From empire’s rule to the vice-like grip of Rome: Irish did Church’s bidding over Tuam

THE Ryan and Cloyne reports into child abuse in the Catholic Church could be seen in simple black and white terms: It was easy to loathe the abusers and the parish priests and bishops who colluded to protect them, to shudder at how bereft and powerless the child victims were, and at the torment of parents when they learned what had gone on around them.

But, following Martin McAleese’s Magdalene report last year, the lines began to blur. We saw that 25% of women sent to the laundries had been referred by an arm of the State, 8.8% by priests, and a notable 10.5% by families. We saw how Church, State, and families were complicit in subjugating, degrading, and dehumanising young girls who had fallen foul of Catholic and therefore societal, norms.

The uproar about conditions in mother-and- baby homes over the past number of weeks has underscored this theme — with the finger increasingly pointed at the families and communities that wanted these pregnant women and their babies out of view; who shoved crying girls through the front door of these homes in the dead of night, expected them to feed, care for, and love a child for a year and then to hand their child to a stranger without question.