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…