Are you ashamed of the State's behaviour in the 40's, 50's. 60's & 70's?

Pauleta

Dudess wrote: »

I presume you've cut ties with the older generations of your family in disgust at their complicitness?

Narrow that down a tad... Or are you just engaging in your usual attention-seeking sh1t?

Cant say im particularly close to them and every catholic that could see what was happening and ignored it is to blame.

CommuterIE

Pauleta wrote: »

Cant say im particularly close to them and every catholic that could see what was happening and ignored it is to blame.

Thats slightly unfair, WHAT COULD THEY DO??? Thousands reported what was going on to the authorities and they turned a blind eye.... and if you were a teen spreading these stories you would end up in an institution just like those who had "bastard babies"

Dudess

Pauleta wrote: »

Cant say im particularly close to them and every catholic that could see what was happening and ignored it is to blame.

Ah... "every catholic that could see what was happening" - you're narrowing it down at least. Still need to narrow it down - e.g. what age group?

Just looks sectarian tbh... Also, you haven't a ****ing clue how much influence they would have had, whether they were intimidated into keeping their mouths shut... It's wonderful to be able to smugly blame soft targets though...

KeithAFC

Dudess wrote: »

Your pretend innocence doesn't fool anyone anymore - maybe it's something to do with the massive red hand in your sig. Or are you going to claim that's just a symbol and you can't see how it would be deemed inflammatory?

I want to discuss and talk about this poll and this interesting subject. Not my sig or Wolfe Tones sig etc. It doesn't matter.

Pauleta

Dudess wrote: »

Ah... "every catholic that could see what was happening" - you're narrowing it down at least. Still need to narrow it down - e.g. what age group?

Just looks sectarian tbh... Also, you haven't a ****ing clue how much power they had. It's wonderful to be able to smugly blame soft targets though...

People power over-rides everything. If the people who could see what was going on united, our country would of been free of the catholic disease before we did expose them.

CommuterIE

KeithAFC wrote: »

I want to discuss and talk about this poll and this interesting subject. Not my sig or Wolfe Tones sig etc. It doesn't matter.

You aren't welcome here because your past posts, and particularly not in this thread

mike65

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

No, my parents were busy murdering Jews at Auswitch and Bergen-Belsen respectively.

the Germans said oh we never knew about the camps after the war, of course most did. They felt powerless to do anything of course and thats underdstandable, who'd face down the local NAZI unit in a town or village?

The same thing happened here with Catholic Church abuse, the Church didn't have side arms but it did have way of making people dissapear, the Churches were full and the collection plate likewise. In small villages people knew and people said nothing.

Dudess

Pauleta wrote: »

People power over-rides everything. If the people who could see what was going on united, our country would of been free of the catholic disease before we did expose them.

You make it seem so easy. You'd need to actually study Irish society at the time in-depth really before coming to such a conclusion...

KeithAFC

CommuterIE wrote: »

You aren't welcome here because your past posts, and particularly not in this thread

Ok. I will keep out of AH.

gigino

CommuterIE wrote: »

You aren't welcome here because your past posts, and particularly not in this thread

imo he is as entitled to state his view as anyone else. especially as he is more polite than some

Dudess

I agree it's unfair to tell him to keep out - but continuing passive-aggressive flame-baiting will only rile people. He has a right to be here though.

mikemac

The Church or State didn't go around grabbing women off the streets and sending to the Magdalene Laundries.

A lot came came from good and normal families but the parents sent them away for shaming the family as they saw it.

Where's that poll option

CommuterIE

gigino wrote: »

imo he is as entitled to state his view as anyone else. especially as he is more polite than some

He can state his opinion/view no problem, but he's made himself out to be a bigot... that is why I think it is inappropriate that he even posts in this thread and I am sure mods agree

Solair

The way I see it, the Catholic Church in particular, but also the Church of Ireland i.e. "the religious establishment" exerted enormous influence over every aspect of society in Ireland in the past.

The State is democratically accountable, but the people who it was accountable to were basically brainwashed, manipulated and controlled by "the religious establishment".

The religious institutions clearly wanted to have control and power and exerted that through their tight control of the education and welfare system in particular and people accepted this because they controlled society.

So, while I think society and the state were very weak and didn't challenge this position, I also think that the religious institutions basically manipulated and seized power in what was a fragile, vulnerable, very impoverished and very new and naive state/country.

The Catholic Church also wrapped itself around Irish nationalism which really shouldn't have had anything to do with religion at all. It was originally supposed to be about independence and actual Republican values i.e. liberty, equality and democracy. That was distorted by the way the religious grabbed power and turned Ireland into something resembling a theocracy for a long period of time.

It was really only in the 1990s that we finally started to rediscover what being a Republic is! Perhaps now that we're no longer all subjects of the Church, we might finally start to realise what being citizens of a republic is supposed to be about.

So, I don't really blame the state for what happened. I think the state and the whole country was basically abused by very power hungry organisations.

It took us a whole century to put the religious organisations back into their box and to actually reclaim our country.

What we need to do is to ensure that NEVER again should any vested interests, or unaccountable organisations be they religious or anything else be allowed to take over the country!

vampire of kilmainham

Pauleta wrote: »

The people of Ireland helped the cover up and denial. Its our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on's fault. Remember this all didnt just happen this century. Its been happening for centuries. Catholics are to blame.

im not standing up for the catholic church and i dont have any time for orginised religions but abuses went on in other religions as well it wasent just confined to the catholic church

chucken1

feelingstressed wrote: »

The Church or State didn't go around grabbing women off the streets and sending to the Magdalene Laundries.

A lot came came from good and normal families but the parents sent them away for shaming the family as they saw it.

Where's that poll option

Because the "parish priest" organised it. Catholic guilt.

Trust me.

diddlybit

I must disagree with the idea that the Catholic Chirch completely brainwashed anyone, i.e, the state into covering up the abuses. The State was aware of something untoward in the early 1930's yet, did nothing. It appears to me, when lookking at the history of the State in realtion to the abuses committed that they took the attitude of "I know there may be something going on, but I'll let someone deal with it." It was pretty apathetic, but then so was the attitude of the Irish public to these kids, they were orphans, unwanted and poor, and looked down on by the general population. Once they went inside those walls nobody gave a s**it about them.

Now saying that, as I contardict myself, there was a documenetry produced in the early eighties about the abuses that was never aired on RTE (State television).

It's a complex question OP.

I think that there were people in the clergy guilty of abuse, both by committing it and by covering it up. The State also was aware of it, but did not address it. Lay people knew about it, but also never did anything about it.

But on the same hand, there were priests that did not commit abuse and did report it, expecting it to be dealt with. Many people in positons of power were shocked by the allegations that surfaced in the nineties and knew nothing. Then of course there were lay people who complained and reported it, just to have there complaints dismissed.

I don't think it's a black and white issue, or that we can wholly blame any one institution. Though many point the finger at the Catholic Church and their teachings and drive towrds self-preservation, there are many others that were not religious, but scared of rocking the both.

Undermining the staus quo can be a very powerful deterennt to disuade people form doing what is right.

ballsymchugh

can we not blame the brits at all??

seriously though, the church took advantage of a broken state. if it wasn't there, then the state couldn't have afforded to educate the people, or look after them in hospitals which were run by Catholic and Protestants.

i blame Dev meself, as Michael Collins would've told the Church where to go. i'd say!

but to stick with the poll, as a woman passing where i worked in england said when she saw 2 heroin addicts attacking each other with knives, "you're both as bad as each other!"

RussellTuring

Personal responsibility: I didn't abuse any children or know about it happening at the time so I take no blame for what happened. By the same token, those who abused children or knew and either covered it up or did nothing to stop it are responsible to varying degrees.

CommuterIE wrote: »

KeithAFC, get your biggoted arse out of this thread, quite frankly everyone is sick and tired of it, troll another forum

That was a completely inappropriate response.

bronte

I pretty much have equal contempt for both.

Didn't the lovely Ms. Harney announce that there would be no inquiry into the practice of symphysiotomy recently enough.

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=16907

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/no-inquiry-into-symphysiotomy-says-harney-446964.html

Nothing has changed....it's still festering away like it always was.

Micky Dolenz

CommuterIE wrote: »

KeithAFC, get your biggoted arse out of this thread, quite frankly everyone is sick and tired of it, troll another forum

Banned.

JohnMarston

Its not the state fault that all this abuse happened, its the churchs fault.

Its the states fault that they allowed it to continue.

I don't feel shame, but an absolute loathing for the church that went out of their way to mistreat and abuse the trust of the irish population, ruling with an iron fist.

Rabidlamb

Ah great times, could go to the pub after work & leave the wife with the 6 children.
Come in around 9pm for the dinner & slap her around if it wasn't warm.
She couldn't leave me cause the priest wouldn't let her.
Great days indeed......

When I watch Reeling in the Years & see Dev with his bishop in tow advising him on moral matters I cringe.
At least this will never happen again, absolute power is a nasty thing.