Paying the price for church misdeeds

MUCH is being made — properly so — of the abuse of human rights of the mothers, children and orphans who were incarcerated in Magdalene homes run by the churches and facilitated by the State.

Society agreed with this, as is evidenced by the visiting committees of respectable gentry and nobility and donations made, etc.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost, with the proper demand for retribution and compensation — if money could ever make up for their loss — by those who suffered and are alive. There is confusion as to who was responsible, because of how church and state acted. Last November, the Irish Human Rights’ Commission (IHRC) held a one-day seminar to address the issue of the human right of any child to receive schooling in any publicly-funded school without being indoctrinated in a religion — a specific constitutional right — and more. Since the collusion of church and state in 1971 to bring out a “new curriculum” infused with religious beliefs for use in all national schools, in place of the separate provision of religious instruction as first practised, this right has been subverted by both church and state and tolerated by society, which is unsurprising as nearly all are the product of the same schooling. The Whittaker Commission on the Constitution (1996) judged current practice as unconstitutional. The abuse of children’s rights in national schools will eventually be a cause for litigation by a child who perceives herself to have been damaged by it. The whole business is uncannily similar to the treatment meted out by Magdalene homes: it involves church interests; the human rights of some citizens are totally subjugated in a discriminatory way for institutional church gain; the Establishment are complicit in this; most people accept it as part of our culture; there is likely to be legal action by one of the intellectually abused children (the description of a professional submission to the IHRC); and there will be confusion, when action is taken, as to who is to blame, but the taxpayer will surely pay as those responsible slink away.