Cardinal Brady has given the best Church reaction to the dreadful story, but why did so many ordained men and so many vowed men and women behave so badly and for so long?
During (and long before) the period covered in the Ryan Report, there were many thousands of young men and women religious in Ireland. A very small proportion worked in industrial schools. It was not a prestigious posting.
Letterfrack Industrial School, Co.Galway
As the numbers of religious began to soar in the 19th century, becoming so numerous that thousands went abroad for good, the formation of young religious became increasingly formulaic: “ You keep the Rule and the Rule will keep you.” Observance of externals was emphasised, but self-knowledge was rarely mentioned and the taking of initiatives was discouraged.
In that background, it’s easier to understand (but not to accept) why religious could go to Mass daily, confess their sins frequently and make a retreat annualy, but could see no disconnection between the love of God that they professed and their harsh treatment of the poor children in their care.
Fergus O'Donoghue, SJ is editor of Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review.
10 responses so far ↓
Shane // May 21, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Irish Catholicism degenerated in its morals because of a historic entanglement with Jansenism. The report you cite expresses acutely the fruits of this noxious heresy, which creates an attitude to sex that is downright gnostic and engenders an aversion to human goodness. Especially anathema to Jansenists is the innocence of children. This spread to other parts of the world missionized and ministered to by Irish clerics.
I was recently reading a book on the history of Irish Catholicism. A priest in the 1940’s from Nebraska who had established many orphanages there attacked the industrial schools here as a ’scandal to the nation’. He was attacked in the media for his comments. No doubt many of those same newspapers are imputing malice to other authorities while conviently neglecting to mention the role they played in keeping this information distant from the public.
I have always maintained that British society is more amenable to Catholicism, and certainly its culture is in many ways influenced by Catholicism to a greater degree than we are. There are no Irish theologians of great repute, nor is there any distinctive Catholic literature from Ireland, at least for the last 3 centuries. A short and by no means comprehensive list of British Catholic luminaries will suffice to highlight the disparity: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Edward Elgar, Eric Gill, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Anscombe, Elizabeth Jennings, Michael MacMillan – the Irish equivalents of such figures simply don’t exist. In fact the vast majority of Irish writers were lapsed Catholics or Protestant -hence ‘Anglo-Irish literature’. A theological sewer (which is what essentially Ireland was for a long time) is never prodigious for literary or theological talent.
Unfortunately Ireland has long been rife with Jansenism. There are historic reasons for this. The first Irish seminary since the Reformation, the Royal College of St Patrick in Maynooth was staffed by French emigrants from the Revolution. A very high percentage of the faculty were Jansenists. Even before the Royal College, the Irish students at Louvain were taught by the Irishman Lord Trimblestown, who was a Jansenist and whose family played a crucial role in trying to defend Jansenism from persecution.
There has thus always been a Jansenistical air in Irish Catholicism, for historic reasons, and this has caused immeasurable harm to souls. I can remember my uncle telling me about going to Mass, and the priest demanding that any couples who had sexual relations would have to go to confession. No wonder you hear so many horror stories of this sort coming from Ireland.
The lesson in all this: Jansenism is a spiritual cancer, destroys piety and ruins souls.
sillyoldtwit // May 21, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Brady is either an evil man or a fool. If he didn’t know what was going on he was criminally incompetent , quite literally. If he did know he was criminally responsible for letting it continue.
He should be brought before the courts as any other criminal might be.
sillyoldtwit // May 21, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Fergus ,
The excuse you make for Brady is no different from that used by every Nazi official in Hitler’s German and is as equally absurd.
The only difference is the the Nazis lost the war which is to say they lost power while the Church still has immence power…..
Pat Rice // May 25, 2009 at 12:22 pm
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
(John 8. 32)
The recently published Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, chaired by Mr. Justice Sean Ryan, on the treatment of children by religious orders in schools, orphanages and similar institutions in Ireland during the greater part of the twentieth century can be best compared to a report by a Truth Commission which have now become a feature of many countries who wish to come to terms with the most disturbing chapters of their recent past, be it apartheid, civil war, genocide, or dictatorship. The Ryan Report is to be welcomed then as one of the most liberating statements to come out of an official body in Ireland in recent years. It reveals situations which dishonor us as a people and exposes the Irish Catholic Church as having betrayed its founding principles. Even though its primary focus was on residential institutions for children run by the Christian Brothers and the Mercy Sisters, it comes as a special relief to all of us who did our primary and secondary education in a Christian Brothers School. Only now with its findings public, can we put the most disturbing aspects of that educational experience behind us. Inhuman and cruel practices were tolerated and it became absolutely necessary for an official body to investigate and publicly denounce the situation. The fact that the investigation took nine years shows how sensitive the whole issue was especially on the matter of sexual abuse and the involvement of the Catholic Church.
Corporal punishment, with the “strap” which each Christian Brother had in his cassock pocket, was the order of the day in those times and every boy was introduced at a very early age to the traumatic experience of getting “slapped” for almost any reason whatsoever. However that kind of punishment was only the tip of the ice- berg. Lay teachers had a free scope for head beating, ear pulling, slapping with canes, kicking in the back with the knee and all other forms of punishment which on occasions were aggravated when the teacher was under the influence of alcohol. However the most destructive practice of all was the verbal abuse we received as teachers had a free license to get angry with us . We were insulted for our clothes, our mistakes, our way of talking, our lack of hygiene, our names were mocked, and we suffered with those students who had more serious mental handicaps. It was true that classes were big, that the times were bad and Ireland was in economic depression but those kind of “Gestapo” methods were uncalled for and should never have been tolerated in Ireland. I can only imagine the regime of terror kids must have experienced in industrial schools or reformatories staffed by some of the same Brothers.
The Catholic faith which guided the Brothers was of course the pivot of the system. It created a world of fear and violence but also of generosity and indeed heroism. I vividly recall when one student, 11 years old, struck back at the teacher who was bullying him. Those few teachers who did not resort to violence became the paradigm of sanctity to us. Already in our first years of primary school we began to distinguish between Brothers who were violent with us, and those who were encouraging and gave us confidence. I have no doubt that my own strong emotional reaction to discrimination comes from having been exposed to such situations during those early formative years in the classroom.
Nevertheless I freely confess that, like many of my classmates, I decided to enter religious life and the missionary priesthood because of the example of some of the Brothers whom I got to know during my school years. I discovered the human side to religion in that same school where I had experienced its sinister evil side. In the seminary during the sixties I discovered that Church teaching gives no justification whatsoever for the violence we had experienced. The Catholic Church was about life, justice, truth and love. Coming to Latin America as a missionary priest in 1970 only confirmed me in that commitment.
However I soon discovered that the violent Church I had experienced in my childhood was very much alive and well here. During the military dictatorships we saw the official hierarchy in many Latin American countries align themselves with the torturers and the assassins in uniform who proclaimed themselves to be exemplary Catholics. Consequently the other Church of the poor, of liberation theology suffered persecution, martyrdom and imprisonment because of its commitment to the Gospel values of justice, truth and love. Moreover the official Church campaigned against all Church renewal including the Vatican especially Pope Benedict XVI, when as Cardinal Ratzinger in the Holy Office, he introduced Inquisition type practices to silence Latin American theologians. This is the leadership of the Church which during the last 30 years has zealously maintained a curtain of silence on all kinds of sexual abuses by the clergy.
The Ryan Report will certainly reignite the “aggiornamiento” movement began by Pope John XXIII . I believe a spiritual revolution is finally happening in the Church from the bottom up. That is where lay folk have a key role to play. Believing in the God of love and peace, working for justice and truth, being creative and responsible in what we do, joining in the community, reading and praying together, getting priests and bishops to come and join us. That is where the Holy Spirit is at work. It was a breath of fresh air to see Archbishop Martin of Dublin react to statements by the new Westminster Archbishop Vincent Nichols who seemed to be more concerned in a recent TV interview about those Church people who had committed abominable crimes in Ireland than those unfortunate children who had been their victims. It was a rude awakening for the new Primate of England to receive the stern rebuke from his Episcopal colleague. The Holy Spirit is certainly getting a hurricane stirred up in the Church as well as in Irish society.
Thank you Mr. Justice Ryan!
May 25th 2009
Patrick Rice (former Irish missionary priest and member of the Charles de Foucauld Lay Fraternity)
Buenos Aires , Argentina
Jonathan West // May 26, 2009 at 2:46 am
I don’t think any decent person, Catholic or otherwise, can be anything other than sickened at events described in the Ryan Report.
It is only by means of contributions from the faithful that this appalling system has been able to continue for so long. I’m sure the great majority of Catholics had little or no idea what was going on, and so cannot be held collectively responsible for events. But now that you do know what was going on, you have a responsibility to do all in your power to see that it is stopped, that those responsible are brought to justice, and that this can never happen again.
I believe that there is a way in which ordinary Catholics can make a difference here. I think and hope that it might be highly effective.
Continue to attend Mass, continue to take communion. But make it clear to your local church and by writing to Cardinal Brady that you will give no more money to the church or to any Catholic charity and that you are diverting your charitable giving to secular charities instead.
Tell them that this state of affairs will remain in force until you are satisfied that the Church’s institutions have been cleaned up, that all known paedophile or abusive priests have been removed from positions in which they can do any further harm, that all relevant evidence has been passed to the police, that the Church will be generous beyond its strict legal liabilities in providing support and compensation to victims, and that the Church will in future operate a policy of openness and co-operation with the secular authorities regarding breaches in the law by Catholic priests and officials. Only when you are satisfied that all this has been done will you consider that the Church is a fit steward for your charitable donations and resume your giving to the Church and its associated charities.
Andrew // May 29, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Jesus would think that looking after vulnerable children would be prestigious .. Suffer little children … and all that!
I’ve been perusing comment pieces from writers around the world on the Ryan Report and it truly gives me a thrill to read the word ‘offender’ being applied to members of the Religious Orders who ‘managed’ the Institutions. Really it does!
So when people talk about these appalling Institutions housing offenders be aware that the offenders are the people who are managing the Institutions.
Fergus // May 21, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Michael Corish, former Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Maynooth, wrote an excellent book “The Irish Catholic Experience” and makes a good case for much of we regard as “Jansenist” being really Victorian middle class values. On the other hand, the Irish links with Jansenism are clear: for example the friendship between Cornelius Jansen and Irish Franciscans.
Fergus // May 21, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Cardinal Brady, or anybody else in leadership knows only what is passed on to them. He was in leadership only at the very end of the period under investigation. What’s most disturbing was that EVERYBODY in the country knew, and knew for decades, that life was tough in industrial schools and that NOBODY (including journalists) did anything about it. Accepting that is shameful and very hard to explain, but so it was.
Fergus // May 22, 2009 at 8:50 am
The comparison between Nazi Germany and Ireland doesn’t hold up.
Fergus // May 25, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Pat, That’s very helpful and insightful. Thanks!
Like gas stations in rural Texas after 10 pm, comments are closed.