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The stench of an Irish rat

Louie,

Irish Rat

A gruesome story out of Tuam, Ireland, about the alleged mistreatment of children at a long-since closed Catholic institution for unwed mothers, is making international headlines.

The Washington Post, for example, published the following:

Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers

According to the report:

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

The story, as being told thus far, sounds just terrible. That having been said, I detect the stench of a rat; an Irish rat with an anti-Catholic axe to grind.

The driving force behind the story is Irish historian Catherine Corless, who is reported to have uncovered “a batch of never-before-released documents.”

And where exactly were these heretofore unknown documents hidden?

In plain sight at the Registry Office in County Galway.

According to Corless, as reported on the Irish Central website, she simply requested them. In other words, the newly unearthed “smoking gun” in this story is, and always has been, a matter of public record available to anyone willing to pay a photocopying fee.

Now, I don’t claim to know exactly what transpired at the Home, but let’s be clear; neither does Catherine Corless or anyone else.

Even so, anyone willing to follow a few links and connect a handful of dots can see that the story consists largely of unsubstantiated claims and preconceived notions magnified by the deliberate sensationalism of a complicit media.

The grave itself, in spite of the  tenor of media reports, is not some recent “shocking discovery;” in fact, it’s not even news. According to a Reuters News Service video on the Washington Post site (linked above), the grave was discovered some 39 years ago. Even the figure so widely reported of “800 babies” is nothing more than a guess.

And while allegations of “malnutrition” and “mistreatment” are being tossed about with reckless abandon, no supporting documentation has been provided that even hints at abuse at the hands of the nuns.

According to Irish Central, “The certificates Corless received record each child’s age, name, date – and in some cases – cause of death.”

Get that? The cause of death is recorded in just “some cases.”

Even so, for Corless and those media types who love themselves a good old fashioned Catholic cover-up, especially if it is alleged to have taken place in the triumphalistic days predating the Council, it’s obvious enough who the guilty party is.

“I do blame the Catholic Church,” says Corless. “I blame the families as well but people were afraid of the parish priest. I think they were brainwashed,” she told Irish Central.

“To get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth,” she said. “It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.”

How she knows that “a lot” of these unwed pregnancies were the result of rape is anyone’s guess, but don’t expect anyone in the secular press to ask the question.

So, what do we really know?

Using the biased sources already mentioned:

A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.

Sounds to me like the need was great and resources were being stretched to their very limits by the nuns in order to meet it.

According to documents Corless provided the Irish Mail on Sunday, malnutrition and neglect killed many of the children, while others died of measles, convulsions, TB, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. Infant mortality at the Home was staggeringly high.

The Irish Mail story indicates that some of the children had deformities and mental illnesses as well. It’s not difficult to imagine, therefore, that some of these children were among the unwanted, abandoned and abused of society.

In any case, the causes of death listed in the story are taken from the files of a “local health board,” and yet there is no indication whatsoever that the orphanage was cited for any kind of violations. That should tell any reasonable reader that the children likely entered the facility in a state of “neglect and malnourishment.” That some of them were not saved in a cramped institution wherein many of the children suffered with communicable diseases is no surprise.

In fact, these kinds of conditions would account for an unusually high death rate over all, especially bearing in mind the state of medical science during the time frame in discussion.

According to Irish public health records, for every 1,000 deaths of infants under one year of age in the general population in 1944, nearly 200 of them were the result of “diarrhea and enteritis,” the latter being a bacterial infection that typically clears up on its own.

A closer look at these records indicates that a large percentage of deaths in children under five years of age occurred as a result of conditions that are easily treated today.

Special kinds of neglect and abuse were reserved for the Home Babies, as locals call them. Many in surrounding communities remember them. They remember how they were segregated to the fringes of classrooms, and how the local nuns accentuated the differences between them and the others.

Given the close quarters in the orphanage and the prevalence of infectious disease, could it be that the nuns were “segregating” the “Home Babies” in order to protect the health of the other children? No, that would be far too kind an assumption to make for those intent on attacking the Church.

The only real question of legitimate intrigue that remains concerns the use of a mass burial site.

“If you look at the records, babies were dying two a week, but I’m still trying to figure out how they could [put the bodies in a septic tank],” Corless said. “Couldn’t they have afforded baby coffins?”

Well, let’s think about this for just a moment without the anti-Catholic bias.

Clearly, resources were not very plentiful at the Home. It’s a distinct possibility, therefore, that they couldn’t afford both baby coffins and the provisions necessary to care for the living, to say nothing of adequate ground space for individual graves. In any case, I’d be willing to wager that those poor children didn’t die without Baptism.

Furthermore, prior to the 1960’s, it was commonly believed that the corpses of those who died from infectious disease were a source of epidemic. Even today, there is an effort underway on the part of humanitarian organizations to educate disaster relief workers who still believe as much. It’s entirely possible, therefore, that the mass grave was used as an attempt to keep infection levels in check.

All in all, if this blockbuster wannabe scandal from the Emerald Isle tells us anything it’s that fuel designed to ignite the fires of hatred for the Catholic Church remains a hot international commodity.

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Comments (72)

  1. Good analysis, Louie.
    –
    Now, let’s pray some Vatican prelate doesn’t issue some kind of mea-culpa and grovel for the world’s forgiveness without engaging in a similar sort of fact-checking and thinking.

  2. Of course, if you follow the liberal line until the end, this broad’s answer would have been…wait for it…abortion on demand for those poor frightened women.
    Come to Detroit. I’ll take you to Mount Olivet Cemetery. There is a huge section on one side that looks devoid of graves. When I was a child and my mother took me to her mother’s grave, I asked why there was so much empty space in an otherwise packed cemetery. She drove over to the section and we got out and walked around. I discovered scores of graves, some with small headstones, some with just a number. They are filled with small children. We used to pray for them there.
    My mother told me that when she was a child, almost every family she knew had lost one or more young children to a myriad of different diseases. Many of them were buried in the family plot, usually at the foot of a grandparent, or parent, and the grave was unmarked. The childrens’ families in this section didn’t have family plots, or couldn’t afford a regular burial plot.
    Scores of them. Catholic children buried in consecrated ground. In a Catholic cemetery. In Detroit.
    Is this a conspiracy to cover up the mistreatment of Catholic children? Hardly. It’s the history of people before the medical advances that we enjoy today. It was life in Detroit.

  3. Who is this Corless women, and what is her background? Knowing this will also help to bring this into focus.

  4. Hi John, I am a fellow Detroiter. The same could be said of Holy Sepulchre cemetery in the Southfield. There is a whole section for infants. Unmarked. Or if marked, just a number. Our family has an infant buried there. When I went to visit….. my mother told me that I may have a hard time finding the location, as it is unmarked. I found the section and basic area.

  6. It is obvious that this new wave of Catholic bashing had to begin. You may have noticed a recent rise of TLMs in the Emerald Isle. Those horrible, suspicious Catholics are resurfacing and there must be a scandal to try to shame as many as possible out of returning to the Faith. When I visited my family’s country a few years ago, it seemed very comfortable to me, temperamentally—it reminded me of my family. But it certainly wasn’t a Catholic country, and there are plenty who hope that it will never be again. Probably including Ms. Corless. Of course, she may have just seen an opportunity for a story that some newspaper would pay for….

  7. A little bit of hisoric perspective might help. Pencillin wasn’t available to the public until after WWII. So deaths from infections were quite common. For example in 1918-1919 20 to 40 million people died from an influenza epidemic.And BTW they didn’t have smartphones.. We forget how quickly things have changed technologically speaking. But despite all these advances in technology, man still needs God. That is what the Corless’s of the world forget. In fact we need God more than ever. One only needs to look at the world around us with an objective eye to see how far human society has fallen at the same time that technology has advanced. Just look for example at the prevalance of vandalism and think about what that tells us about the society we live in. A godless society has no love of God, nor love of neighbor… and no amount of humanist talk of “human dignity” and “human rights” can ever make up for the dethroning of Christ the King…

  8. Good article, but you haven’t uncovered the worst stench behind the media’s smear campaign. Here’s what I’ve found, and it’s a stinker:

    If you look at Catherine Corless’ statements, her claims are based entirely on speculation that there “MIGHT” be human remains in a septic tank where the orphanage used to be, but the septic tank hasn’t even been excavated to see if there’s anything down there. She has also admitted that it isn’t large enough to hold the “800 skeletons’ which she has speculated might be in there. The only reason she thinks there are any skeletons in there at all is because: 1) she’s under the delusion that Catholic doctrine forbids granting Christian burial to children born out of wedlock, which of course is absurd (plenty of canonized saints were born out of wedlock); and 2) allegedly a few decades ago – some time AFTER the orphanage was torn down half a century ago and replaced by housing – some boys claimed they found skeletal remains somewhere in the general area (they can’t remember where). These remains (if they existed at all) were apparently never exhumed nor examined to determine whether they are human or animal, or what historical time period they date from (a century ago? Two centuries? A thousand years…? You’d need to carbon date them).
    They haven’t been able to find these bones that were supposedly there, somewhere. Hence there is absolutely no credible basis for the claim of a “mass grave” which the media keeps on repeating.

    And it gets even smellier. If you follow the stated sources in these media articles, you can trace the information back to a tabloid called the “Irish Mail”, which looks and reads like the “National Enquirer” and is seemingly no more credible. Worse, many of these news articles have been running the grossly misleading headline “800 babies found in a mass grave” while usually admitting (near the end of the same articles) that the septic tank hasn’t been excavated yet. A few articles admit that many of the locals thought the bones dated from the time of the great famines in Ireland, in which case they would have nothing to do with the orphanage; some articles also admit that the recorded deaths at the orphanage were in the same proportion as overall childhood deaths in the general population at that time, due to diseases that couldn’t be cured yet. Even Corless hasn’t accused the nuns of deliberately starving children to death, despite all the lurid, sensational headlines. In short, the media’s own articles often contradict their own headlines and scandal mongering; and the actual quotes from Corless and other people involved indicate that there is virtually nothing behind these claims at all.

    This is the definition of a smear campaign, and in this case it’s basically targeted against an entire religion. I think there would be legal grounds for a class-action lawsuit against all of these media sources. Certainly, the nuns who are directly affected could definitely sue.

  9. Thanks for this sane analysis, Louie. The blogosphere is going mad like a feminist at a Buenos Aires anti-catholic protest over this.

  10. off topic, forgive please brethren-
    the scandal of what’s about to take place on Pentecost reminder:
    “———-The differences that separate us will remain,” —
    especially since proselytizing is solemn nonsense !
    {warning:–check your nausea quotient before reading:}
    http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1402316.htm
    penance, penance, penance

  11. I join with others here who have expressed their gratitude for your analysis of this, Mr. V. Thank you.

  12. St Paul tells us that God permits heretics so that, by comparison, the Faithful can know who is ‘approved’, and who is a reprobate 1Cor.11:19.
    –
    Frankie’s pow-wow ‘prayer’ with the press and Christ deniers is one way for the Faithful to ‘know the heretics’; somehow I think most Catholics don’t care. apparently the ‘prayers’, will be in ‘chronological order’ – that is modernist chronological order, jews, apostate-christians and muslims. strange since rabbinical Judaism is post-temple and therefore after Christianity, and Islam is so replete with paganism, including animal sacrifice and worship of the jinn, plus it’s god names are straight out of the middle east pagans’ compendium, that it probably predates Abram; but I guess in the VII world of getting along to go to hell, all things are equal.

  14. I live in the County Cork and your take on this Louie is absolutely spot on. It is an anti-Catholic smear-job from start to finish.

  15. In fact it’s one of the worst smear campaigns I’ve ever seen. So when is someone going to sue the dickens out of the people who are behind it? (especially the media, who have been distorting the matter almost beyond recognition)

  16. Just a few minutes of googling recovered the following facts which supply some sobering context for these heartbreaking early childhood deaths. Let’s look at the general survival rate for diseases like pneumonia and TB in the era before antibiotics.

    It wasn’t until after WWII that the BCG vaccine against TB first became available in the most advanced medical centers— and it was years later in impoverished western Ireland.

    In this era, even for privileged TB patients who got the best of food in the most pristine environments — such as wealthy people who went to costly alpine TB sanatoria —50% of patients were dead within five years.

    Antibiotics like penicillin, streptomycin, Aureomycin, and tetracycline were not available for prescription until the 1950’s. Before this time, 60-80% of the people infected with pneumonia died, usually within a week-10 days. It was only with the introduction of penicillin that the mortality rate for pneumonia dropped to 1 -5%).

    American Medicine Volume 2, p. 290, estimates that in the pre-antibiotic era, one seventh (1/7) of all deaths worldwide were caused by tuberculosis. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) ran many articles on the serious requirement that TB sufferers be kept apart from the uninfected population, and tthat their bodies be disposed of as soon as possible after death in order to prevent recurring epidemics.

    Since Church-run charitable facilities were precisely the places to which these unfortunate sick children were being consigned, is it any wonder that the death rate was high, and the burial of bodies done quickly without individual caskets and graves?

    Thousands of babies and children passed through institutions like the Bon Secours Home. Indeed many were brought there because their parents knew that was the only place they could receive even basic palliative care without infecting everyone in their family households.

    So people in Ireland whose little children were desperately ill — and who had no means of treating them — left them at churches convents and orphanages, thus continuously re-introducing infectious diseases into the “Homes” caring for orphaned/abandoned children.

    Many such institutions attempted to protect the healthy babies born in the Homes, by arranging for their adoption as quickly as they could. Thus the next “scandal” charged against Catholic charitable organizations: the adoption of Irish babies by American families.

    Evidence suggests the possible conclusion that Bon Secours and similar Homes were not barbaric negligent pest-houses, but baby-saving missions, doing heart-breaking but heroic work in a time of desperation.

  17. You do not know of what you speak. You may remain blinkered if you choose but real people were (and continue to be)deeply affected by the church’s stance on extra marital sex. Where were the morals when young women were committed to mental asylums if they fell pregnant out of wedlock, some of them never to gain freedom. All of it at the say-so of the local priest, who was, most likely, sowing his wild oats amongst his parish. The Irish government paid these institutions to “look after” the “morally corrupt” and there was a healthy income to be had from selling babies to rich customers in the US. shame on the catholic church and Irish government, shame on you all for considering this to be a conspiracy against your twisted faith.

  19. Dear Kate… allow me to finish that thought for you. Much better to kill a baby pre-born in an act that also violates the mother’s body and soul. Then dispose of the child’s body as medical waste. That is the “modern” and “humane” way to deal with these problems. And there is hardly any “choice” involved. The mother is relentlessly pressured into making this “decision” to kill her child. If anything there is more stigma in “modern” society associated with an “unplanned” pregnancy and an “unwanted” child. Now this stigma extends not just to unwed mothers, but to “wed” mothers as well. That’s progress…

  20. “St Paul tells us that God permits heretics so that, by comparison, the Faithful can know who is ‘approved’, and who is a reprobate 1Cor.11:19.”
    –
    I learned something! That is a superb reference. Superb. I had never before seen it referenced in any work of Catholic apologetics.

  21. Hi Kate,
    –
    First of all, that’s Church, not church – as in, the one specific, visible, hierarchical Church that Jesus Christ Himself founded. Historical fact ‘n all, you know.
    –
    “All of it at the say-so of the local priest, who was, most likely, sowing his wild oats amongst his parish.” Where does one begin with such blatant, clueless bigotry? Perhaps simply to ignore you. I think I will start doing that now.

  22. Wow this is one of the most ignorant , uneducated and biased articles I have ever read..did you bother to contact any of the mother and babies who have been at these homes?you have absolutely no evidence to back up your argument, except for googling a few newspaper articles. You have insulted and belittled the pain and suffering that these people went through and are still going through!I suggest you do proper research in future before spouting this [**************]

    *COMMENTARY BY FOUL-MOUTHED TRAMP EDITED BY ADMIN

  24. The long and the short of it is, the nuns and the Church were the ONLY people wiling to take on unwanted mothers and there unwanted babies in an era were infant mortality was as high, at times, as the survival rate. But then if someone wants to hate the Church because they prefer the religion of ‘recovering catholic’, that’s their dogma, I guess.

  25. Well, Louie, you really stirred the pot – you have haters crawling out of all kinds of holes, it would seem.
    –
    Hey “cantbelievethis” – do you believe that blog posts should be “unbiased”? That is, that their authors should express no opinions about – anything? And are so incredibly naive you believe mainstream media to be “unbiased”?
    –
    As usual, like those of your ilk, your “argument” consists of ad hominen along with emotionalism. Mr. Verrecchio most certainly did not “belittle” the pain and suffering of these women and children in ANY way, as an “unbiased” reading would demonstrate.
    –
    Rather, what he did do is frustrate the passions of those who long to find reasons to hate the Catholic Church. Don’t worry – you’ll be able to find plenty more with just a bit of work.

  26. dear A Catholic Thinker,
    To your point,
    proof that Mr. V. and we sour-pussed {yet sweet angel faces, } are appropriately and if you will, blindly, obedient to the current Supreme Pontiff vis a vie ” make a mess!”
    Archbishop Lefebvre, sound shepherd, guardian of the Faith undefiled, pray for us.

  28. Good news: Catherine Corless has now said bluntly that the media has distorted her statements and distorted the “mass grave” issue, and at least some media sources are admitting it:
    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393

    The guy who claimed he found bones on the site in 1975 has also said that he only saw about twenty skeletons. Wikipedia is admitting that the building which eventually housed the orphanage had previously been used as a British military barracks where Irish prisoners were executed, which could explain the skeletons. Wikipedia also admits that the locals thought the bones dated from the time of the Great Famine (long before the orphanage was there). In any event, there’s no evidence that the orphanage had anything to do with any “mass grave” that might be near the site, assuming they ever find any actual bones there to confirm the 1975 story.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home

    So maybe the media’s smear campaign will fall apart now.

  31. Dear Cotta. If you follow this sort of smear campaign you start to see a pattern. (Dare we say “conspiracy”?) The unsubstantiated (AND FALSE!) accusations are trumpeted with great fanfare in BIG BOLD headlines. After this becomes a de facto “truth” in the collective mind of public opinion by shear repetition and by the virtue of the “credibility” of the media sources that are propagating this hearsay (After all the NY Times is not the same as National Enquirer…. or is it?)… after public opinion has been thoroughly manipulated, then some non-denial “denials”; the highly qualified admissions of guilt; the “mea culpas” that lack any sense of remorse and therefore would be rejected by a holy confessor.These non-denial “denials” are posted in a small column on page 22 of Section C where no one is likely to find them unless they happen to be specifically looking for them. So from a false legalistic point of view… the truth has been told by the mass media… so therefore we can continue to place our trust (faith?) In the reliability (godlike omniscience?) of the media (another one of the secular demigods like “science”).

  32. Louie,
    –
    Thanks for faithfully following Francis’ directives to – as “de Maria” poined out – “armar un lio” (make a mess) by posting this article! Maybe you ought to make a cold call to Francis letting him know of your good work : ) !
    –
    Anyone who still takes seriously the (corporate bought and paid for) mainstream press seriously needs to have their head examined. That’s all I will say.

  35. Exposing the liberal bias and the subtle but relentless lying of the corporate media is one of the greatest aims we should have.

  36. Bravo to the person that inserted Corless’ statement that the story “has been widely misrepresented”. Unfortunately, they put it at the bottom of the page, not at the end of the very first section where it belongs.

    Will anybody here move it? It’s a simple matter to do. I would do it myself but I am blocked from editing there.

  37. “cantbelievethis”, wash your mouth out with soap and try to be a good boy for a change. For your penance: no Catholic bashing for you for one full day.

  41. Ive known about his connection to the URI for some time. This is why anyone calling themselves a Catholic, who still supports bergoglio in any way, should not only be ashamed of themselves but are most certainly part of the problem. The sooner people get it through their heads that bergoglio is not simply dumb or misguided…but rather evil…the better. This man is determined (like I’m now convinced almost everyone who has held any position of power throughout the last 50 years was) to destroy the Church as we have always known it. For anyone calling me a “conspiracy nut”…the proof is in the V2 pudding; they are succeeding. I hate putting percentages on things but what the heck: I’d say 95% of those who identify themselves as Catholics are basically lost…and that number might be generous.

  42. What matters is that the truth should be found out – regardless of whether this is favourable to the Church (which is possible), or unfavourable to it (which is also possible). The truth may be neither, but simply neutral. If the Church is in the wrong, then it needs to answer for it – if it is not, so much the better.

  43. Rich, ‘conspiracy nuts’ in very very good and holy company indeed, with the likes of Pope Pius VII, Pope Leo XII, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Pius Leo XIII, Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pius XII who said, “Suppose, dear friend, that Communism was only the most visible of the instruments of subversion to be used against the Church and the traditions of Divine Revelation … I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God … In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them.” – Pius XII, from the book Pius XII Devant L’Histoire – http://mundabor.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/half-way-to-suicide/
    –
    http://www.novusordowatch.org/wire/conspiracy.htm

  44. If anyone has been in any doubt about the ‘abomination of desolation’, it is the Novus Ordo, which simply isn’t Catholic. I’m not saying that everyone affiliated with it is not Catholic, but if they are, they are labouring under some serious delusions and are not committed enough to hearing the Grace of God leading them to Truth to wake up, yet. As for the rest, they can only be lending themselves to the agenda of the enemies of the Church.
    –
    http://www.novusordowatch.org/wire/index.htm#.U5PT9ShtU-I

  45. Amen….I know very well how legitimate the real conspiracy is. People on the wrong side of truth love to throw that moniker, “conspiracy nut”, around.

  46. Today bergolgio, like wolytja before him, declared himself before all the world to be a formal apostate from Catholicism. A formal apostate cannot be pope.

  47. my dear salvemur,
    —- brethren,
    before the “occurance” the blogosphere, who shall remain nameless, are qualifying the words of His Majesty Jesus Christ as if they were part of a larger schema to justify the diabolical nature of what is about to take place!!
    ——————-
    The sword, dear brethren,take courage!
    ————
    penance, penance, penance.

  50. Rosaries in reparation. Here’s an article, an antidote against the anti-pentecost:
    –
    http://meetingthemets.com/2014/06/08/antichrist-and-his-anti-pentecost/
    –
    He also mentions the following regarding montini and his UN address, and his apostate regarding Lepanto:
    –
    ” “We are conscious that you are the interpreters of all that is paramount in human wisdom. We would almost say: of its sacred character. For your concern is first and foremost with the life of man, and man’s life is sacred: no one may dare to interfere with it.”Presumably “no one” does not included God. Paul’s performance at the United Nations, an organization long viewed with suspicion by the Church for the obvious reasons, sent many a Catholic reeling. So did papal act just two months later, when Paul gave back to the Muslims the Standard of Lepanto. The history of the flag was venerable. It was taken from a Turkish admiral during a great naval battle in 1571. While Pope St. Pius V fasted and prayed the Rosary, an out-numbered Christian fleet defeated a much larger Moslem navy, thus saving Christendom from the infidel. In honor of the miraculous victory, Pius V instituted the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary to commemorate Her intercession.”
    –
    This reminds me of bergolio’s herzl-homage.

  53. More good news: the New York Times has admitted that the local police in Tuam have said that any bones on the site date from the time of the famines, before the orphanage existed, and they aren’t conducting any criminal investigation:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/world/europe/feared-burial-of-irish-babies-leads-to-call-for-inquiry.html?_r=1

    But I suspect most of the media will keep milking the story for whatever they can anyway, regardless of facts; probably by running stories recounting the “public outrage” over the issue (i.e. the outrage generated entirely by the media’s own false version of events, of course). Five years from now, they’ll still be running bogus stories about it.

    I’ll say it again: these nuns – or anyone else who would have legal standing – need to sue the dickens out of the media, so they won’t try something like this on any other innocent people in the future. It would be an open-and-shut case of libel, especially now that the media’s main source (Catherine Corless) has denounced the media’s distortions of her statements. The nuns could name the amount of damages.

  54. Hi Maria. Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, I totally disagree with the analysis presented. One big reason Hispanics leave the Church is because there is no clear teaching on morality. Who wants to bring up their children in the Novus Ordo Church? In contrast, the evangelicals teach strict morality. Another big reason is the one that Louie keeps reminding us of — Christ the King! When Latin American governments recognized the Catholic Church as the True religion, the whole society worked to nourish the Catholic faith of the laity. After countries were literally forced to remove any mention of the Catholic Church from their constitutions — by the Vatican! — the door was left wide open for the protestants to spread their poisonous teachings. Gone for example are the “fiestas patronales” — feasts of the patron saints. Or if they are celebrated then it is in a very secular way — much the same way as we celebrated Christmas or Easter in the United State. You know — Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. What about Christ the KIng?

  55. Does anyone think Kate and “cantbelievethis” will be back any time soon to offer the apologies owed to the Church and to Mr. Verrecchio?

  57. This guy is now taking the credit for the story:

    “‘I thought I’d seen it all. Then I found nuns’ secret grave for 800 babies’: By Philomena writer MARTIN SIXSMITH”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651484/I-thought-Id-seen-Philomena-And-I-nuns-secret-grave-800-babies-By-Martin-Sixsmith-exposed-Sisters-sold-children-fallen-girls.html

    It’s instructive to look at the comments and votes. The average idiot is seeing this as some sort of Catholic “atrocity” as if it were murder or deliberate fatal neglect. Yes, I do recognize that the commenters are not a random sample of the population. In the U.S., every homosexual with a keyboard shows up to do some Catholic-bashing on every such story. I don’t know if it’s the same in the U.K. or not.

  58. Catholics are easy to push around, because the sole response from most is to pray for the attacker. Even Francis is taking advantage of that propensity.

  59. I visited this blog via a link. Now I feel deeply upset having read so many bias non charitable responses to the plight of many.
    The only thing I might agree with is the media frenzy is not helping the cause. To the person who commented that many of these women were not raped I say my mother was. She is a good woman who attends mass every day and now in her eighties.
    To those of you who were not adopted and clearly have no empathy whatsoever with the severing a primal bond I say I was adopted.
    To those who say there is no proof of any abuse in these homes I say speak and engage in a meaningful conversation with those who lived the reality.
    Catholic bashing is such a defensive expression which let’s down humanity when used as an excuse to justify these opinions. It negates all the Catholic Church claims to represent.
    What is needed is a full and extensive investigation into all of the accusations laid on the clergy in Ireland and elsewhere. Nothing less will do. The mortality rates actually have little to do with discarding bodies un without the dignity of a name or even a communal headstone. AND yes be very sure there are many such children buried in Ireland without such dignity. AND yes freely acknowledged as such by the clergy.
    Serious communication is clearly closed to business on this blog. Through meaningful discourse we can understand an others point of view. I tried and failed to understand the need for such a haughty supercilious approach from most of the posts here.

  60. dear Michael Leon,
    I think you should speak more about this because what you have to say is so vital. Thank you so much for it.

  61. Cdon: None of us ever claimed that there were never any abuses anywhere by any member of the clergy, in fact I think you’ll find that most of us tend to oppose the current clergy, especially in the post-Vatican II era but also during the many years of growing moral corruption that preceded it. We were responding specifically to a case which is now pretty much admitted to have been false, but has generated enormous venom against all Catholics (we’re now being accused of running Auschwitz-style death camps, all based on a fraudulent media smear campaign). This hurts innocent people as well as deliberately creating a hostile political and social climate which makes it difficult to have a level playing field in social debates. It also ironically makes it more difficult to fight against the very corruption that you complain about, since I think you’ll find that most of the genuinely abusive clergy are – almost by definition – the same guys who reject traditional morality whom we ourselves complain about, but our voices are being marginalized by relentless media distortions. Case in point: many (if not most) of the clergy who were caught having sex with boys – such as Paul Shanley, or the monks at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN – had long been openly gay activists who in some cases had also openly promoted sex with boys as well as men. Shanley had long given public speeches promoting sex with boys, and was opposed by conservatives like ourselves while being celebrated by the media until Shanley was arrested for practicing what he preached. Then the media tried to blame conservatives for what these radical gay activists had been doing, and the entire thing was quickly turned into an attempt to demonize the very people who had actually opposed guys like Shanley and his cohorts. And it succeeded. This is blatantly and deliberately dishonest, especially since so many conservatives had spent decades warning about the subculture of pederasty in the Church (look at the books that were written by conservatives long before the media paid any attention to the problem). Many of us are tired of the Orwellian manipulation of these issues by the media, and that’s what this discussion is about.

    If you want to solve genuine problems that have been going on (such as rape by priests) then present evidence to law enforcement officials who have jurisdiction. But if you just want to claim that all Catholics are evil because there are some bad eggs in the bunch, then you’re going to meet the same reception as someone who wants to claim that all Jews are “evil” just because some of them do bad things.

  62. Dear Maria, since you graciously asked let me expand a little on my previous answer. Here’s a quote from the article “they are baptized, receive first Holy Communion and Confirmation, but are not converted inside.  It is external Catholicism with Holy Pictures, Rosaries and Crucifixes.  But the deeper experience of Jesus deep in their hearts and in the Blessed Sacrament is rarely arrived at.  Nevertheless they are people full of faith from their baptism, but it is rarely developed.” I find this statement condescending, full of middle-class intellectual bias and ironically very protestant. If Latin American countries were still possessed of Catholic governments then there would be no need for the faithful to “develop” their faith Instead there faith would be constantly nourished by a Catholic society that is in complete harmony with the liturgical calendar. Basically there are two approaches: convert the society or convert the individual. I think the Catholic approach is to convert society while the protestant approach centers on an individual conversion. This is in keeping with the individualistic philosophy behind protestantism. The problem isn’t tha the faithful are not fully “developing” themselves, the problem is that the society abandons them at a certain age. It is un-realistic and I think un-Catholic to expect the faithful to have fight a constant uphill battle against the forces of evil in society. The Catholic response is to create a society that protects the faithful so that they are not “led into temptation”. But this is not the attitude of the post-Vatican II Church. Instead of “delivering us from evil” the Church opens wide the doors to evil (aggiornamento). Prior to Vatican II the Church’s answer was always “thy Kingdom come” — or as Louie so aptly and simply states the same principle “Christ the King” or “Cristo Rey”. Viva Cristo Rey!

  63. Dear Michael Leon,
    Thank you for this and I agree, at best the blogger is condescending. And more. I apologize for the affront of linking to this. How kind of you to expound as you did.
    I am not Hispanic, but 2 of my many children have Hispanic Godmothers that were borne before mid ’60’s disaster. Space limited, I cannot respond to the rich & compelling points you make. But I have experienced with these dear Godmothers heart wrenching stories which were impacted by that to which you allude.
    Lastly, for now, if I may say this: those who were called to “shepherd” instead committed , objectively speaking, serious sin against the Seventh Commandment, in the form of violent thievery, robbing and burglarizing from the hearts of Faithful — almost any form of true Catholicism.

  64. Rant alert. I know a sensible woman who considers herself a good Catholic – she has absolutely no problems with the anti-pentecost that just took place. I think the folks at Novus Ordo Watch are absolutely right when they say that ‘catholics’ who applaud the abominations occuring, are simply not Catholic.
    –
    In charity I have tried to continue to engage with novus ordoites because Truth must be shared. But, so many who profess to be in the Church think it uncharitable to point out the contradictions between the Vicars of Christ prior to ’58, and the strange popes who suddenly embraced the previously condemned errors of extra-Catholic – indeed extra-Faith – ecumanism, of communism, humanism, the whole freemasonic gamut. Roncalli removed Pius XII standing excommunication of known communists – and then roncalli was the first pope to buddy up – he also elevated those whom Pius XII had dusciplined for heresy. montini basically gave his new church to the united nations then denied all the faithful the right to the True Sacraments; wolytja made open formal apostasy a new ‘papal tradition’, and yet people refuse to see because it would mean they would have to give up their cosy pew which fits their butts so nicely and give up their place standing with the presider to hand out the meal chips, and give up their charismatisms and their pop music, their t-shirts and shorts, and their parish council politics, and their DIY magisterium – and then they would have to do terribly inconvenient things like search out the True Mass, faithful priests, pray the Rosary and suffer a bit of exile; but worst of all they would have to learn and adhere to the True Faith.
    –
    Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, pray for us.

  65. Whose coming (the anti-Christ’s) is according to the working of satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying: that all may be judged who have not believed the (True Catholic) truth, but have consented to iniquity (2 Thes.2:9-11)

  66. cdon, I’ll set aside for the moment your own “haughty” attempts to claim moral superiority as you go about criticizing and insulting people here. You also apparently presume without evidence (non-charitably so) that the Catholics must be guilty of some very bad things, just as the media always do. For now, here are some questions for you:

    How would you have selected which children would go without food for a time so that proper headstones could have been bought instead? Or do you think that the nuns had a big bag of money that they kept to spend on themselves? Likewise, do you think that the nuns opened their institution because they enjoyed torturing and starving children?

    The institution was overcrowded, which would have contributed to the spread of infectious diseases. Which children would you have thrown out to make it less crowded?

    Do you think that any people in all of Ireland were malnourished during the relevant span of years, such as during the Depression? Or are you concerned only with blaming Catholics?

    Today’s medical researchers know the genetic makeup of the flu virus from the 1918 epidemic because they found it by digging up a frozen mass grave in Alaska. Here’s a somewhat related story from 2009, “Mass graves could be dug for autumn bout of swine flu” in the U.K., reported in Mail Online. But those mass graves probably wouldn’t bother you, because there are no Catholics to blame, right?

    I suspect that you attempt to equate opposition to Catholic-bashing with not caring about the children precisely because you agree with the liberal approach of thinking the worst about Catholics. No one here said that we must always defend any Catholics no matter what, so your implication about that is false. When you say “investigation,” I suspect that you really want a politically-driven witch hunt because even the police said there is no reason for an investigation. All that is apparently your idea of serious communication. Right or wrong? What is your response?

  67. As to the false claim made by cdon that there was no marker on the mass grave, here is what is written by Sixsmith: “I found a plaster statue of the Madonna on a pile of stones, incongruously sheltered by an old enamel bathtub. Beneath it were the bodies of nearly 800 babies”.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651484/I-thought-Id-seen-Philomena-And-I-nuns-secret-grave-800-babies-By-Martin-Sixsmith-exposed-Sisters-sold-children-fallen-girls.html

    Yes, I suppose it looks “incongruous” to a snobbish English Protestant (or atheist).

    And surprise, there is what amounts to an ad on the page: “Philomena, by Martin Sixsmith, is published by Pan Macmillan, priced £7.99. The film is out on DVD.”

    At the end of that article, he brags about the character playing himself, “furious at being fobbed off by the Church, storms into a convent and threatens to throw the old nun who ran the mother and baby home ‘out of that [expletive deleted] wheelchair!’ ”
    But it would offend cdon’s self-congratulatory sense of “humanity” to label that as Catholic-bashing, I suppose.

  68. bigfred I am not sure if you actually read my post or not. The issues I addressed seemed to have been lost. I certainly do not claim moral superiority. What I can note tho is there is still little in the way of meaningful dialogue existing between me. and those like me…… who resulted from the society of the time…..ie a bastard conceived out of the act of rape. Yes I hear you say, society of the time. However, the catholic bashing is viewed or not is actually not relevant. What does matter is meaningful communications and not dictatorial mindsets on this or any matter relating to the unfolding information regarding Magdalene Laundries and other homes in Ireland. It seems to me that the opinions of individuals, if they do not comply, are deemed haughty or some such thing. Communication is the key and validation is crucial when considering the mindset to be adopted concerning all these allegations. It is a source of sadness to me that the church in which I was raised and belonged to has members who still insist their way is the only way. Let the press do as they will, it matters not to me what they say. What matters is that the voices of those who have suffered are not lost in the frenzy. Sorry but to me it appears your mind is closed.

  69. Oh dear bigfred you just don’t get it do you?
    Your response says far more about you than it does about me.

    Be happy.

  70. As a 70+ year old coming from an Irish family I can tell you with absolute certainty that even in ‘normal’ families, new babies were Baptized as soon after birth as possible because of the high infant mortality rate. I was born on Wednesday and Baptized 4 days later on Sunday. My cousin and Goddaughter was born Sunday morning and Baptized the same afternoon. All our family did the same. For those nuns to deal with the sheer volume of deaths at a time of desperate poverty should engender understanding not condemnation. All that takes is informed judgement – bigotry doesn’t cut it! Thank you Louie.

  71. Sorry, just a small additional point. when will some smart Alec reporter write an article about the wicked evil English people who buried thousands in Plague pits rather than in individual coffins with headstones? And why? Because it reduced the spread of the PLAGUE! It isn’t rocket science. Could that silence be due to lack of interest because those plague victims weren’t Catholic? Just asking.

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