The Magdalene Asylums

I know I'm really late in viewing
the film The Magdalene Sisters, but
just rented and watched it....
What "religious" people have done in the
name of God to other people is just
sickening. This is just one example.

If you haven't seen this film, you
really must. Here's one article about
it...but googling brings up more:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/madg-s01.shtml

The heartless of a heartless world
The Magdalene Sisters, written and directed by Peter Mullan
By Joanne Laurier
1 September 2003

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world”—Marx

Five years ago in Dublin, Ireland, an order of nuns sold off part of its convent to real estate developers. On that property the remains of 133 women buried in unmarked graves were discovered. It turned out that the women had been incarcerated by the Catholic Church to work as virtual slave laborers in institutions known as Magdalene Asylums.

The asylums were a network of laundries named after Mary Magdalene, who, according to Christian theology, was a prostitute turned devout follower of Christ. The Magdalene Asylums were set up in the 19th century, first as homes to rehabilitate prostitutes and then as industrial orphanages in response to the growth in the number of abandoned children resulting from the devastating Potato Famine of the middle and late 1840s. By the early 20th century, their role was expanded to function as workhouses for women who in a variety of ways had offended the country’s moral code. Run by the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland, the asylums functioned as commercial laundries, financing the order’s operations.

Under pressure from the Church and its archaic mores, families sent daughters who were deemed wayward to the asylums. The girls were brutalized and worked long hours every day but Christmas, for no pay. The choice of work was not accidental. Called “Magdalenes,” or penitents, the inmates were intended to scrub away their sins by scrubbing clean the dirty laundry from orphanages, churches, prisons and local businesses. Many of the women were so broken in spirit and isolated from the outside world that they chose asylum labor over leaving the institutions, some remaining until they died. The Catholic Church in Ireland indentured more than 30,000 women and girls in the Magdalene Asylums. Amazingly, the last one was not closed until 1996.

Inspired by a British television documentary aired in 1998, called “Sex in a Cold Climate,” Scottish actor-director Peter Mullan (lead performer in Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe and director of Orphans) wrote and directed The Magdalene Sisters.

Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2002 Venice Film Festival, the film predictably caused a stir at the Vatican and among Italian cinema industry officials. The right-wing Berlusconi government had recently overhauled the Venice festival, aiming to prevent the rewarding of antiestablishment works that would generate controversy. One Catholic media figure commented: “It’s a bizarre signal that the first festival of the center-right government has chosen to honor a professedly anticlerical film.”

continued

It is proof that the catholic church can do "EVIL" in the name of the lord. I honestly believe all religious organization have done done evil in the name of a god in one way or another.

These "asylums" really are like Gitmos
except I doubt that the residents of Gitmo
are making articles to sell at Macy's.

I'm sure that if there was another buck
to make out of Iraq and Afghanistan
prisoners Halliburton would find a way.

It's not the Catholic Church doing evil in the name of the Lord-It's people doing evil in the name of the Church and the Lord.

is the same thing. I believe the ideas and message are being used by such people in such created.

It's not the Catholic Church doing evil in the name of the Lord-It's people doing evil in the name of the Church and the Lord.

The people who perpetuated the system were priests and nuns, as well as the laity. Heck, even the government and police force enforced the Magdalene system. I don't think you can exempt the Catholic church anymore than you can exempt the government of Ireland or the families who forced their daughters into those places. There's plenty of guilt to go around for everyone here.

as punishment for recieving the attention of some older boys at mass. i had no idea what i had done wrong and was amazed at the rage my mother was showing me. seeing this film all these years later was a heartfelt experience. my mother did what she thought her god had instructed her to do. tyranny.

I know San Francisco had a laundry asylum
also, so this was more international than
people might think.

i spent eight years in a school taught by nuns, and could tell you countless stories of horrific child abuse. the more they tried to break what i consider my spirit, the more defiant i became. today im proud to call myself "born again savage"

country, and what has happened in countless tyrannical situations throughout history.

That is, a small group of determined and ruthless people can easily intimidate and dominate a large group of people.

One of the saddest aspects of the film was that the women had no sense of solidarity. The older inmates helped the nuns keep the younger women "in line." When the one woman was freed by her brother on Christmas Day, she didn't go to the press or file a lawsuit for false imprisonment. When the nun was making the women line up naked so that she could make cruel comments about their bodies, they could have overpowered her, but they stood there and took the humiliation. When the two escaped at the end, again, they didn't help anyone else escape, and they didn't publicize their ordeal.

A couple of "prison riots" in that situation might have convinced the nuns that keeping slave labor was more trouble than it was worth. After all, the women were not sent there by the judicial system, so there was no legal reason why they had to stay.

It reminded me of stories of Mao's Red Guards, when a couple dozen teenagers could terrorize schools or factories containing hundreds of people. It was literally years before anyone resisted, and soon after the first resistance, mounted by a group of factory workers, Mao called off the Red Guards.

I don't know the psychological term for it,
but you know...like in the scene of one of the
"inmates" who finds the garden gate unlocked,
steps outside, actually talks to a man in
a car who offers her a ride and she just
stands there, declines and goes back into the
asylum...

the bishop paused, and gave me this LOOK, at my confirmation?

My confirmation name is Mary Magdalene; it is the name of the church I was baptized in. Suffice it to say that I was the *only* MM out of many Marys, Maries, Theresas and Bernadettes.

that I think must be among God's greatest sorrows for us. :cry:

I haven't seen it. Does anyone know if it's repeating anytime soon?

The next showing is on Starz Classic at 11PM (Central time) on St. Patrick's Day!

"The Magdalene Laundries"

http://www.netreach.net/~steed/joni.html

And the worst part was, it was the story of only a handful of girls over a brief period of time. How many poor innocent women were treated like that over the centuries?

The Vatican reaction is not surprising, though. Official church policy on virtually any horrible action is to deny, deny, deny, blame the victims, deny some more, and finally, decades to centuries later, offer up some sort of milquetoast "apology."

I don't know if that was worldwide or
just in that laundry prison.

And how many died like that older woman in the movie, alone and told to "just die and get it over with."

if possible. I got it on sale at Fry's for less than $15, I think.

The DVD contains the original BBC documentary the movie is based on, "Sex In A Cold Climate."

You get to hear from the REAL women who were depicted in the movie. It's just heartbreaking.

One girl really was sent there just because she was pretty. She didn't have any idea why she got shipped off to that awful place. Another found the son she was forced to abandon, after years of searching the Catholic orphanage system.

And one said she has never been to any church since she escaped from the Magdalenes.

Crap like this makes me SO happy to be an atheist...