Posted on 06/04/2014 9:51:45 PM PDT by boatbums
Almost 800 babies and children were buried in a mass grave in Ireland near a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns, according to new research Wednesday which throws more light on the Irish Catholic Church's troubled past.
Death records suggest 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were deposited in a grave near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers during the 35 years it operated from 1925 to 1961.
Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says her study of death records for the St Mary's home in Tuam in County Galway suggests that a former septic tank near the home was a mass grave.
The septic tank, full to the brim with bones, was discovered in 1975 by locals when concrete slabs covering the tank broke up.
Until now, locals believed the bones mainly stemmed from the Great Irish famine of the 1840s when hundreds of thousands perished.
St Mary's, run by the Bons Secours Sisters, was one of several such 'mother and baby' homes in early 20th century Ireland.
Thousands of unmarried pregnant women -- labelled at the time as 'fallen women' -- were sent to the homes to have their babies.
The women were ostracised by the conservative-Catholic society and were often forced to hand over their children for adoption.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Anyone who wishes can visit the largest cemetery (by interments) in the USA, Calvary in Maspeth, NY. Once there you can locate the sections being filled between the 1920’s and 1960’s. In these sections you will see more babies and teenagers and young adults than you ever would have believed. In a great many cases you will actually SEE the individuals as photos flashed into porcelain have been set into the stones. Once you have strolled a few of these sections you will have no problem understanding how fragile life was over those 40 years and you will require a hell of a lot more than just numbers to infer some kind of wrong-doing.
OK, here’s a question. I’m not trying to be insulting or provacative, it’s just food for thought. I haven’t been in Ireland since 1980 and will probably never get to go back. But Ireland used to be a poor and troubled country, one of the most backward in non-communist Europe. Then came the Celtic Tiger, tech industries, etc. The tiger was mostly a bubble I guess, and now they are again one of the economically troubled European countries. And in the meantime it seems that the Catholic Church stopped having so much influence. The young, particularly young women, are mostly unchurched(like here) and do a lot of hard drinking and partying( like England) and are very secular and permissive in their views on Social issues( like here and England). I glean a lot of this from Marian Keyes novels, which I realize are novels. But I wonder how happy the average Irish person is today and if they are any happier than when the church, severe and patriarchal as it was, had so much influence. Have they really made progress?
Anybody here actually from Ireland? Are the Marian Keyes novels accurate?
No they had a Faith to defend for the living.
You have no idea whether or not they pitied or prayed for these unfortunates or how they treated them or comforted them in life; but you pretend to for your own purposes.
Christianity didn't rise from 11 Apostles of a “dead guy” to nurture learning, science and civilization as we know it today, in the greatest, richest nation ever seen because Christians were weak-minded slobs who didn't know the difference between pity and charity. The fact that these Nuns devoted their lives to taking care of the fallen and neglected is evidence of their Goodness. These "wretches" were ostracized by their own actions. People understood then that were they not ostracized society would have begun the spiral into decadence and hell we are witnessing today, decades earlier. Start counting the "poor of Spirit" today resulting from the stupid destructive leftisim that began in the 1960's. You want "Evil"? There it is.
This is like my the work of fanatic nuns that hate extramarital sex
Q STARRED IAN A VERY GOOD MOVIE ON THE SUBJECT
I wonder how contagious these are? Even after death some diseases are still active. To put them in a septic tank so runoff in a the local water supply? Yes I believe the children died of this but I'm surprised more did not die in the community.
Malnutrition means the children were not fed! Are you defending this? I visited Ireland in 1960 and it did not appear that people didn’t have enough food.
How is it possible that orphaned children died for lack of food and then their bodes were dumped into a cistern?
Thanks, narses.
The reasoning is that they believe baptism should be voluntary and desired by the follower of Christ. Hitler was baptized Roman Catholic as an infant; had he chosen following Christ and baptism as an adult, history would be markedly different.
And, NO, that's not a knock upon Catholic tradition, just an explanation of the attitude of some other Christian faiths.
It was a converted septic tank, i.e. no longer in use as such. As a mass grave is was merely an underground cement vault.
Had this been an article about a "Protestant" home for unwed mothers, how many Catholics would be not only posting and reposting it but piling on to express their contempt for all things Protestant?
You realize it wasn’t the Catholics that helped to perpetuate that Nazi slaughters, right?
What's that Internet law that kicks in when the first person brings up the Nazis to bolster their assumed argument? You're doing it, dude.
Is it so difficult for Catholics to admit wrong was done by those representing their church and determine they will do all they can to prevent it from happening again? The, "other people were bad, too" defense is pretty lame for an organization that claims it alone is the ONE, TRUE church of Jesus Christ. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. (Luke 12:48)
That's not to say, of course, that many nuns aren't loving, gentle and Christ-like and who serve the Lord with gladness. I had a few of those, too.
Amen.
Did you miss the part in the article that said the townspeople didn't know that's what the tank contained? From the article:
Health issues and problems associated with the homes have long been documented. As far back as 1944, a government inspection report of the Tuam home described some of the children as "fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated."
Let me ask you, as a Catholic, do you approve of what these people did in the name of the Catholic Church? So many FRoman Catholics boast that "their" church gave the world the Bible, the Gospel, kept us from worshiping false gods and were the ones who brought the world Western "civilization", yet, when news comes out about bad things done in the name of their church, they scurry to cover up, rationalize, point to others who were worse or accuse those who bring it to light as haters, bigots and anti-Catholic. Do you not recognize hypocrisy?
I challenge you to name a more disrespectful location and manner of burial.
If this was a story about a Protestant home for unwed mothers, where the dead bodies of nearly a thousand babies and young children were unceremoniously dumped one on top of another in an old septic tank, covered over and unmarked, would you be saying the same thing?
Nobody is denying that there may have been legitimate reasons for the many deaths and that they were not a result of criminal neglect or murder. It is just the seemingly blatant lack of compassion for the innocent children who had nothing to do with HOW they were conceived and their heartbroken mothers who, often times, were forced to leave home and taken into such places. These women were often NOT immoral but victims of rape and they were indentured to work in these "homes" to pay off their costs of care. Their children, those that lived, were often SOLD to factories using child slave labor or, if they were lucky, to an infertile couple wanting a child. They were ostrasized just like their mothers from other children and society and treated as outcasts, with no hope for a normal life. That isn't what we expect from a church-sponsored ministry, is it?
Believe me, if the same kind of story came out about a "Protestant" ministry doing the same thing, I would be at the head of the line condemning it. I wouldn't be pointing the finger at those who revealed the story.
I think any objective person would say "those that did it".
I challenge your source’s claim, as strange and vague as it sounded in the first place, other sources don’t support it.
The Washington Post says, “”More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.””
The local Taum newspaper reports it as. Wednesday, 4th June, 2014 10:20am “”A MEETING was to take place last evening (Tuesday) between the Bon Secours Sisters and members of the Children’s Home Graveyard Committee regarding a planned memorial at the unmarked children’s graveyard in Tuam.””
“Committee and Sisters meet over unmarked mass grave”
Wednesday, 4th June, 2014 10:20am
Story by Siobhan Holliman
A MEETING was to take place last evening (Tuesday) between the Bon Secours Sisters and members of the Children’s Home Graveyard Committee regarding a planned memorial at the unmarked children’s graveyard in Tuam.
Up to 800 children and babies are buried in the mass grave on Dublin Road close to the site of the former mothers’ and babies’ home which was run by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.
As frequently reported in The Tuam Herald, for the past two years a local committee has been researching the plot and historian Catherine Corless from Brownsgrove found that death records show that at least 796 children died and were buried at the home.
Galway East TD Ciaran Cannon has called for a Dáil inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the unmarked burial site.
Chairperson of the memorial committee Teresa Killeen Kelly says while the story has caught the attention of the national media and politicians have spoken of their shock, the committee’s priority remains to have dignity restored to the dead babies by having a plaque with their names erected at the site.
“We have commissioned a bronze plaque with the names and this will cost at least €6,500. There is other work that has to be done to improve access to the site. The minimum we need is €15,000 but we’re nowhere close to that at the moment,” she said.
Apparently a little historical research needs to be done about what was going on in Ireland during that period.
I don’t go out of my way to bash my fellow Christians.
Absurd use of the Nazi characterization doesn’t negate the reality of Catholic resistance to the Nazis that also had problems with Catholicism. The Nazis didn’t like the Jews. Didn’t Like Catholics.
Legitimate concerns are raised concerning the Church. But the opportunistic hostility is a different matter — a bitter, small-minded game that can be played by both sides. Is that what you want? I’d be more than happy to dig out crap on whatever Christian derivative you wave above your head.
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