Revisiting the Home at Tuam

Catholic blogger Caroline Farrow pushes back against the outrage over the Home at Tuam in Ireland, which I wrote about last week:

Ireland was in the grip of poverty, and rural Irish society was ruthless compared with our comfortable armchair perspective. Life was tough during the lean years of the economic wars between Britain and the Free State. . . .

The death rates from neglect, malnutrition and preventable diseases easily treated with antibiotics are undoubtedly shocking. No-one seeks to excuse them. With that in mind, the death rates in Tuam seem to be consistent with the death rates of illegitimate children throughout Ireland as a whole, which were 3 or 4 times that of legitimate children and double the death rates of illegitimate children in England and Wales.

This is all true, but so incomplete. The treatment of children in Ireland's church-run homes was often horrific, as a long list of recent revelations has shown. Sexual abuse was rampant, and the cover-up of egregious cases extended to the top of the church. Severe beatings were routine. I could draw up a long list of charges, but better to quote a statement on these homes by one of the church's own spokesmen:

There is no good in saying other than the truth. The church at this state has no credibility, no standing and no moral authority.

Farrow also complains that people are loading onto the church the sins of the whole society:

Reports from 1929 show that a special maternity ward for the unmarried mothers was added to the Home in Tuam. The reason for this is that married women and paying customers at the local district hospital in Connacht were unwilling to share their hospital facilities with the ‘misfortunates’.

This is also true. The gloomy repressive conservatism of Ireland from independence in 1922 until about 1960 was not imposed by the church, but eagerly sought by a wide swath of Irish society. Many people felt that independent Ireland should become a truly Catholic nation, and opposition to the church was attacked as treasonous or at least anti-Irish as well as sacrilege.

But is it an adequate defense of the church to say that it was no worse than the rest of the society? As Farrow says, in the case of unwed mothers the church was called on to do the dirty work of making them disappear so nobody else would have to think about them. But the church agreed; the church allowed itself to be made the enforcer of cruel moralism that visited condemnation on the children of unwed mothers.

A church truly devoted to the teachings of Jesus would have refused. A society less concerned with appearing more moral than the neighbors, and more concerned with doing the right thing, would never have treated these women or their children so badly.