Broad brush stroke on your part.
There was a time when there was 60-70% church attendance rate in the U.S., and at the same time there was slavery, men could legally beat and rape their wives, men and women could legally beat their children and leave black and blue marks and bruises on their bodies, Indians were run off their lands and given rancid meat to eat. Slaves could be legally raped and/or beaten.
Shall I go on?
The simple fact is that there has never been a Godly generation that was the majority of society. Sure, there were pckets of Godliness, but never a generation that was anything close to Jesus and the 12 disciples around him. And what was experienced during the Apostolic Age was very limited in its scope and how many were affected.
You had better get with the program. First this was a left vs. right attempt. Then it was an anti-Catholic attempt. Now it is an attempt to judge past social mores with today's loose morality. I can't keep up with all of the conspiracy theories!
If the Nuns had diligence in recording deaths (death records for the 796) why the heck couldn't they be just as diligent in burial records? The Bon Secours nuns were the ones who did not let their bones rest in peace.
If there was money to erect churches then, and money for wine for priests, friars, monasteries, nuns, money to beautify churches, etc, there was money to bury those children individually.
That is what this is about: money for me, but not for thee (decent individual burial for each child on consecrated ground). There was a cemnemtery right across ther road for these 796 children. It was burial in secret at all costs. Period.
Even Archbishop Neury says there is no proof that any of these children was buried on consecrated ground. period.
Yes, prior periods in the U.S. indeed had better morality. You must have missed them. Up until the 1960’s in fact. Our society now is not. If you can’tell the difference between today’s morals and say, that of the 1950’s, then you are blind. It appears you are either a libertarian, or verging towards being a Dem. Which is it?
And the issue was never the money that the Catholic Church in Ireland may or may not have had. It was the morality of the times, where you did not have a child out of wedlock, and thus everything was hushed up, including the burials of the babies. But they don’t even know how many graves may o may not exist, but you sure are fast on condemnation. A bit of an anti-Catholic, are we? Why don’t you just live in the past and condemn every right or wrong that has ever occurred? I’m sure that would make you very happy. Get your head out of the past. We’ve got plenty of problems to deal with right here in the present.