Madam, – The “march of solidarity” with former residents of the institutions plan for June 10th (Home News, May 30th) is a welcome development, although the midday, mid-week timing will exclude the vast numbers of workers who wish to walk with the survivors to express their sorrow and anger.
What is needed is a Sunday morning march, during traditional Mass hours, when instead of filling the churches, we could fill the streets to show the strength of our outrage at the despicable and shameful acts perpetrated on these innocent victims of church and State “care”. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Kevin O’Sullivan (May 30th) writes that it is “essential that the Catholic Church immediately puts into effect measures to eliminate future opportunities for the physical and mental abuse of children by its clerics”.
The problem is that the Catholic Church thinks it has already done this: the Vatican now proposes screening priesthood candidates for possible homosexual tendencies. This approach is naive and completely misses the point. It is not homosexuality but a prohibition on acting upon natural human tendencies, combined with a position of authority over vulnerable people, that causes abuse such as that revealed in the report. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Spanish Cardinal Antonio Canizares attempts to diminish the horror of child abuse in the Ryan report by comparing it to abortion (World News, May 29th). In fact, Vatican teachings on human sexuality and reproduction are twice culpable for the abuse of children.
First, many of those who were treated so terribly were children born to mothers who could not get access to modern contraception. (As late as the 1990s I was an expert witness in Dublin when the Irish Family Planning Association was convicted of the crime of selling a condom in the Virgin Megastore.)
Second, by forcing priests and nuns into unnatural celibacy, church teaching helped create frustrated and sometimes sadistic adults to care for the children of unintended pregnancies. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I cannot let Art Kavanagh’s letter (May 23rd) go unchallenged. Is a 13-month-old baby whose mother is unmarried a thug? Is a four-year-old boy whose mother has died a thug? What happened to me and my family does not amount to a hill of beans compared with the suffering of all the poor children in the Ryan report.
I write this merely as background information, for what it is worth.
My mother died suddenly in 1956 and left my father to rear seven small children. I was 10 at the time and the eldest of the seven.
Things were tough in our house and to tell the truth we went a little wild compared with the standards of the time.
Certain of the neighbours tut-tutted about the liberties we took when our father was absent and the leash was off.
About a year after my mother’s death my father disintegrated under the pressure and had to go into St Loman’s hospital for “treatment”. He had no income, except from a small farm. No dole, and as far as I can remember, a very small, if any, children’s allowance.
There was always, though, an abundance of religion. No shortage there.
We were at that time in the care of my grandfather – an invalid – who could walk only with the aid of two sticks, but who none-the-less was a very capable person.
When my father came out of hospital he was in a very fragile state and this was not helped by the arrival of “The Little Nun”.
Over several visits she put enormous pressure on my father to give us up to institutional care, “where we would be properly looked after”. This had a dreadful effect, especially on the younger members of my family. So much so that my sister Kathleen could not sleep at night.
Early one morning she came into the kitchen and asked my father straight out if he was going to send us away.
My father looked at her and said, “Not till the last cow is gone”. This was my father’s finest hour. Part of my reason for contacting you now is to honour him in death because I did not honour him in life. (He and I were like chalk and cheese and rarely saw eye to eye on any subject).
The next time “The Little Nun” called he “ran her like a redshank”. She did not meet her quota that week at least.
She left our yard berating him for being a selfish man.
Apart from my father’s and my grandfather’s courage the only thing that saved us – and I firmly believe this to this day – was the fact that we had a bit of land, albeit a small bit.
If we had come from a county council cottage we would not have stood a chance.
This was de Valera’s Ireland! – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Has the Government learnt nothing from the Ryan report and the drip-feed of news over recent years about our failure to protect vulnerable children?
The 2008 annual report of the HSE (Home News, May 29th)shows the continuing neglect of vulnerable children by State bodies charged with their care. According to this, and earlier reports, not only are there 900 children in care who have not been allocated a social worker, but one third of about 21,000 children reported to be at risk (that is, 7,000) were not allocated to a social worker. During the boom years, despite regular reports of the under-resourcing and understaffing of our child welfare services, we still didn’t make these services a priority.
Then there is the problem of long waiting lists in our children’s hospitals, which have not been protected from the general cutbacks. The least the Government can do is to ringfence this area of public service and health provision.
There is a need to fast-track recruitment of the staff needed for the HSE childcare services and implement urgently the repeated recommendations concerning integrated communication and planning. If we don’t insist on this, we too deserve to be vilified by future generations – how can we say we didn’t know? – Yours, etc,
A chara, – In recent years I have travelled to many countries that are attempting to deal with the horrific legacy of past human rights abuses including South Africa, Germany and the United States. One element of their reparations has been the establishment of museums and centres on Apartheid, the Holocaust, and the segregation of black people; many designed and run by the victims, their families and communities. These are effective commemorations and educational resources that highlight the violent abuse, degradation, exclusion and disrespect that blighted the lives of so many.
For Irish society, and in particular the younger generations, the establishment of a museum of institutional child abuse would offer a permanent space, giving a voice to the victims and to enabling wider reflection on where we have come from and where we want to go as a society – to ensure all people are treated with dignity, kindness and respect. – Is mise,
Madam, – No issue has received such publicity among the media and the public as the Ryan report on abuse among the clergy. One wonders if the massive reaction is not the response of a guilt-ridden society. Nobody denies the shame and sadness evoked by the perpetrators, but must we place the entire blame on the Catholic Church and its clergy? The blame must be shared by a much wider society. There were a few lonely voices who protested but they were largely ignored by parents, teachers, the Civil Service, government and any member of the public who bothered to think of our culture of neglect.
What will our successors think in 50 years time of our current society? Of the widespread corruption among our politicians, bushiness people and the professions, and of the tolerance of such corruption among an electorate who return proven corrupt candidates to our parliament? What will they think of the widespread criminality which has become part of our culture? The culture of crime and violence is the responsibility of our society and cannot be attributed to any particular group. It cannot change without a profound cultural change within ourselves.
I spent six uneventful years in a Christian Brothers’ secondary school. and I never heard a complaint about them. The belt was occasionally used but it did not seem inhumane to us. Nor did it apparently in any of the English public schools.
The Christian Brothers, like many other Catholic orders, were almost solely responsible for providing education and social services to the people of Ireland from the time of the Catholic emancipation, long before government and the rest of society adopted their proper responsibilities. I hope we do not have a witch hunt following the report. The great majority of our clergy have been moral, unselfish and steadfast citizens and it is impossible to forget their huge contribution to our country. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – At last, some individuals in the discredited organisation Cori seem to understand the injustice of the 2002 deal with the Government.
Maybe influential people within Cori would now call on the religious abusers to make full statements of their crimes to the Garda and call on all religious congregations to give their documentation on crimes against children in Northern Ireland and other jurisdictions to the authorities.
Even if congregations have to die, even if the heavens fall. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – For some years now, I have found the intrusion of the Angelus bell on RTÉ TV and radio to be irritating. That is, until the other day.
I had been dwelling on the consequences of the horror of our own “holocaust” when the Angelus bell sounded. It did not provoke in me the by-now-habitual response but, rather, a momentary melancholia in acknowledgment of the suffering endured. I sincerely hope my newly acquired response takes root and that I never again take for granted my good fortune in life.
I hope that others who have felt similar disaffection might form the same (for me, utterly appropriate) association. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Republicans don’t kneel to foreign powers and democrats have a deep respect for accountability and transparency.
Where were the principles of our self-styled “republican party” when a blanket indemnity for the horrifying physical and sexual abuse of young Irish citizens was being signed on our behalf? Deference and submission is no more due to Rome than it was to London. – Yours, etc,