Ireland has never had much time for nuance when it comes to religion. Until the early 1990s, we were unwaveringly pious. Then, as the hypocrisies and later the crimes of the Catholic Church came to light, we turned on priests and nuns with a vengeance. They went from pillars of society to pilloried outcasts, unwelcome reminders of the cruel and hidebound country we used to be.
In The Last Nuns in Ireland (RTÉ One, Tuesday, 10.15pm), the second of two absorbing profiles of clergy in the country today, journalist Dearbhail McDonald suggests it is time to stop seeing nuns – and, by implication, ourselves and our history – in black and white. Yes, the nuns had a great deal to answer for: their role in the Magdalene laundries, the mother and baby homes and other outrages. However, they also provided healthcare and education to this fledgling and often bankrupt state throughout the 20th century.
For McDonald, a knotty issue is further complicated by the fact that, as a former pupil of St Clare’s in Newry, she is convent-educated. “I can’t rationalise the church’s position on women,” she says. “But I’m still a St Clare’s girl.”
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There are 4,000 nuns in Ireland today, most elderly. In Drogheda, McDonald visits the Dominican Sisters at Siena Convent, a “closed order” who live apart from society and spend most of their day in silent contemplation. “We’re kind of like the power supply in the factory,” says Sr Teresa Dunphy, one of the rare young recruits to the order. “We’re praying ... we’re drawing down the grace. We’re providing the power and the energy for all these other people in the world that they don’t know about.”
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In the 20th century, Ireland was a production line for nuns. Many were still teenagers when recruited – raising serious issues about their capacity to assent to such a challenging life. “You have to think about informed consent,” says Professor Karen Hanrahan, the daughter of a former nun. “At 15, can you really know what you are doing?”
It’s all too easy to harangue the Church today and to blame it for crimes for which the State and Irish society more generally must shoulder some blame. That said, the tone stuck by many of the nuns is bracing.
“Where were the men? Where were the parents? It was society that created these places,” says one. “The nuns were foolish enough to take on that work – you feel we were scapegoated and blamed for what was going wrong in society.”
But were the nuns truly “scapegoats”? Should they be more remorseful over their legacy? That is a debate sure to rage until there are no more nuns in Ireland – a point that may come about sooner rather than later. In the meantime, this fascinating documentary argues that nothing in Ireland is ever straightforward – especially our fraught relationship with Catholicism.
