I understand your condemnations. But having been raised in an Irish-American family, I have learned over the decades to see the harsh emotional behavior of the past's ignorant Irish poor as a cultural phenomenon that did not result from Catholic theology, but became entwined with Irish institutional Catholicism, because few other kinds of people except the poor and ignorant were available in post-famine Ireland. Few of us on FR have ever lived in a culture of multi-generational grinding poverty and ignorance, punctuated only by the often baffling rituals and intervention of the England-persecuted RC church in Ireland.
While we would like to judge the past by today's standards, and foreign nations by American standards, it's not really fair to do so. As conservatives, we are often accused by the left in this country of having personally set out to give diseases to American Indians, to enjoy slavery instead of tolerating it with restrictions against a backdrop of fierce opposition that almost destroyed any hope of a Constitution, and to have whipped every slave rather than care for them as we would a good horse, given that an adult male slave cost $2000 in 1845 money. We are daily characterized as haters of homosexuals and women, of wanting to create a theocracy -- and if we did establish a Christian theocracy, it would be utterly indistinguishable from the intents and practices of the Taliban.
Surely you can see that while there are regrettable elements of truth in every shocking discovery of tragic events of the past, the whole truth lies in between what we think we would do today and what the propagandists are saying about the yesterday whose influences they are determinedly trying to eliminate.
As conservatives, we experience what it is like to be slimed by propaganda and to have hate directed at us and violence incited against us on a daily basis -- while the left accuses us of hating and inciting violence against them when we report facts instead of emotional polemics. I have counter-demonstrated at leftist anti-war rallies on the National Mall that left hundreds of thousands of pieces of litter behind on the grass and streets for the taxpayers to pick up; and I have partipated in many conservative events on the National Mall such as the first gigantic Tea Party rally in 2009 after which the only trash to be found was piled neatly around the very few trash cans provided, because the Tea Party was prejudged to be so potentially violent that the Park Service had removed most of the trashcans. They were convinced that small-government zealots in colonial costumes would pick up trashcans and use them to bash -- who or what, exactly? The police? The windows of the Capitol Building? Nothing could have been further from the truth.
What has always been true is that "a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on in the morning." The rehashing of the worst possible interpretation of this tragic Tuam story is but the latest chapter in a worldwide campaign by leftist useful media idiots to carry water for the internationalist secular socialists who stand to profit from taking the hope of Christ away from the people. Magnifying the horror and minimizing any mitigating elements of any Christian scandal serves their purposes -- the more rabidly emotional, the better.
Not every human error born of poverty and desperation such as Tuam is as intentional or horrific as the highly profitable Gosnells, illegal-worker traffickers, "educational" pornographers and sex-slavers of today who go unremarked.
None of us were there.
Excellent post. Thank you.
I certainly see your point. But I disagree. My cruel Irish-American mother used theology to beat me up daily to the extent that I could not believe there was someone named Jesus until I was 40. Poverty had nothing to do with it; I went to the best Catholic schools from nursery school thru the uni, and we lived a block from the president of General Motors. Our social life was exemplary, but at home I was condemned to hell daily for things like not eating my tomatoes. "God will punish you for that," and "You're going to hell," were her most common expressions. Pretty harsh way to raise an innocent little girl. So, I have no difficulty whatsoever in believing in the intentional --and sneaky --cruelty of Catholics.
May God rest their souls. All of them.
Where do you draw the line between the “none of us were there” and the common standards of decent known to humans for thousands of years? At what level of convenient do you shrug? And I do mean you - I am not a collectivist-conservative, and I bristle when someone tried to lump me in with the “conservative we.” In fact, a hallmark of American conservatism is a specific rejection of collective justification of anything.
One more thing. I come from a family with roots in coal mining Irish Roman Catholicism that had very little money or formal education. Yet I struggle to think of even one who would know what YOU mean by “Irish Institutional Catholicism” vs “Catholic theology.” But I am CERTAIN they would interpret it as you telling them that they were to stupid to even understand their own religious beliefs or their current political situation.
And just between you and me, it’s lucky for you that they’re dead and buried, and you’re nottelling them that to their faces.
Because I think you might have found them a bit too ignorant and backwards to comprehend your good will.
After all, if they can’t tell the difference between a funeral and a graveyard, compared to a septic tank, how are they going to be able to tell the difference between your teeth and their fists?
Oh, did I mention your insufferable arrogance? Don’t let me forget.
How distant was this past?
The people doing it are largely the WWII people and some of them possibly still alive since 1940 isn’t so long ago.
Many, if not most Catholic nations are known as cruel places, our southern border is the entrance into about 20 of them including the most Catholic nations on earth.
What an excellent response! Thank you.
Excellent points. Frankly the standards of yesterday were the poor were buried in unmarked graves (potters fields), and often stacked on top of each other.
Watch the film Penelope to see the disgusting fanaticism of Irish nuns
....As conservatives, we are often accused by the left in this country of having personally set out to give diseases to American Indians, to enjoy slavery instead of tolerating it with restrictions against a backdrop of fierce opposition that almost destroyed any hope of a Constitution, and to have whipped every slave rather than care for them as we would a good horse, given that an adult male slave cost $2000 in 1845 money. We are daily characterized as haters of homosexuals and women, of wanting to create a theocracy -- and if we did establish a Christian theocracy, it would be utterly indistinguishable from the intents and practices of the Taliban.
Thanks for the confidence in Christendom.
I think that is a very fair reading of the culture.
The Irish also have a social problem with a high rate of "addict personalities", which manifests as alcoholism, and has been intense enough to warp their culture and family structures.
Without knowing the details of what went on in the house, the simple fact that the bodies were *buried* in an old used septic system, is more than enough to warrant condemnation.
Even if that were the only wrong perpetrated by that group, and I somehow doubt that anyone who would *bury* babies in an old septic system would be paragons of virtue in treating them well in life, it would still deserve condemnation.
All the rest is speculation. The bodies in the septic tank are fact.