Posted on 06/17/2014 4:24:37 PM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
The home the children were in was funded by the state. If any died of malnutrician blame the state. Catholic nuns get no salary. They devote their lives to helping others.
Those nuns did as well as they humanly could with the funds provided by the state. The school was not a Catholic-run institution. Nuns work for nothing, for the glory of God. The exact same way they have been taking care of the poorest since their inception.
Americans in general have difficulties grasping the concept of a State Church. The state and the church in Ireland were not separate entities, NKP_Vet.
But that is in contradiction to the report by Dr Sutherland, who made great efforts to survey such homes. He reported that in the Tuam Home, after the infants were two months old, the mothers were allowed to have them beside them at night.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/author-battled-clergy-to-gain-firsthand-experience-of-motherandbaby-homes-30337249.html
Babies in these homes were routinely nursed by their mothers, because feeding them any other way was extremely expensive.
I’d have to go and find the links, but several accounts of women who were in those homes for unwed mothers indicate that nursing babies were given to lactating women who were not their mothers. One woman talked about nursing multiple babies, none were hers.
Times were truly different then ,, these young women really were shunned by society and although I’m sure that many wanted to keep their children that many if not most were pressured into agreeing to adoption ,, just as today most women who abort are pressured by family and partners .. These homes may have been state funded or partially supported but they were on a budget that I am sure was near impossible to meet ... I am also sure that because of the relatively small number of deaths over such a long period of time that they worked hard to provide decent medical care... This was rural ... like backwoods West Virginia rural ... BUT WITH LESS MONEY!
Time to get the best understanding we can from the documents and move on ,, this facility closed 53 years ago ,, even a novice nun in 1961 would be in her 70’s now, and the nuns that were running the facility in it’s heyday are all dead.
Not everything in life is pretty , no matter how hard you work at it... sometimes your best (their best) isn’t enough ... but you keep at it and do your best .. and that’s what they did.
Ireland, during that era, was one of the poorest countries in Europe, perhaps only surpassed by Albania. The state had very little money to provide, with far more needs than supply. The Catholic Church in Ireland, being predominantly made up of the poor, also had far more needs than money to fulfill them.
Could the nuns have done things differently or better with the land and resources they had access to? What land did they have? Could they afford to buy any of the surrounding farmland for more cemetery space (assuming the owners were willing to sell)? And few were, as land was scarce for the needed crops.
If only we could transport back in time see firsthand what they were dealing with, and to show them the error of their ways.
I toss these ideas and questions out not in an attempt to justify or rationalize anything, but rather with an (amateur) historian’s eye toward the context and conditions of the time, place and circumstance as opposed to through our lens of a wealthy society in the 21st century.
As an aside, my family came from (and many still live) in an area ranging from 1.5 and 5 miles of the site in Tuam, and there are 9 names on the list with my own last name.
"The whole building was fresh and clean. In the garden at the back of the House, children were singing. I walked along the path and was mobbed by over a score of the younger children. They said nothing but each struggled to shake my hand. Their hands were clean and cool. Then I realised that to these children I was a potential adopter who might take some boy or girl away to a real home. It was pathetic. Finally I said: 'Children, I'm not holding a reception.' They stopped struggling and looked at me. Then a nun told them to stand on the lawn and sing me a song in Irish. This they did very sweetly. At the Dogs Home, Battersea, every dog barks at the visitors in the hope that it will be taken away."
In order to visit and write about the Bon Secours home at Tuam as well as the Magdalen Laundries, Dr. Sutherland had to seek permission from Bishop Michael John Brown, and was required to agree to edit anything that the Mother Superior wanted changed or removed.
So, was it a dirt poor, struggling place barely hanging on by a thread, or was it as described above by an internationally renowned doctor?
According to the list, the last death was five years before his book.
I hadn’t noticed that. The list contains those children who were recorded as having died there, but had no record of burial. The home continued in operation for five more years after the book was published.
Whatever was behind these unfortunate children apparently not receiving a proper Christian burial ended 10 years before the home closed, which would be 1951? The former septic tank in question ceased being used as such in 1938.
I went and checked the list and don’t see that it ended five years before publication of Dr. Halliday’s book?
Oh, I see. Inverted numbers in the year of publication. 1956, not 1965. Apologies for the error.
I'm sure that is a pious thought to have but it doesn't make it fact. You have claimed NONE of the story is true, that it is all just bogus and a fraud and people who want the story to be told are doing so because they are anti-Catholic bigots. Why don't you make up your mind?
These kinds of homes were spread across Ireland and were provided funds to help take care of the part of society everyone thought should be hidden away - out of sight, out of mind. The Tuam home, in addition to state funds, also received donations, adopted out babies for money (donations), women and children were hired out to factories and they even allowed medical experimentation on the residents. The Bon Secours nuns DID represent the Roman Catholic church and it pains me to think how splendidly and lavishly the Pope and his bishops lived in Rome while so many did without some of their most basic needs of survival. It WAS a Catholic church institution, that is unquestionable, and there certainly WAS more that could be done to ensure the health and welfare of these human lives put into their care. We aren't talking about the middle ages!
Yes, Christians have been helping the less fortunate since it began, which is why reading about this pitiful situation pains me. You may think anyone who talks about this only does so from an attitude of bigotry against Catholics, but that is untrue. I haven't ignored that there were "Protestant" homes that could be accused of the same things and those who are in the process of investigating this shameful past are not leaving out ANY of them - which is as it should be. Nevertheless, we should never give the adversary an occasion for slander or reproach for the cause of Christ. Ignoring or refusing to believe bad things happened is opening the door wide for just that. We are ALL touched by scandal and must work together to ensure it never happens again.
Not one nun that worked at the school has been charged with wrongdoing. Not the first one. Yet you, just like the rest of the LIBERAL Catholic-hating media automatically jump on the sisters to try and say they were responsible for the deaths of these children. When the investigation is finally completed and it will reveals the nuns were not explicit in the deaths and did all they could to care for these children, I would appreciate an apology from you and the rest of the anti-Catholics on FR. Will that ever happen? Absolutely not.
Poor does not equal dirty ,vulgar or unkempt.
He said maps showed that the area where the Tuam remains were found had been sewage tank that became disused in the 1930s after it began to leak.
He said he had spoken to people who remembered seeing nuns "in the failing light of summer evenings, quite late in the evening, burying remains with workmen into this septic tank site".
"There is a wealth of evidence there which points towards the nuns knowingly burying hundreds of bodies in a disused septic tank," he said.
I have no opinion.
I reviewed the list and can’t imagine their suffering and deaths.
Tragedy is all I see and make no attempt to look for blame.
The list has hundreds of young babies that died horribly and if were sick today, most likely could have been saved.
The syphilis babies tore at my heart.
“That actually is the problem, respect shown for the dead or the lack of it.”
Regarding which subject you know absolutely nothing. You have not one shred of actual knowledge regarding how they were treated when they died, other than that some of them, probably all of them, were buried on the grounds.
And yet you think this a good enough stick to beat Christ’s Supernatural Bride.
I wish personal insults were allowed here, because you have earned a number.
“He said...He said he had spoken to people who remembered...he said...”
Well, that should be good enough for anyone.
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