IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
A Vatican submission last December to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) made three significant statements of fact that are inaccurate.
One such statement, as reported in this newspaper last week, was its claim the four religious congregations which ran Magdalene laundries in Ireland were willing to pay part of a compensation scheme developed by the State for women who had been in the laundries.
Compensation scheme
This was untrue, but prompted Minister for Justice Alan Shatter to write to Rome seeking clarification. Since then, two of the congregations, the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity, have repeated their refusal to contribute. All four, including the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, said last summer they would not be doing so.
However, it has emerged it was inaccurate of the Vatican to say it didn’t use the term “illegitimate” when referring to children and didn’t promote the corporal punishment of children. The 1983 Code of Canon Law for the Catholic Church states (Canon 1137) “children conceived or born of a valid or putative marriage are legitimate”. Canon 1138.2 states “children born at least 180 days after the day when the marriage was celebrated or within 300 days from the day of the dissolution of conjugal life are presumed to be legitimate”.
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