Tuam: Women were just ignorant creatures full of nothing but sin and misery

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/tuam-women-were-just-ignorant-creatures-full-of-nothing-but-sin-and-misery

f you need to know how Tuam babies cases happened look no further than the attitude of the Irish church to women in the 20th century.



In 1909 Father David Barry wrote the following in a magazine called Irish Ecclesiastical Record:

“Allowing women the right to vote in Ireland is incompatible with the Catholic ideal of domestic life. It would fare ill with the passive, patience, meekness, forbearance and self-repression looked upon by the church as the special privilege of the female soul.”

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In 1957 a Catholic pamphlet ordered that:

“Catholic women, PRIVILEGED to be passive, patient, meek, restrained, tolerant and self-repressed, were to say this prayer daily,

“Have pity on me, O Blessed Virgin. Talk to God for me. Tell him I am a poor ignorant creature, full of nothing but sin and misery. I know the closer I come to Thy Son the nearer I must come to Calvary. I now accept, most willingly and lovingly, whatever trials, crosses, temptations, humiliations, afflictions and death that it may please Thee to send me. Do with me whatever Thou whilst, only grant me the grace of perfect resignation. Amen.”
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uam brings us back to a very sad place and time when women were powerless and celibate men made life decisions for them. To err in sexual matters was the greatest sin.

It didn’t matter whether the woman got pregnant by rape, incest or perhaps even a priest. All was never forgiven. Tuam was designed to be hell on earth for mother and blameless baby and it was. For mothers the usual exit was direct to the Magdalene laundries. For many of the babies it was death.