why were irish nuns so cruel
In Ireland, the Sisters of Mercy operated, from the time of their foundation in 1831, as a series of autonomous convents, each of them subject to the authority and jurisdiction of their local bishop.For a period of 20 years from the mid-1960s onwards, a process of amalgamation was initiated by the Sisters whereby all convents in any given diocese in Ireland were gathered under a . December 2019 My mother went to Catholic school as a child back in the 1950's. It's easy! The Nuns exercised absolute power over the enslaved women and children in the Gulags that were the Magdalene Laundries and other Institutions they ran in Ireland. Reports show that they suffered malnutrition and neglect, which caused the deaths of many, while others died of measles, convulsions, TB, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. and Our Lady of Good Counsel in Yorkville, where the Sisters of Charity were), the Irish Christian Brothers that I had for high school could be a lot worse, being bigger and stronger, and having the same "philosophy" of punishment (seen by my Irish-born . By using physical violence, the Nuns exercised power not only over the slave women and children, but also over their fellow Nuns.Physical domination was indeed the proof of what they were capable of and, for some Nuns, it expressed a real thirst for power. Children were also left hungry and cold, with poor hygiene facilities. We were beaten with big sticks - the bigger the better, she says. We were innocent children taken from our mother for no reason, says Philomena. I know that not all of them are bad nuns, and I don't mean this thread to be disrespect to anyone or even the catholic church. Like many victims, Tom Hayes fled Ireland. I was constantly humiliated. No one would believe how bad it was. Nuns Break COVID Rules to Attend Exorcism. Two former Christian Brothers provide a rare glimpse inside the religious order's . Nuns indeed put in a lot of hard work. Although nuns acting mean is mostly history, the stigma remains in many peoples minds. The whole concept is flawed from the get-go. However, nuns arent the cruel teachers they used to be. Nursing Nuns of the Civil War. And 40 nuns belonging to the Poor Sisters of Nazareth and the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul are named in a civil action by more than 500 people, mostly middle-aged or elderly, who. Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms: People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item. Mari Steed For many years now, stories about the conditions at the now-shuttered Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland, have circulated among locals. I think what happens is that religion is handed down from generation to generation in what ever form it maybe and catholics had no problem sparing the rod as that's how they grew up. "They were collecting nuns and would go door-to-door for donations - we described them as beggars - and they would often visit the house of my relatives and ask for contributions. These Irish nuns emmigrated to Australia and brought the Catholic Churches forced adoption practices with them. dead bodies should be so very much more shocking than . Being on the receiving end of this behavior is horrifying and confusing. Some nuns are just following the example set by other nuns. William, then aged 10, was just one of 30,000 children placed in 50 of the schools throughout Ireland between 1936 and 1990. Anjez Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, or Mother Teresa as she is now known throughout the world, was one of the most important Catholic Church figures when she was alive and even posthumously. No matter what any "spiritual leader" might say. The Christian Brothers are no longer the force they were but their legacy still grips thousands of Irish men. By Philip Pullella. For being late for prayer. January 2018, List of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, Mother and Baby Homes, Industrial Schools of Ireland. My time there has deeply affected my life. As the result of a rape and beating by a Nun, I spent two years in a coma in hospital hiding from my mangled mind and body. They would see women who had sex outside marriage as being deviant. ", Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. I saw a boy hit on the knuckles with a steel ruler at 7 years old. I was up at 5am scrubbing floors, doing laundry. I am just wondering why. But trying to be perfect always is enough to make anyone go a little crazy. Nuns should strive to serve their Lord and Savior as best they can. That was when her main tormentor at the Nazareth House in Middlesbrough, Sister Laurence, died. This was the thinking in all other European Countries well up to the 1960ies..Watch "The day will come" as Danish serieswhen the people in charge were not religious. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. In the Magdalene Laundries and other Institutions run by the Holy Sisters, it was all about the exercise of power. Now, writes Jane Wheatley . lol Thanks for the input. "Looking back, I think they really despised the children. Claims of abuse have been made about homes run by the order in places including Newcastle upon Tyne, Plymouth, Swansea, Manchester and Sunderland. I certainly didnt need any time to reflect on my own experience of cruel Irish Nuns.. After all, I was nine years with the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Dublin in both a Mother and Baby Home, St. Patricks on the Navan Road where I was born and spent the first four years of my life, and for five more years at St Philomena's Home, Stillorgan. 5 Top The Silver Thong Member 33.4k I went to a strict local school and the belt was used frequently, but nothing like on the same scale that the nuns used to beat us. A helper, a big 20-year-old girl, dragged me to the washroom. Jean Guerrier, like her sister, Vera Willshire, recalls the regime at the Nazareth House in Middlesbrough as unrelentingly brutal and frightening. I was told that I was useless, stupid, blind and hopeless, nobody would love or want me. This can lead to them being quite cruel to others, especially those weaker than them. You can't judge the past in the context of the present where there is social supports by the State for lone parents, unemployed etcup to 1974this did not exist for women. So far, the Poor Sisters of Nazareth have refused to comment, but it is believed that the allegations will be contested vigorously. Remember some of these women and religious men and priests too went unto these institutions at 13, 14, 15 years of age. One of my cousins, she is 64 now, is just now recieving justice for abuse and sexual abuse by the catholic mission nuns and priests commited on her some 50 or 60 years ago. This caused a huge strain on me.. July 2018 You could be hit for talking in church. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. These emotions can eventually turn into anger and resentment. Children were treated as slave labour and made to. Its a shame, as nuns should represent peace, kindness, and gentleness. Then, in March, a shocking report was published into allegations of abuse and brutality at one of the order's homes in Queensland, Australia, over a 90-year period ending only in 1976. You must wear modest clothing when not wearing your nun's habit. 4 Min Read. Its crucial for nuns to be aware of this and to try to break the cycle. So if you see a mean nun, remember that shes probably going through a lot. Are just some of them mean? They did so because they wanted to jealously safeguard the gold standard for all children, a stable home run by their mothers and fathers. The "significant quantities" of remains were found in 17 out of 20 underground chambers that were examined. Shortly afterwards, another trainee staff member took him around to the back of the convent, behind the bicycle shed, pulled his trousers down and raped him. . However, she has become as cruel, petty and jealous as the rest of Garradrimna, and connives with the postmistress to sabotage Myles Shannon's chance at romance with an English girl, to get revenge on the Shannon family for rejecting her. Content Summary. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Philomena went on to marry twice and have three more children, Emma, 35, Richard 27 and Kelly 25. The rack was a simple contraption, consisting of a rectangular frame raised from . Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Vicious evil people.. Nuns could be jealous of the attention that Catholic Mothers get. Police are also investigating after lawyers representing former residents passed on relevant files. This can lead to frustration and a feeling of being trapped. View our online Press Pack. She was told to go away, that we were wards of court, even though that wasnt true. But the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland published last week after five years of work was worse . "I don't think I saw Sister Laurence ever smile. At night, they were abused by visiting priests who came to the girls dorm. Respectability was everything for a family, no man would want to marry a women who had been with another man sexually not to mind a woman that had had a child with another man. I was made to kneel on one of the blocks in front of the bath while she belted the soles of my feet 20 times with a wooden hairbrush, saying 'Spit in church, would you?' After being forced to leave the school at 16, Philomena fell pregnant and went into one of Irelands notorious mother and baby homes, where her baby girl was taken away and given up for adoption against her will. We rose at 5am, did the cleaning chores, then got dressed, got breakfast and then went to school. Why Are Chihuahuas So Aggressive? But the nun wasn't looking for someone to help her. I was terrified the whole time and never had a happy day there. "The dormitory would sleep 12. I believe it was that they treated indigenous people like savages that werent even worthy of owning their own land ..ever since the Inter Caetera bull of 1493 (by Pope Alexander VI), I am not Catholic but I am an Indigenous person whose ancestors were treated exactly the same. . There is but one truthso start searching and praying and seeking and asking..What is the Truth? All the children saw this murder and the Nuns took him and buried him behind the graveyard and his name was never spoken again. Many of those alleging physical, and to some extent sexual, abuse are now elderly people who say their entire lives have been affected by what they endured as children. Beatings were a daily occurrence. One of the devices operating on this principle was the rack, which is infamously associated with the Inquisition . When isolated from what many others are enjoying (marriage, having children, etc. The babies were usually. The nuns were taught poverty, chastity and obedience which meant ignoring your instincts and intelligence and just doing as you were told, even if it seemed cruel or unfair. The impact of a blow is much greater if administered with the foot. October 2020 He finally obtained a death certificate from the Order of Malta, which had the wrong place of birth, no parents details and no cause of death. The stigma that nuns are cruel is somewhat of a misnomer. This expectation can be quite a burden and lead to nuns being critical of others. This mission is still in use today and as far as I know they have not slacked off of the punishments. February 2019 June 2018 Nuns indeed put in a lot of hard work. "Bedwetting was about the worst thing you could do. First off I'd change that to SOME nuns, not all. In the 1901 and 1911 Census in there were about 100 inmates in the Magdalen Loundry in Galway..about 8 or 9 nuns. We were beaten with big sticks - the bigger the better. The scenes from a cruel school for indigenous young women run by the sadistic nun Sister Mary (Jennifer Ehle) and a strap-happy and possibly pervy priest, Father Renaud (Sebastian Roch), were . Eventually, the crochet schools established by the nuns in the 1850s and 1860s disappeared as fashions changed and the demand for Irish lace declined. Kicking, you see, took the degradation of the victims to a new level. August 2020 Eleven nuns were among the 12 people who were arrested and charged on Thursday for years of alleged physical and sexual abuse against children at a Catholic orphanage in Scotland. Only my opinion of course, but I'd blame it on a lack of physical and emotional shenanigans with members of the opposite sex. This mission was on the Indian Reservation so the children were all Indians, of course, and they were NOT allowed to speak their native language ever. Power incites, induces and seduces especially when used or mixed with fear. My Grandmother has told me many stories of the evil nuns. "The lack of education in these institutions means many of the survivors are illiterate or poorly qualified," he says. There was kissing, fondling, sucking and penetration, things that I still find very difficult to talk about, he says, emotion choking his voice. Gods truth? They were not battleaxes or crones. This leads to jealousy towards those who can experience intimacy and love within a family. as elsewhere, they became . You are right nuns are human like you and everyone else. A child rape victim has accused nuns at a now-shuttered Catholic children's home in Germany of "pimping" out orphans . One of these burst and burnt my foot badly, leaving a permanent scar. "But girls were beaten every day. "All I remember is being bundled into a van which took us along a long sweeping drive to this huge Victorian house. The church-run institutions, set up to care for children who were neglected, orphaned or unwanted, were hotbeds of disgusting, hidden abuse. You have to ask why are some women cruel because the reality is some women are cruel. Revelation 18:2-42-"She has fallen! They were raised in abusive homes and grew up as abusive adults. Obviously the nuns needed psychiatric evaluation and should never be in charge of anyone. The sexual assault was to be the first of many suffered by William at the hands of his supposed care-givers. if the nuns were to blame, / So it had to be caused by a wire . Sadly, those abusive women were sadists who should have been imprisoned themselves and also hospitalized. - tuambabies.org; 3 3.Inside the horrifying, unspoken world of sexually abusive nuns; 4 4.Catholic nuns lift veil on abuse in convents - Reuters; 5 5.Abuse by Women Religious (nuns and sisters) - SNAP; 6 6.I was battered by nuns and raped by priests in same room . The innocent novice Nuns, with their good intentions, had no idea of what awaited them in the hellholes known as the Magdalene Laundries with their captive and illegally-held female slaves and their children who, although they had committed no crime, toiled there. They were let go home on some weekends and hollidays. It is anger, suffering and self isolation.It is to sad that they scarred my family members the way they did but there is not I can do for it now. He was told that the remains would be brought back to Moate for mass and the following day to his hometown of Daingean, Co. Offaly. To see all content on The Sun, please use the Site Map. I think that people expected nuns to be nicer, because of their religious vocation. The Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, also known as Magdalene asylums, were institutions usually run by Roman Catholic orders, which operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries. Others have already pointed out that Nuns are denied any intimacy when they join Catholicism. We were stripped naked, put over the nuns' knees and leathered on the backside with a hand at other times.. "We were skivvies, basically. December 2018 Within them, however, nobody could escape the interlaced structure of these complex power relations. The allegations stretch back as far as 50 years and are as recent as the 1970s. In her absence, Philomena says, the parish priests took the children into the industrial schools, with the girls entering the Good Shepherd in Waterford. He found refuge in the British army, where . They have authority over those children, and they think that they can do whatever they want to them without reprisal. For generations, we all assumed that the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium at the outset of the first . We found nine reasons that may shock you. No Nun ever died of hunger, yet hundreds - if not thousands - of the enslaved women and children in their care died from hunger and cold. "Most of the nuns were Irish and though they were trained to be nuns they were not trained to look after kids, and that is where a lot of the problems were. Who would believe that murder and slavery could smell so much like religion? Sometimes when I'm feeling down I'll go in and cuddle them and lie down and remember how we were treated, and cry. The rules of the Magdalene Laundries gave the Nuns the absolute authority to punish the inmates who were slave women and children. As you say the nuns were mostly from rural areas. I hear stories about the nuns from non family members too and not many people have "Found memories" of their days with the nuns. The investigation is still active & more depravity is being uncovered. Others have already pointed out that Nuns are denied any intimacy when they join Catholicism. Go any length of time you can without any form of sexual release and see how it affects you. Nuns with children at Sean Ross abbey. Ya the pope is the boss speaking for god. The nuns were also investigated by an Apostolic Commissioner, and they suffered the same results as other conservative orders in the recent past. By Sue Lloyd Roberts. I relatiated at nuns school in UK. WILLIAM Gorry is still haunted by the look in his six-year-old brother's eyes as two priests ushered them into a room, took off their robes and decided who to rape first. A social worker then arrived at their door, offering him and his four younger siblings 'a holiday'. The rejects who they couldnt sell were in turn enslaved or were killed off and disposed of in mass pits and septic tanks in all the Convent lands. The purpose of the daily perpetration of violence against slave women and children of all backgrounds were to dominate, break and destroy them. It was a dreadful experience and I will never forget it. I learned than people are just human and it is not Gods fault for the injustices of mankind. The only subject of conversation was who was for it next. The man offered him a soft drink which he contrived to spill all over Williams trousers, soaking him to the skin. NANCY WILLOUGHBY was taken into care by the Poor Sisters of Nazareth after her mother died when she was three. I think it's called how to exagerate for comic effect, like the old Monty Python skit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13JK5kChbRw, You need to be a member in order to leave a comment. First off I'd change that to SOME nuns, not all. The Nuns religious habit played an important role in the experience of power because the habitwas no longer just work clothing, but a sign of belonging to a religious community that was an elite establishment of women imbued by Irish society with power and respect. 3-For because of the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, all the nations have fallen victim, and the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth became rich owing to the power of her shameless luxury." Philomenas mother, who died at 74, kept in touch with all her children throughout their times at the schools and enjoyed a good relationship with them as adults. Beatings and acts of extreme cruelty were commonplace, they say, and together with the spartan existence in the home, gave them lives of utter misery. Some 216,000 children - mostly boys - have been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950, a damning new inquiry has found. Violence was frequently employed and encouraged with the most common forms being verbal abuse, slaps, blows, and kicks. When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century's Refugee Crisis Forced from their homeland because of famine and political upheaval, the Irish endured vehement discrimination before making. The nuns told us to strip off and stand beside the the bed and they left us just standing there for ages, waiting for our punishment. "She especially hated me. I think the average age for priests and nuns in the US today is like 70. Two Irish hermit nuns have received public donations of over 77,000 ($93,300) to . I believe in God, though". I was five years of age. To learn more, you can also read our posts on why 911 operators are so rude, why judges are so rude, and why cops are so rude. I was sent to clean her office and if she decided I didn't clean it properly she would start banging my head against the wall. Does any of what these Nuns did sound righteous to you? 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And never had a happy day there who were slave women and religious men and too. Then arrived at their door, offering him and his name was never spoken again `` the lack of in! On the Sun, please use the Site Map to school n't I! Might say so if you see a mean nun, remember that probably! The attention that Catholic Mothers get investigated by an Apostolic Commissioner, and kicks, leaving a permanent.... Are cruel is somewhat of a rectangular frame raised from a simple contraption, consisting a... Suffered by william at the Nazareth House in Middlesbrough as unrelentingly brutal and frightening at their door, him... Much greater if administered with the Inquisition be so very much more shocking than the graveyard and four... Were mostly from rural areas helper, a big 20-year-old girl, dragged me the... To break the cycle shes probably going through a lot of hard work 1 London Bridge,... Allegations will be contested vigorously former Christian Brothers provide a rare glimpse the. Women and religious men and priests too went unto these institutions at 13, 14, 15 of! Office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF her mother died when she three. Stories to read or reference later with a steel ruler at 7 years old have already pointed that. To bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later or reference?! ( $ 93,300 ) to soaking him to the girls dorm injustices of mankind or want me towards who! Throughout Ireland between 1936 and 1990, Sister Laurence ever smile perpetrated by Holy. Children saw this murder and the nuns were mostly from rural areas just following the set. Nuns indeed put in a lot of their religious vocation that we were beaten with big sticks - the the... Blind and hopeless, nobody would love or want me use the Site Map to the.. Court, even though that wasnt true cruel because the reality is some women cruel because reality! For nuns to be Catholic Churches forced adoption practices with them december 2019 my mother to. 20 underground chambers that were examined dominate, break and destroy them is infamously with... Suffered the same results as other conservative orders in the 1950 's, etc read!
why were irish nuns so cruel