UNITED STATES
WBUR
Tue, Jun 10, 2014
by Aine Greaney
I once met a fellow Irish expatriate who had spent more than 40 years living in Australia, where she had married, divorced, had kids and become a grandmother.
“You must like it there,” I said.
She shook her head. “No. It’s hard to like a country where so many bad things have happened to you.”
Her “bad things” included her marriage and ex-marriage to a nasty man.
These days, I feel the same way about my native Ireland. It’s hard to like or be proud of your own country, a country where bad things have happened: church-concealed child sexual abuse, women’s labor camps, a.k.a. Magdalene Laundries, and, now, 796 unconsecrated and unmarked baby graves. No, not ‘happened.’ These atrocities were perpetrated, ignored and criminally concealed. The victims? Women, children and the poor. The atonement? Little to none.
What does it take for a country to have or to acquire the morality, the humility and the will to atone for collective cruelties to its most vulnerable citizens?
Even if the national will or means were there, even if it could be orchestrated, how would Ireland carry out a reconciliation process? What does it take for a country to have or to acquire the morality, the humility and the will to atone for collective cruelties to its most vulnerable citizens?
I don’t know. But I do think that a formal separation of church and state would be a very good start. So would an end to the hypocritical set of laws that still mandates that 21st-century Irish women must travel overseas for legal, safe abortions.
As an Irish school girl and college student and, later, a young working woman, I did not get pregnant or have to abort or bear or give up an “illegitimate” child. This was not because I was pure or demure or had access to legal contraception. (A 1935 law banning the importation and sale of contraception in Ireland was on the books until 1980 for married people and until 1985 for single people over the age of 18. For married and single, access was at the discretion of the individual prescribing doctor (married) and individual pharmacist (condoms for single people).
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