Readers blog: Blame goes much further than Church in the mother-and-baby scandal

The Irish public are understandably seeking to apportion blame for Tuam and many other such cases in “Mother & Child Homes” and “Magdalene Laundries” throughout the country. 

Of course the Catholic Church has to bear responsibility for what happened – but they are not the only ones.

However, I’m sure that many will be unwilling to face the fact that responsibility also rests with those that the majority of the Irish public spent the whole of last year lauding and lionising ad nauseum.

They are the ones who, having replaced Royalty with the Catholic Church, proceeded to make the Church the senior partner in government, placing it in an unchallengeable and unanswerable all-powerful position in the State and in Irish society – with tragic consequences.

The Garda Síochána were also shamefully complicit in this whole affair, capturing Magdalene “escapees” and returning them to custody (although these unfortunates were never charged, tried or convicted of any offence in a court of law) in these religious gulags, sometimes to serve a life sentence.

Unfortunately, responsibility rests most heavily on the Irish people themselves, for no such outrages by any regime can be successfully perpetrated without the complicity of the people.

So, just as “we didn’t know what was happening” rang hollow in Germany in 1945, so it rings hollow for the Irish people who knew what was happening but said and did nothing.

They enabled and facilitated these horrific crimes against generations of Irish women and children, and in many cases condemned their own daughters, sisters and nieces to their fates.

Sad and shameful times for Ireland indeed.

Peter Keating

Newtown,

Charleville

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