A massive new report by the Irish Commision To Inquire into Child Abuse has uncovered enough malfeasance and coverups in Catholic reform schools for a dozen Charles Dickens novels, a month of Oprah’s and a Dan Brown prequel.
Rape, humiliation, ritual abuse, it’s all there. The nine-year investigation, conducted only after a decade of lobbying by abuse survivors, uncovered grim truths going back all the way to the 30′s.
Look for the Cruelty-Free tag on your next rosary purchase?
But for sheer, grisly irony perhaps nothing tops Christine Buckley’s account from the inaptly named Sisters of Mercy in Goldenbridge Orphanage. Now 62, Buckley says the orphanage essentially forced its orphans into slave labor – to make prayer rosaries. Each child was forced to make 600 beads a day, or face stiff punishment, she says – pointing out that more than 50 years later she still carries a scar from having boiling water intentionally poured onto her thigh by a nun.
I don’t know if objects carry the karma that went into making them. Or if so, if we are sensitive enough to be aware of it? I may well, as I write this article, be wearing jeans and socks made in dingy sweatshops, happily oblivious to such human tolls. Such is the pace of modern life that it’s easy to be unaware of the suffering that must go into a multitude of mundane objects in our lives. And just as easy to convince ourselves that it’s okay to be unaware.
But I wonder, still, if maybe just a few of the tens of thousands of devout who prayed using these beads had a vague feeling, a hunch that they couldn’t place, that there might be something unholy in the very focusing object of their faith. That maybe the beads just didn’t feel right. And if maybe, even just one of the faithful had an inkling that the blood that suffered for his or her rosary was human, not divine.
Catholicism – If shit happens, you deserved it.
Buddhism- If shit happens to someone, shit happens to everyone.
Hinduism – This shit happened before.
Gloverism – I’m too old for this shit.
For these poor children in decades long past, it was truly a world of shit. The Irish report bluntly summarizes:
A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.
As cathartic and vindicating as this public 2600-page document is for the survivors of such abuse, however, the public tome is missing some critical information – the names of the abusers. This is because of a 2004 lawsuit by the Catholic Order Christian Brothers, who ran many Irish schools for generations.
According to the AP story:
The Christian Brothers’ leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names secret because “perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations.”
Oh Brother.
Where art thou?
One Comment
Well written. Insightful. Thought provoking. There is so much anger and abuse in the world.