IRELAND
Irish Independent
MAEVE SHEEHAN – 23 FEBRUARY 2014
OVER generations, bishops and their clergy helped to shape a society that banished women to Magdalene Laundries, sent troubled and impoverished children to industrial schools and shielded paedophile priests. Babies born out of wedlock were shipped abroad for adoption and unmarried teachers who got pregnant outside of marriage were sacked.
As the novelist LP Hartley wrote, the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there, right?
While the Catholic Church and the organisations within it may have apologised for past sins, in many ways, they are still refusing to share collective responsibility for the failings of the past.
When Judge Yvonne Murphy began her long investigation into child abuse by priests in the Dublin archdiocese, she soon discovered that one of the biggest obstacles to her work was the very organisation she was investigating.
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