Just saw "The Magdelene Sisters' and my question is....

[jbane]

Why in the hell is ANYONE still Catholic. Between that kind of shit and all the priest abuse scandals and their cover up. It's not that far from the Taliban. I don't mean to offend any Catholics, it's your choice, it just seems as if your church has a lot of long standing problems.

[TheGunslinger]

1. Should all Republicans disavow conservatism because of *?

You need to separate the message from the messenger.

[benburch]

7. Yes!

** reveals the actual truth of conservatism.

[NashVegas]

2. Well ...

That's more an Irish or Irish-Catholic situation than a Catholic situation in general. At least, until we hear about these traps existing in other places.

For the record, if there's anyone on DU who has a bone to pick with the Church, it's me. I left the institution as a teen. Yes, it IS a repressive atmosphere and there are no excuses that can be made regarding the Church's treatment of female sexuality - human sexuality in general - but most countries with a strong Catholic populace don't actually go around grinding young women into the dirt the way the Magdalene laundries and the consenting community did.

[LostinVA]

6. Agreed -- and I'm an ex-RC, too

There are plenty of wonderful religious in the Church, who do the best of good deeds every day of their life... and get little in return. I have a problem with the Church, but not with most serving the Church. The huge majority of priests aren;t pedophiles, and the majority of sisters are women who work their asses off (and get arrested and sent to prison for protesting nuclear arms!).

[NashVegas]

9. I Just Did Some Googling

There were other Magdalene or Magdalene-type confinement houses in some other countries, notably Australia. Pretty bad, but not quite as bad as what went down in Ireland. In other places, the houses shut down long before the Irish ones.

Although the Irish houses were the chief problem, I'm rethinking my above post. Yes, the Irish people were complicit, and the governments in the towns where these places existed, for keeping a blind eye. But ultimately the Church, as an institution, does bear responsibility for what its little shepherds were doing.

And none of these women, from the resources I looked at, have seen any reparation.

[rosesaylavee]

3. I'm not Catholic either and I don't know about

your reference made to the 'The Magdelene Sisters'. I DO know that the Catholic priests do not have a monopoly on child abuse... it is a problem with our culture as a whole when we can't leave our children alone wiht a trusted authority figure. Period.

Most churches and institutions are now recognizing this and making sure that there are always two adults with children at all times to prevent crimes such as these.

For those that have been abused, the likelihood that the abuse will continue through them to another generation is almost assured... We need to address the problem head on - not piecemeal as we are right now. Punishment for crimes is one thing - counseling for victims needs to be increased IMO.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

4. Not that far from the Taliban?

Hmmm. When I hear about the Church holding public stonings and massacring ethnic enemies in their beds (I'm talking this century now) then I'll go there with you. Or when they demand women live in bags. Heck, nuns show more skin in full habit than a burqua allows.

Their dogma is certainly strict but they don't force anyone to play their game. That's the big difference. Catholicism is still voluntary.


spelling edit

[rosesaylavee]

5. Found this re Magdelene Sisters...

http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/new/pressrelease/072203MagdeleneSisters.htm

Washington, DC—Conscience, the hard hitting newsjournal of Catholic opinion, gives high praise to The Magdalene Sisters, a new film by Peter Mullan that has been denounced by the Vatican as an “angry and rancorous provocation.” Having won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, The Magdalene Sisters opens in major US cities on August 1 and nationwide on August 15. The film tells the story of three girls in Ireland who are sent to the Magdalene laundries where women accused of sexual sins (being raped, flirting with boys, and having a baby while unmarried) were banished to a lifetime of servitude during the 20th century.

In her illuminating review in Conscience entitled “Lifting the Lid on Catholic Totalitarianism,” Ruth Riddick, noted Irish writer, reviewer and women’s health advocate, states: "Mullan unapologetically confronts the Catholicism of the time …. This is the Ireland where 30,000 women were imprisoned in Magdalene laundries, literally washing the country’s dirty linen (clerical and lay), their babies taken for largely undocumented adoption by Catholic families at home and in the US, their exhausted bodies laid to final rest in unmarked graves, until the last of these church-run institutions closed in 1996 …. This Ireland, obsessed with sexual sin, may be unfamiliar to American audiences nostalgic for the Hibernian myth."

The Vatican condemned the film in its newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in which its art critic, Father Franco Patruno, wrote, “If he wanted to inform his own church . . . about the scandal of certain psychopathic detention centers in Ireland and Scotland, the director certainly could not have achieved his goal with this angry and rancorous provocation.”

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, viewed the film and stated: Contrary to the Vatican and the right wing, The Magdalene Sisters is a remarkably restrained portrayal of the emotional and physical abuse suffered by Irish women who were imprisoned by church authorities when they simply did not fit the image of good girls that the church, their parents and a repressive society was most comfortable with. The film is a testament to the courage women worldwide have shown in the face of sexual abuse. The fact that Vatican officials do not see this and denounce the film rather than the sickness and corruption it exposes is further evidence that church authorities do not have the capacity to end the numerous problems of abuse within the church—whether it be the sexual misconduct of priests who abuse children or a structure that relegates women to second-class citizenship throughout their lives.


____________________________________________________________________
My response is - 1996???? That wasn't too long ago. This is a modern day abuse of women.

[terip64]

8. I can't be catholic in good faith anymore.

When my 19 year old daughter was recieving her first confession my mother leaned over and said,"that's father McSomething, he was brought up on sexual harrassment charges." Wonderful. I am ashamed to say that I still had my children go through the church and get first communion, confirmed, etc. I did it for my parents and my husbands parents.

I stopped pushing it on my kids about 7 years ago. My youngest son,14, just came home and said he might want to start going to youth group at the catholic church, maybe even get confirmed. I said no, you can go to youth group, but you are not getting confirmed. I sat him down and explained the newest attack on gay priests and then backed up and explained so much else. He read Angels and Demons, so he gets it.

I saw this movie and I wish I could say that I was shocked by it. When the whole sex scandel hit the church I was not shocked. Anyone who grew up Catholic and went to Catholic church knew how corrupt it was and I suspect still is.

I can not in good conscience be a member of the Catholic Church. How sad!

[pacalo]

10. I saw this movie for the first time last year & it left me speechless.

For those who haven't seen it, here's the trailer: Magdalene Sisters Trailer

The movie is set in Ireland during the 1960’s & it’s about how young girls who were pregnant or simply perceived to be promiscuous or too flirtatious were sent to work as slaves in a profit-making laundry run inside a convent. The movie concentrates on 4 main characters, which were based on actual accounts of life in the convent.

The movie begins with 3 separate examples of persecution that led to being sent to the convent. The first girl was raped by her male cousin, who betrayed her trust when he led her into a coat closet during a family wedding. Very upset after the rape, she immediately confided the situation to a female family member, who then confronted the male cousin, then the girl’s father. The scene shifts to the following morning, when the dad wakes her by addressing her as “You. Get out of bed & get dressed, then come downstairs at once.” She was then sent away in a waiting car.

The second example was a girl in a hospital who had just had a baby. It was clear she adored the baby, but her mother, who was in the room by the girl’s bedside, refused to even look at the baby. She just sat there stone-faced while the daughter pleaded for her to look at the pretty baby. The dad came to get her & led her down the hall where a priest was waiting with adoption papers. She was then taken to the convent.

The third girl, a pretty brunette, lived in an orphanage. There was a set of twin girls, around 11 or 12 years old, who adored her & enjoyed brushing her hair as much as they liked the pretty hairbrush itself. The twins playfully fought over who would brush the girl’s hair.

At recess, the girl was talking to a group of boys who were hanging from outside the playground’s large iron fence. They seemed to be boy orphans. The girl enjoyed their attention but did nothing to encourage them; in fact, she playfully rebuffed their flirtations. A female orphanage official came to the fence to shoo the boys away, but they returned when the coast was clear. The recess bell rang but the girl continued to talk to the boys. The scene cut to a shadowy figure watching the girl talking to the boys through the building’s upstairs window. The following scene shows the girl’s bed, with all the bedding removed, mattress curled up, with the girl’s hairbrush & other small belongings left strewn under the bed. Sadly, the twin girls tried to outrace the other to get to the abandoned hairbrush first. Life goes on in the orphanage when someone leaves; sadly, relationships are easily forgotten.

It’s not easy to find a movie that can still leave me speechless, but this one did. The girls were severely punished for acts that weren’t punishable, but the real horrors were shown inside the convent. The examples I described above took up about only the first 20 minutes of the movie, & the rest of the movie concentrated on the nuns’ inhumane treatment of the girls.

[kskiska]

13. I'm old enough to remember those Catholic homes for unwed mothers

back when girls had to leave school if they became pregnant. There was one in Hartford, CT - St. Agnes'. Girls were sent there by their families to await the birth of their babies to avoid the embarrassment of remaining in their communities. The babies would be signed away for adoption. After seeing this movie, I'm sure they were strong-armed into signing. I doubt any girls left with their child.

[pacalo]

14. It was my first time learning about these Catholic homes.

What struck me most about the movie was the inhumane treatment of these girls by the nuns. It was my first time hearing about Catholic homes for "wayward" girls & I was literally stunned by the time the movie ended. Before this, the worst thing I had heard about nuns was my husband's story about when he got tied to his desk in Catholic school when he was in the second grade.

One thing that sickened me in the movie was the priest who took advantage of the simpleminded girl on a regular basis. Here these girls were, shunned by society & placed in a home where they were intended to be "cleansed" through penitence, & this priest is abusing his position of moral authority by having this girl perform oral sex.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. I left the Church 50 years ago when that priest told me

that "God works in mysterious ways". The catch-all answer to any logical question.

My wife, after 60 years of trying to overlook the long history of B.S. finally had enough with the cover-up of the priest abuse mess.

[Cleita]

17. Well, I left as soon as I could get out of Catholic school.

They kept telling me I was going to Hell because I was always questioning many of the things they held sacrosanct. Hell sounds fine to me as long as I don't have to see any of them again.

[hedgehog]

12. Father Andrew Greeley has made several comments on this

to the effect that it was more a reaction to the Famine than to anything the Church said. It was a way of ensuring that no child was born unless it had a mother and father able to care for it. Part of the code was that the oldest son married only when his parents died and he inherited the farm, often waiting until he was 40 or 50 and marrying a young girl. The younger siblings emigrated. Marriages were arranged to bring farms together, not lovers. These strict sexual mores fell away in recent years as Ireland grew more prosperous. You wouldn't believe the changes that have taken place in the last 40 years in terms of personal wealth.

Ireland was very much a theocracy until recent years. The irony is that in recent years so many Irish have left the Church. I wonder what lies ahead for other theocracies such as Iran? Separation of CHurch and state protects both CHurch and State.

[Cleita]

15. This is what you get when one religion dominates all

aspects of life in a country. Ireland was pretty much dominated by the Catholic Church until recently.

[jonnyblitz]

16. the scary thing is how long those "laundries" remained open.

the last one was closed in the 90's if I remember correctly. some of the most liberal people I know are still catholic btw. I believe catholicism runs the gamut from far left to far right. liberation theology is damn near communist. you just saw one aspect of catholicism in that movie. I am the last person to pick up for any religion, btw. I am a pretty militant atheist and have no use for any version of any religion for myself.

[Cleita]

18. Well, I found out that how liberal a Catholic you could be

depended on how much you donated to the Church and how much the parish and diocese depended on your donation. If you were part of the system it wasn't liberal at all. I know. I spent a good part of my early life in Catholic boarding schools living with various religious orders.

[jonnyblitz]

20. that's interesting! I just know catholics run the gamut from left

to right and I don't find it shocking there are liberals who are still catholic despite the crazy stuff that has happened within the church.

[Cats Against Frist]

19. I totally agree with you

Some people aren't going to like it, but I get pissed off with this "liberal Catholic" thing. The Catholic Church exists as a self-defining hierarchy. There's no "gray area." You're either Catholic, or you're not. You agree with the church, or you don't -- but, if you don't, you're not Catholic -- you're a CINO (Unless, maybe you're in Central America, and you're all candomblome, or something -- but really, you're still not Catholic). And, some of the most rigid, fascist, patriarchal religious thinkers come out of the hard right Catholic faction -- everyone thinks that the religious right is the Evangelical faction. They're child's play, compared to the writings of the Catholic right.