One More Post on the Tuam Home

In the Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole gets to the heart of what was so sinister about the Irish homes for unwed mothers:

The church’s genius was that it both generated the shame and controlled the secrets that resulted from it.

The people who ran these homes worked to create an aura of secrecy and mystery around them. For example, letters sent from some of the homes were carried to London and postmarked there, as if the senders were living in London; but since it was an open secret that this was done, you had to wonder if every woman who wrote home from London might really be in a home for unwed mothers. The secrecy was all bound up with the terrible shame, not just of being an unwed mother or an illegitimate child, but of having one in your family. Nor was this some small operation:

Catholic Ireland locked up in mental hospitals, industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and mother-and- baby homes an astonishing 1 per cent of its entire population.

These days thousands of Irish women slip over to Britain every year for secret abortions; when Irish marriages fall apart, one partner or the other also leaves the country. Nobody seems to mind very much, as long as the public appearance of Catholic morality is maintained.