The Magdalene Sisters/laundries/church control in Ireland

[pintsofguinness]

Mentally unstable parent = potentially mentally unstable unchild. The argument there was not that there is adoption.

you dont know that a mentally unstable parent will lead to a mentally unstable child. 

I dont think it's always black and white, there's circumstances where it's  not and those who are pro abortion latch on to those.  Reality is however, that most abortions happen because the mother does not want the child, does not want to accept the responsibility and thinks her nights out is more important than the life of her unborn child.

[winsamsoon]

Fair enough pints some people will have an abortion because they are worried about thei social life, but it is a very tiny minority. There are a lot of more compex reasons for it. IMHO it is wrong whatever the circumstances. I could never imagine doing it to a innocent child but everyone is different. But remember this lad, once they make the decision to abort a child for whatever reason. That decision will be on their minds for the rest of their lives, i can't see anyone ever forgetting that. You may say that you would have no sympathy for them but i can guarantee when they grow older times like christmas, New Year etc will always be difficult and secretly unhappy times. We all make mistakes when we are younger. Granted this is a major mistake to make but i would say that younger girls who have had abortions would almost certainly regret it and be hunted by it in later life.

Life is sacred no matter what scenario but this is simplistic and im my circumstances very relevant. But as i say everyone is different and lets remember it is a very touchy subject for some . So it does deserve a bit of dignity .

[Maguire01]

I think fear of the Church had a huge part to play in all of this.  Also the Church vetting system was ridiculous at the time.  Everyone and anyone was able to take up the religious life.  Today there is extreme psychological profiling and testing carried out during entry to training.  I does not wipe out the problem today and I am sure there is still abuse and corruption in the Church like any other organisation but some day please God that wont be the case.
[/quote

Serious question - if the Church now has this psychological testing, should they not put all current priests/employees through it (as well as new recruits), and sack anyone who fails them?

And a not so serious question - should God not have intervened and stopped the 'dodgy' priests from getting in in the first place?

[milltown row]

It seems we are getting off the topic, if private business men had people locked up and made to do work would they be prosecuted today? We all know the answer. So why not prosecute now? The Bishops or ones in charge should face charges

[imtommygunn]

The reality is POG, and this is why I posted on this thread, that you have no idea why most abortions happen. You just assume what you say to be the case with nothing to back it up. 

[The Iceman]

The reality is POG, and this is why I posted on this thread, that you have no idea why most abortions happen. You just assume what you say to be the case with nothing to back it up. 

I don't think you really need anything to back it up.  The outcome whatever the circumstances is the same - a baby is killed.  I'll write that again for you:
For whatever reasons the outcome is the same - a baby is killed.

[The Iceman]

Serious question - if the Church now has this psychological testing, should they not put all current priests/employees through it (as well as new recruits), and sack anyone who fails them?

And a not so serious question - should God not have intervened and stopped the 'dodgy' priests from getting in in the first place?

Not so serious answer to serious question:
Yes they probably should - I'm having scones with the Pope later on this weekend so I'll run it by him.....

Serious answer to not so serious question:
God doesn't intervene because he gave us all freedom of choice but we don't need to turn this into a 'Does God exist' topic Maguire you can start a new thread for that one. 

[pintsofguinness]

imtommygunn
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html
Very interesting.  I'm still reading through it, I suggest you read the whole article, not just the tables.  

When do you think it's ok to have an abortion?

[pintsofguinness]

That decision will be on their minds for the rest of their lives, i can't see anyone ever forgetting that. You may say that you would have no sympathy for them but i can guarantee when they grow older times like christmas, New Year etc will always be difficult and secretly unhappy times. We all make mistakes when we are younger. Granted this is a major mistake to make but i would say that younger girls who have had abortions would almost certainly regret it and be hunted by it in later life.

True and good!

[Tyrones own]

Fair enough pints some people will have an abortion because they are worried about thei social life, but it is a very tiny minority. There are a lot of more compex reasons for it. IMHO it is wrong whatever the circumstances. I could never imagine doing it to a innocent child but everyone is different. But remember this lad, once they make the decision to abort a child for whatever reason. That decision will be on their minds for the rest of their lives, i can't see anyone ever forgetting that. You may say that you would have no sympathy for them but i can guarantee when they grow older times like christmas, New Year etc will always be difficult and secretly unhappy times. We all make mistakes when we are younger. Granted this is a major mistake to make but i would say that younger girls who have had abortions would almost certainly regret it and be hunted by it in later life.

Life is sacred no matter what scenario but this is simplistic and im my circumstances very relevant. But as i say everyone is different and lets remember it is a very touchy subject for some . So it does deserve a bit of dignity .

FCUK them imho (for the most part)..they chose it.... what about the choice or choices the child didn't get the opportunity to make.
No points for knowing where my sympathy lies

[Lar Naparka]

For me, the politicians and state authorities knew full well what was going on but chose to ignore it. What they didn't like, they didn't see

Lar that is all fine and well but what the lads are saying is that it was a product of the society at the time. If politicians would have came out and spoke about it then they would have been ostracised by the community. They would have lost any respect they had worked to gain. I agree they did know what was going on whilst the ordinary 5/8 person was completely ignorant to it. But they simply had to accept it because it kept the status quo and didn't go against the church. I have great aunties and uncles and still to this day if you said a bad word about the priests they would throw you out of the house. You soon learn not to question anthing in the house  . But you can come out of the house afterwards and realise how silly it is to accept and never question anything. It is a bit like the bible belt in America only a lot less extreme. The extremities of the Magdalene sister is to us horrific and totally unacceptable but at the time people where content to let it exist for fear of speaking out against the higher authorities. I can guarantee some of the people who allowed their kids to go to places like this are totally haunted by guilt in modern society. A film like the Magdalene sisters would obviously hunt them. If you thought that you put your child through that it would be very difficult to live with yourself.

You’re right of course. I was picking up on the post by Evil Genius and was attempting to point out that things were not always what they ought to be.

In the end, to punish a teenage girl for being raped, for instance, whilst turning a blind eye to the man who raped her, is utterly immoral and contrary to the professed teachings of the Church, whether we are talking the 1st Century, the 21st Century, or any point in between.

In theory, that seems reasonable and logical but in practice that often was not the case.
One reason why politicians and others in authority allowed such seemingly barbaric practices to go on was because they approved of therm.
Your elderly relations were by no means unique.
In my own schooldays, no kid complained of getting slapped in school because he or she would probably get another few wallops at home on the premise that if the teacher beat you, you deserved it.
Back in them days people in general had far greater respect for authority of any sort than is the case today -and it was of the blind, unquestioning type.
Kids didn’t answer their parents or teachers back. But then curates didn’t give lip to the parish priest or a policeman didn’t stop to question an order from his sergeant.
I suppose you could say that anyone in a uniform would command instant respect.
Christian Brothers and nuns had an immense amount of power over the lives of ordinary people they came in contact with.  Okay, priests were even more powerful but they did not have the organisation or numbers of the religious orders.
Even as late as the 60s, as I grew up, the nuns and the brothers were widely regarded as elite corps in the army of Christ against the forces of Satan.
I know it is hard for EG and others who were not brought up in a traditional Catholic environment to understand why blatant transgressions of the law went unnoticed where matters we have been discussing are concerned. They weren’t acted on because society in general saw nothing amiss.
Sociologist friends told me that there were two principal reasons why Irish Catholicism was so repressive and ultra-conservative in nature in the last few centuries gone by.
For one thing, we have been isolated geographically on the outskirts of Europe and therefore relatively unaffected by cultural, economic and political changes and events in more mainstream societies.
But there was another big reason why the Irish Church was so repressive and authoritarian in outlook:
Many students for the priesthood went to seminaries in France and in Belgium. {Here I’m relying on a coupe of drinking buddies who are clergymen.}

Here they came under the influence of teachers who were heavily influenced by the teachings of Cornelius Jansen.   Jansen was some boyo where matters of faith and morals were concerned. He was probably more right wing than Oliver Cromwell.
Jansenism was banned as a heresy by some pope or other but his influence lived on for centuries and, as luck would have had it, many on the teaching staffs at Louvain and other leading seminaries were followers of his. 
In the Ireland of the 1800s and 1900s class was everything. So, if some guy from a privileged background aspired to the priesthood, he naturally was sent to one of the snotty colleges on the continent. If he came from a relatively poor background, he had to make do with studying at Maynooth or some other plebeian establishment.
In matters of advancement within the Church, having Louvain on a CV meant a lot more than Maynooth or St Patrick’s in Thurles.
It naturally followed that the upper levels of the Church in Ireland were composed of extremely repressive, fundamentalists who looked for evil everywhere. What they looked for, they found and punishment and mortification were the only ways to conquer the snares of Satan, who worked on a 24/7 basis in his efforts to capture souls.

[Puckoon]

Typ, thanks for the figures. I'm still not sure how that information equates to the treatment of todays pregnant women, nor how them choosing (for the most part) to go across the water is them "being sent".

Pints, we all know your views, but your delivery of your point, especially concerning the "selfish cows" is near the knuckle, and frankly insulting where it doesn't have to be.

[ardmhachaabu]

I have read some but not all of the contributions so far.

I am of the opinion that some members of the clergy committed offences against young people they should never have been allowed to get away with but did because people didn't want to make the Catholic church look bad.

I am a devout Catholic so I can understand why people thought that way.  I don't think it would have served the church well at any time, past or present to run themselves down by pointing out all the abuse, neither do I think it should have been covered up.

I also understand the damage trying to cover it all up did.  

Really all I want to say is that not every single member of the clergy was culpable for the abuses that occurred and that most clergy would have been appalled by what happened.

[pintsofguinness]

I'm just calling them what they are puck, they've killed a baby so I think they can take me calling them "selfish cows".

[Lar Naparka]

I have read some but not all of the contributions so far.

I am of the opinion that some members of the clergy committed offences against young people they should never have been allowed to get away with but did because people didn't want to make the Catholic church look bad.

I am a devout Catholic so I can understand why people thought that way.  I don't think it would have served the church well at any time, past or present to run themselves down by pointing out all the abuse, neither do I think it should have been covered up.

I also understand the damage trying to cover it all up did.  

Really all I want to say is that not every single member of the clergy was culpable for the abuses that occurred and that most clergy would have been appalled by what happened.

Of course you are correct, ardmhachaabu, many clergy were decent, hard-working individuals and not every child born out of wedlock was caused by clerical rape either. With regard to the Magdalene laundries, they were a product of the times. It was not a case of nuns deciding to remove pregnant girls from the scene by forcibly grabbing them and putting them into institutions to do slave labour, when their kids had been born and taken away from them.
Parents were complicit in this in the vast majority of cases. What winsamsoon wrote about his grand aunts and uncles was par for the course for almost everybody. In the closed type of society you had back then, parents could not stand the sort of social stigma that was attached to illegitimate births. The word, "bastard," wasn't just an insulting term in those days; it had very real meaning.
Property, especially succession rights, was a big factor in the way society evolved. Many babies born out of wedlock were fathered by landowners and business people, or most likely by their sons, and the Magdalene laundries were one way of preventing problems with succession rights getting out of hand!
Believe me, Ireland up to fairly recent times was riddled with a class system that would rival that of India.
Up to, say, the 1950s arranged marriages were commonplace. (Indeed the practice lingered on in places well into the 60s and maybe 70s as well.) The two sets of parents met together with a matchmaker and literally drew up a business deal. Often the deal was done and dusted before the boy and girl were told.  People stayed within their own social level. A prosperous publican or shopkeeper would not countenance his kid marrying someone whose parents had a council cottage or a small farm. Love didn't enter the scene.
What I'm trying to get across about Magdalene laundries is the nuns alone were not responsible for their existence. It took a wide range of other interests to come together to bring them into being and it would appear that none of the vested interests saw anything wrong with the practice.