Posted on 06/10/2014 9:04:38 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Few of us are inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, and that applies in spades to journalists running with a sensational news story. But even by normal media standards, recent reports about the bones of 796 babies being found in the septic tank of an Irish orphanage betray a degree of cynicism and irresponsibility rarely surpassed by allegedly reputable news organizations.
Although the media attributed the “dumped in a septic tank” allegation to Catherine Corless, a local amateur historian, she denies making it. Her attempt to correct the record was reported by the Irish Times newspaper on Saturday (see here) but has been almost entirely ignored by the same global media that so gleefully recycled the original suggestion.
Today the Irish Times has published a reader’s letter that has further undercut the story. Finbar McCormick, a professor of geography at Queen’s University Belfast, sharply admonished the media for describing the children’s last resting place as a septic tank. He added: “The structure as described is much more likely to be a shaft burial vault, a common method of burial ...in many parts of Europe.
“In the 19th century, deep brick-lined shafts were constructed and covered with a large slab which often doubled as a flatly laid headstone. These were common in 19th-century urban cemeteries…..Such tombs are still used extensively in Mediterranean countries. I recently saw such structures being constructed in a churchyard in Croatia. The shaft was made of concrete blocks, plastered internally and roofed with large concrete slabs.
[T]he verifiable facts that have emerged so far amount merely to a strong story for the media of one small country. The one “fact” that turned all this from a disturbing national story to a screaming global sensation is one that is almost certainly false.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Not every person or every organization upholds church teachings, annalex. It may be that Irish Catholics are not seeking to discredit church doctrine. It may be that doctrine was not followed. Open yourself to that possibility.
That the doctrine was not followed by nuns prior to Vatican II is highly unlikely. That “not every person or every organization upholds church teachings” is of course true, and especially true that in particular British, Russian and American press are rabidly anti-Catholic. This “dumping babies into a septic tank” thing has every mark of being an anti-Catholic media hoax.
... except that there are skeletal remains in a septic tank recorded on plat maps of the former property belonging to the home, and there are 796 deaths of children from that home for which there is no record of burial, annalex. The bulk of the reporting is being done by Irish press. The people who pushed for the government inquiry that is now ongoing are Irish Catholics. Fobbing off every problem that crops up on some anti-Catholic conspiracy is not rational thinking. They’re human and therefore fallen and sinners as are we all. They are capable of error. To my knowledge there was no pre-Vatican II doctrine of infallibility regarding the behavior and moral judgment of nuns running homes for unwed mothers.
I don't see any evidence that structure was a septic tank. That there were children buried in what, we understand from the article, was a burial crypt, no one disputes. Generally, I would advise you to try understanding the article before commenting on your fantasies that you pick from the hostile propaganda.
Plat maps are rather dry and factual, annalex.
I don’t see any evidence that structure was a septic tank. I see though evidence of a useful idiot of the Left trusting the mass media.
Ordinance survey maps from 1840 onward show the structure on the site in question and label it a septic tank, annalex. The tank was no longer used for sewage after 1938, when a new sewer system came into use.
Have anyone other than a professional liar from the press seen these maps? Does anyone have evidence that the structure was actually used as a septic tank, not simply labeled as such? Why is the structure that looks to the people familiar with traditional architecture as a burial crypt taken to be a septic tank?
This is all a media hoax, like Obama’s birth certificate.
If it had been a “traditional burial crypt” there would have been no need to call in a priest to bless it in 1975, now would there?
Why not? By that time it was a neglected gravesite, was it not?
Are Catholic graveyards prone to falling into disuse and disrepair to the point that no one knows it’s there anymore, annalex? I note that the graves of I believe 13 nuns from this home were relocated from the graveyard at the hospital located about a mile away in 2001, when the hospital closed.
I don’t know if they are “prone”, but it can happen. There are plenty of churches in disrepair as well. Clearly, the misery was great at the time, so you cannot expect them to have been kept up, or even recognized as graves overtime.
It is easier to relocate 12 graves than hundreds of remains in a mass grave.
Apparently.
Seems like they could just excavate the site and take a look, but then suspense is much more salacious.
I’m a civil engineer and I could tell you stories about things mislabeled on plans or much worse not labeled. Hand dug wells were once very common and once a better source is discover, they are often filled with debris. Working in construction inspection I was with a crew when they dug up a power line (as big as your thigh) to a hydro electric dam, it was an old abandoned power line -thank god. Before it was verified as unmarked and abandoned the power company rep threatened: “Somebody here is getting arrested.”
Clearly, the media is trying to make a lot of the description of a child as “congenital idiot”. What they may well have meant was “congenital mongoloid”. Either way that sounds horrifying by Todays standards, but realize “idiot” and “mongoloid” were once legitimate medical terms. You probably grew up hearing the term “retard”, again this was a legitimate medical term at one time, but it entered the popular lexicon and then became politically incorrect.
Interesting that the people being trashed (in absentia, since they are all now dead) are the only people who attempted to help these children: the women who fed, clothed, educated and cared for them.
lol
The thing about this story that gets me is the utter ignorance of burial customs in Europe. Europe was and is very crowded. They don’t have the land to set aside huge swaths to bury people for perpetuity. Some sort of communal burial is a necessity, especially for those who had limited means. So a communal crypt would not be all that unusual. Something else that is common in Europe is charnel houses where the bones of the dead were collected. Corpses were only buried long enough to allow them to decompose. Then the bones were dug up and the grave used again.
These were incredibly poor people and they didn’t have the luxury of burying their dead in fancy caskets with perpetual care.
Could the nuns have somehow been in ignorance about what they thought was a burial vault? And does ignorant mistreatment of dead bodies, if that is what happened, need to be treated as a huge scandal once it is discovered? Doesn’t it suffice that they bring in someone to bless the site and that takes care of it? I doubt any of the souls of the dead cared where their bodies were....
They could have just sent them to be incinerated for fuel at a local hospital with other medical waste and avoided burying their tiny bodies at all.
No. That would contradict the character of Irish intolerant homophobic Catholic nuns tossing babies down the toilet because of their medieval anti-choice dogmas.
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