Crocodile Tears Can't Wash Away Indelible Stain Left by Magdalenes

Irish Independent
February 7, 2013

www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/martina-devlin/crocodile-tears-cant-wash-away-indelible-stain-left-by-magdalenes-29053653.html

A council worker in the now derelict Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Magdalene Laundry in Dublin

WELCOME to the age of washing whites whiter. When stains show up on laundry day, we know just how to neutralise them – identify the perpetrators and start baying for heads on a platter.

Culprits are always other people, because Irish society never shares the blame for blots on the national reputation. Failures always happened without our knowledge or approval. And so, true to form, the default position is to round up the usual suspects following the Magdalene Laundries report.

You know the drill: the blame for the brutality of those workhouses can be laid entirely at the door of the Catholic Church, which moulded Ireland into a repressive place. The laundries are another example of the crushing hand of authoritarianism on the shoulders of women deemed dangerous, deviant or just plain inconvenient.

The Magdalene Laundries did, indeed, operate amid a narrow, self-reinforcing society: their harsh regime was indefensible during previous eras and remains indefensible today.

But they existed because citizens allowed it to be so. Their walls were high, but people entered laundries on business and closed their eyes to what they saw. The Catholic Church calls them fallen women? Then keep them apart before they pollute the community.

What happened behind laundry doors was known about, and acceded to. Society allowed girls and young women to be denied their freedom and used as forced labour: we collaborated in their dehumanisation.

Society played pass-the-parcel with their lives, shunting their care to religious congregations. Yet now we have the hypocrisy to cry: "Not in my name!" But it was done in our name: we knew it and kept silent. At least let's acknowledge our actions.

In Ireland today, the religious orders have become expedient scapegoats. Their reputations are at a historic low, with people willing to believe anything of them. But we are slow to examine our own consciences.

Where doubts prick, we point to servile politicians kissing bishops' rings and pandering to Rome Rule. The State collaborated in this human rights abuse, not us, we say. But we were part of the State. We re-elected those politicians.

Granted, the Catholic Church presided over a pitiless and unyielding ethos masquerading as Christianity, and psychological wounds were inflicted which continue to fester.

But its institutions can't be blamed for all of Ireland's ills: they didn't precipitate the economic collapse, surrender our sovereignty to the troika or sign off on those infernal promissory notes. You'd think they did, though, from the rush to load them with guilt for everything we find unacceptable.