10 June 2014

"The Home" -- the tip of the iceberg?

By now pretty much everyone who follows such news at all knows the story of "The Home" at Tuam, Ireland.  Women and girls who became pregnant as a result of sexual activity not in line with Catholic taboos, and their small children, were treated with utterly callous cruelty and neglect, starved and worked to death or let die of preventable diseases, despite the fact that the nuns were well subsidized by the Irish government for "taking care" of them, and also made good money from the children they forced into adoption.  The last indignity, and the clue that brought this history to light, was 800 corpses of small children dumped in a septic tank.  And this did not happen in the Dark Ages; "The Home" operated until 1961.

See this report at The Irish Examiner; more news and commentary is here.  Andrew Sullivan, though Catholic himself, has always been one of the most outspoken voices on the Church's crimes against children; his assessment is here, here, here, and here.  As has always been the case when such atrocities come to light, the Church's response has been craven ass-covering, spin, and minimization, throwing out every possible excuse and rationalization to snivel that it the evil it committed wasn't actually all that bad.

There are growing demands in Ireland for a government investigation of other such Catholic institutions, not just the one at Tuam.  There is no reason to think this one place was unique.  Who knows how many more places like this the Church was running in Ireland, or even in other countries where its prestige placed its actions beyond question?  Given what we already know about the utterly criminal nature of the Catholic Church, there is every reason to suspect the worst.

Make no mistake.  This happened because of the barbarism of religious taboo morality which subverts and replaces the natural humane morality we are born with and which would render normal people incapable of such cruelty toward innocents.  This happened because, as Sullivan forcefully points out, the Catholic Church is obsessed with sexual taboos and their enforcement above all else.  This happened because those who violated those sexual taboos, or who were born of violation of those taboos, were utterly dehumanized by the self-righteous.  If you are a "social conservative" or a defender of "traditional morality", then you are part of the problem, you are part of the mentality which causes things like this to happen.  That primitive taboo mentality inevitably brings forth cruelty and horror; it, and the religions of which it is the diseased essence and core, must be eradicated from the minds of our species.

10 Comments:

Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

Well done. The organization that committed these crimes against humanity, as Sullivan labeled these atrocities, still attracts adherents, and those who remain within the organization, to my knowledge, have not spoken out in horror over this latest cesspool of inhumanity.

The modern RCC tolerated and covered up the rape and abuse of children, and now we've found out that they enslaved girls and women for the crime of having become pregnant, and their babies were starved, abused, left to die in misery, and their bodies thrown into a septic tank. All this happened in our lifetime, not in the Dark Ages.

How many more crimes will this religious mafia get away with?

And I don't need to hear from defenders about the great charitable works this organization has performed. These monstrous crimes cancel all of that out, IMO.

10 June, 2014 05:52  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Shaw: And I don't need to hear from defenders about the great charitable works this organization has performed. These monstrous crimes cancel all of that out, IMO.

That gambit is always infuriating. If it turned out that Ted Bundy regularly donated to charity (which, for all I know or care, he might well have done), nobody would try to offset that against his crimes and say that on balance he wasn't such a bad guy. The case of the Catholic Church is no different.

10 June, 2014 06:06  
Anonymous Zosimus the Heathen said...

Actually, from what I've heard, a lot of criminal organizations do perform acts of charity, presumably for PR reasons (just to give an example off the top of my head, the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar was apparently very generous when it came to using his illicit wealth to help the poorer members of his community).

Re the Catholic Church's sexual taboos, and its bizarre obsession with enforcing them, that's one of the main reasons I can't ever see myself going back to the Church: just the fact that, while it may allow a surprising amount of moral wiggle room when it comes to a lot of dubious activities, it considers harmless actions like having a wank "intrinsically grave and disordered acts" that can never, EVER be justified, no matter what the circumstances.

As for this latest outrage, it just goes to show, once again, the breathtaking hypocrisy of many of those who consider themselves "pro-life". I've often wondered how many of those who consider themselves such also believe we should bring back the stigma against "illegitimate" children, with all the unpleasantness that that'd entail. ("Well, sure, we think you should be treated like shit, just because your parents weren't married, but, dammit, you have a right to the life of misery we have planned for you!")

10 June, 2014 08:48  
Blogger Ahab said...

THIS from an organization that trumpets its alleged love for the unborn up and down. THIS from an organization that forbids women from preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. The Catholic Church's hypocrisy is nauseating. It's time for less posturing and more humanity from this rotten institution.

10 June, 2014 13:40  
Blogger Jono said...

Very well put. I may want to quote you.

10 June, 2014 17:43  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Zosimus: Not surprising really. Any large and successful organization, even a criminal one, normally has a flair for PR.

The latest Pope has tried to fudge things a bit about the taboo morality, even bamboozling a certain number of liberals, but the underlying doctrines haven't changed. It would be better if they were just honest.

Ahab: The sudden end of their concern once a baby is born affirms that their forced-pregnancy obsession is really about controlling and punishing females, nothing else. In fact, it's time for the disappearance of this rotten institution.

Jono: Thanks. Please go ahead if you wish.

11 June, 2014 04:11  
Blogger Zarathustra said...

The Catholic Church can only be characterized in one way. It is a PLAGUE on the human race....

11 June, 2014 05:38  
Blogger Zarathustra said...

"No abortions allowed! We'll kill these worthless children later." That's Catholic 'morality' for you.

11 June, 2014 05:40  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

It is a PLAGUE on the human race....

At least the symptoms are becoming visible enough that our mental immune systems are building up a resistance to it.....

12 June, 2014 04:40  
Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

The scandal in Catholic Ireland is getting worse.

12 June, 2014 11:16  

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