Church must explain role in Bethany Home

THE Church of Ireland asserts (News, September 17): “Bethany Home was neither owned nor managed by the Church of Ireland.” That is, in a certain sense, true. But it is not the truth as regards the mother and baby home.

Bethany Home was opened in 1922 by the Archbishop of Dublin and the Dean of Christchurch. The archbishop declared Bethany a “door of hope” for “fallen” women, so as to divert them from “evil ways”.

It was formed from the Prison Gate Mission and the Midnight Mission. The former was part of the Church of Ireland’s “charitable dimension”. The Archbishop directed third-party bequests of £498 and £300, donated through him, be invested in specific stock, the latter sum under his name and that of Bethany’s treasurer.

Until Bethany Home closed in 1972, Church of Ireland clergy transported women to and from the home, or children to various destinations. The majority of Bethany’s women and children were Church of Ireland members. Its management body contained Church of Ireland clergy.

Members of the Irish Church Missions, a Church of Ireland society, organised burials of Bethany and other children in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome and other cemeteries.

The Church of Ireland made use of Bethany Home as a vital cog in the social control of women in Ireland. It existed to incarcerate women criminalised by either Church, for being pregnant out of wedlock, or state, for crimes from petty theft to infanticide.

That is a more significant truth than whether the Archbishop of Armagh’s name is on Bethany’s title deeds. The Church of Ireland should own up to the actual truth and not a preferred version.

If the Church of Ireland feels it is being targeted unfairly, it has a point, but only as regards the Presbyterian Church. Presbyterians, whose Bethany Home involvement receives scant attention, hide behind those Anglican bishops who take most of the flak.

DR NIALL MEEHAN Griffith College, Dublin