First, before I get accused of shifting blame, let me reiterate my first post, written before I read the Calvinist bilge:
“As a Catholic, the sickening thing to me was the disposal of the bodies: the poor treatment of the bodies despite Catholic beliefs makes it very easy to believe that their souls weren’t cared for while they were alive.”
But to answer your question:
Yes, actually, as a matter of fact, spending years eating only potatoes interspersed with nearly starving to death repeatedly does things to completely mess up your mind. Ireland is bonkers, less so than a few generations ago, but the spiritual and social damage done by the extreme poverty and oppression takes many generations to undo.
You think the shame and silence of Ireland comes from the Catholic Church? You haven’t been to Italy. It comes from not knowing what to say when you figure out that Uncle Tim and Aunt Mary probably ate Cousin Andrew because they had been driven mad with hunger... and yet you can’t really judge them because you know damned well the fact that Dad fed you well has more than a little to do with other people in your extended family dying.
And when you have priests listening to confessions like, “I murdered my little brother. I couldn’t control myself: I hate a whole potato; I had no idea he had a fever” you get a little bit of a thick skin to calling things evil. And thus, as the bible teaches, evil is handed down from generation unto generation.
Your comments are interesting.
A similar thing happened to China. Lot of very hard times.
It makes a society mad.
The Catholic Church in Ireland I am certain has been nothing but a help that tempered severe social insanity and chaos, as happened in China and other places.