."

Waaaah on the Irish taxpayers, since for decades after the Republic was set up they were one and the same. If the Irish state had not jobbed this responsibility on the Church, the Church wouldn't have had these kids to abuse. Because:

"The Church is, first and foremost, a business -- a profit center."

misrepresents the facts. The Church is first and foremost a social sytem or a governmet, and has been that way ever since civil government began breaking down in the 500's. And it has been in constant struggle with every attempt of civil governments to assert power in areas it ocnsiders its own purview. T

And some people wonder why the Irish Protestants are so violently anti-Catholic. One big reason is the sheer power the Church had (and, in a lot of ways, still has.) Until very recently, anybody coming forth with this sort of accusations would have been ruint.

And...it might, just might have something to do with that clerical celibacy, mightn't it? I mean, most people want very much to have sex, so signing on to a job where "no sex WHATSOEVER" is the rule might be a sign that something's a little amiss upstairs?

What I have a hard time believing is how many people are "shocked, just shocked" at this. Back in the 1970s, I heard more than enough smutty jokes about priests, and enough stories about sadistic nuns, to figure that Catholic schools were places I wanted to steer clear of.