If we’re blaming Church for adoption scandal, we might also take a look in the mirror
AS A rough rule of thumb, I question myself whenever I find that I’m in the moral majority. There’s something deeply unsettling about gathering with the mob on the street, torches burning, marching righteously against the wicked.
This week and last, they’ve been rounding on the Catholic Church again. The source of infinite wisdom and purity up to a generation ago, it is now seen as the root of all evil.
Who needs balance and nuance when baying for blood is much less complicated?
The current adoption scandal surrounding St Patrick’s Guild would indeed send a shudder down your spine and this is not the first time the Sisters of Charity has been spoken about in less than charitable tones.
What could be more dehumanising than having your identity stolen and then being sold off? Trafficking is not too strong a word for it.
But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us get off the hook.
It suited a newly independent Ireland, flush with the success of its rosary bead revolution, to hand over education, health and much of its incarceration services to the Church.
After all, the religious orders provided the State a personnel resource that was cheap (vow of poverty), uncritical
(vow of obedience) and morally certain (vow of chastity). What could possibly go wrong?
But the nuns, brothers and priests didn’t roam the streets kidnapping happy children or steal them from their warm cots. Families came to them in their droves with their problems and crises, sometimes out of shame and desperation, but often out of avarice too.
The pre-Famine peasant Ireland of subsistence living of small-holdings gave way to a social and agricultural revolution soon after, cemented by the land acts of the 1870s and beyond. These laws saw 414,000 tenants become the owners of 14 million acres over time.
From then, children born out of wedlock were disowned as they could present a threat to property and succession.
Now the moral sanction of the Church was given a powerful economic imperative. Unmarried mothers and their ‘bastards’ were a threat to society itself. A symbiotic relationship between Church, State and family evolved into brutal social Darwinism, which itself bled well into the 20th century. And the consequences of it are still with us. Yes, the Church certainly played a huge part. But it didn’t do it by itself. The State and families – ones just like yours and mine – were willing co-conspirators.
It’s time we owned up.
Solidarity with exam parents
SO the circus begins. While most people will spare a thought for those who begin the Leaving Cert tomorrow, I want to offer a hug to the parents.
It’s bloody awful being a student facing into an exam you’ve been preparing for since junior infants with a gathering sense of dread and fatalism. We’ve all been there.
But it’s even grimmer for mum and dad left at home.
Any footballer will tell you that it is much easier to be out on the pitch giving it welly rather than stressing on the sideline.
As a player, you are in control and can help shape your own destiny.
Sitting on your hands in the dugout watching helplessly and roaring instructions that are either unheard or unwelcome is what purgatory must be like on its off days.
But then parenting was never meant to be fun. It’s one of those things life throws at you and by the time you realise you’re not any good at it, the cash-back guarantee has expired.
So be strong. You’ll muddle through.
We all do.
Not an average Joe
IHAVE an old buddy who is a rabid Munster supporter. He once told me that he never met a smug Leinster fan he didn’t want to boot up the rear.
Tad extreme, I felt, but then we had that out-pouring of outrage and entitlement from The Goys over Joey Carbery’s defection south.
Anyway you know, my mate just might have a point.