IRELAND
The Age (Australia)
June 12, 2014
Martin Flanagan
Sports Writer for The Age
I’ve never been to Tuam on the west coast of Ireland, although I have climbed the mountain further west called Croagh Patrick.
Croagh Patrick was an ancient pagan site, people climbing it to celebrate the summer equinox. Then Saint Patrick came along and fasted for 40 days and nights on its summit and claimed the mountain for his God. Irish pagan spirituality has a strongly female side. The Roman Catholic church which arrived around the 5th century was, and is, solely male in its lumbering hierarchy.
In the 1840s, Ireland’s population was halved by a terrible famine; in its wake, the grip of the Roman Catholic church intensified. During the 20th century, Ireland’s long-time leader Eamon De Valera embodied the notion that the Roman Catholic church was central to the identity of the poor, deeply conservative nation.
Like many others, I shuddered upon hearing the story that 800 babies had allegedly been found in a septic tank beside a former ‘‘Mothers and Babies’’ home in Tuam. The deaths occurred between 1925 and 1961 in the home for unmarried women and their illegitimate offspring.
A furious battle is now being fought, in Ireland and elsewhere, over the detail of the Tuam story. Some extremely angry Irish voices want an international body such as the United Nations to investigate, because they trust neither church nor state. Others say the whole matter has been misleadingly reported. One of only two witnesses to have seen inside the septic tank (in 1975) has said he saw no more than 20 bodies.
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