IRELAND
National Catholic Register
Editor Brendan O’Neill says reports on the Secours Sisters’ St. Mary’s home for unwed mothers is ‘a mishmash of anti-Catholic prejudice, Irish self-hatred and the modern thirst for horror stories involving children.’
by CNA/EWTN NEWS 06/11/2014
DUBLIN, Ireland — Distorted claims about the burials of hundreds of children who died at an Irish home for unwed mothers show a trend of “exaggerations and myths” about injustices in the country’s Catholic past, one commentator charged.
The truth about the hundreds of children allegedly buried in a septic tank “was a very different story to the fact-lite, fury-heavy tale that had already gone round the world,” said Brendan O’Neill, editor of the current affairs magazine Spiked.
O’Neill made his remarks in a June 9 editorial about news coverage of the Bons Secours Sisters’ St. Mary’s home for unwed mothers, which operated in Tuam in the 20th century.
“Clearly this isn’t about news anymore; it isn’t a desire for facts or truth that elevated the crazed claims about Tuam up the agenda; rather, a mishmash of anti-Catholic prejudice, Irish self-hatred and the modern thirst for horror stories involving children turned Tuam into one of the worst reported stories of 2014 so far,” he said.
“The transformation of Ireland’s past into a cesspit of human wickedness that modern Irish historians and assorted Catholic-bashers can dip into in search for stuff to stand up their contemporary prejudices inevitably leads to the skewing of facts.”
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