The Roman Catholic Church

[Orfuln]

Following the death of Sinead O'Connor.

Obviously the acts and crimes of this church are vast and can't be contained to one place. But in honour of a great woman, if you find it in yourself, give your testimony here.

Mine : my father was institutionalised, brutalised and brainwashed in childhood by the Catholic organisation who schooled him following the death of his father. He was an unhappy and violent man who didn't understand family relationships and consequently my own childhood was blighted with violence and misery. I did however learn my catechism very well. I now absolutely reject it.

Similar experience here. My father brutalised my mother and ensured our home was a place of fear growing up. My mum finally fled the home, she sang in the church choir and the weekend after she left she was sitting with the choir a few feet from the priest who asked the congregation to pray for the man whose wife left him after 32 years. No prayers needed for mum who had to flee with clothes on her back and start a new life. I absolutely hate the institution, and a good few of the people who align themselves with its teachings. I won't even go into the stuff that was bandied about during the gay marriage and abortion referenda.

TW CSA: My father went on full scholarship to a Catholic seminary boarding school. His education was stellar and it brought him out of relative poverty to a very good financial situation but he was completely closed off emotionally as a person which i suspect is part was down to this experience. I don’t believe he has a single friend outside of my mother.

His complete and utter lack of empathy towards my sister and me after finding out that our brother sexually abused us and his beyond unending empathy towards my abusive brother I believe is the legacy of the misogyny he was raised in and schooled in. He normalised and rationalised the abuse so much that makes me question his own history with child abuse which it seems was endemic in those types of institutions. My mother is also exceptionally misogynistic which is cultural too but she is what I would consider to be beyond the cultural norm in her level of misogyny.

I fell out of love with the Catholic Church when all of the abuse scandals happened. It was authoritarian and frankly lacked any compassion and to me especially in Ireland it behaved like those religious fundamentalist cult like churches in middle America. Cruel, deeply misogynistic and cold.

Great aunt who suffered greatly in a mother and baby home because she was an unmarried mother. Physically abused and the women were made to clean the convent eg scrub stone floors etc whilst heavily pregnant. I hope the nuns are roasting in Hell for all eternity. (Glasgow 1930’s)

They're dicussing the x case and annie murphy on rte now. The list of their crimes is endless.

Not me but a friend.
He was sent to a catholic school in Scotland and horribly abused there. It’s affected his whole life. Nothing happened until nearly 5 decades had gone by and then the perpetrators were long dead

I had a friend raised in a catholic mother and baby home. She could never eat Turkey at Christmas because as a child she’d had to gut thousands throughout the whole of December; sticking her hand into the body cavity to pull the giblets out, in a freezing cold outhouse without even a pair of gloves on.
Because she was a product of sin.. she didn’t know who her dad was but assumed her mother had been raped in her teens.

The crimes of the Catholic Church are numerous and date way back to the genocide of indigenous people in Latin America, The Inquisition, Complicity with The Nazis and that’s before we get on to the abuse of women and children.
I am sure individual members do good but it’s a rotten institution

For anyone who isn't familiar with the mother and baby homes, look up the.Tuam babies. And for PPs who were in those homes, i am so very sorry, for you and for your poor mums. 😥

Rotten institution indeed.

My grandfather was buggered in his catholic children's home.

No wonder I am firmly against religious institutions of any denomination.

Has no place in the modern world.

The Pope recently apologised for the residential 'schools' for indigenous children in Canada. Tens of thousands of children were taken from their families and put in these places in an attempt to convert them to Christianity.
There was widespread abuse and thousands of them died. The Canadians are still discovering unmarked graves.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/25/1113498723/pope-francis-apology-canada-residential-schools-indigenous-children#:~:text=Newsletters-,Pope%20apologizes%20for%20'evil'%20committed%20at%20Canada's%20Indigenous%20residential%20schools,run%20schools%20in%20the%20country.

My MIL said that our children (her own grandchildren!) were illegitimate because her son and I had not been married in a Catholic Church. She was not really interested in them.

That is really awful 😡

I went to a Christian Brothers run school, abusive bastards each and every one of them.

Its a pity more people didn't rise up when Sinead OConnor tore the photo. She was laughed at as a crazy person yet everyone knew all these stories. I hope she is not going to be lauded by people who never supported her while she lived.
I never had any damage done to me or my family by the Roman Catholic Church but left because of their teaching in 1986. In lreland this caused me many issues.

That's batshit.

I've had my mum literally crying at me about the shame and sadness that I have no interest in religion at all. Irish family, all the cousins go to church, baptism, communion, confirmation for all their kids etc...

So many do all the big gigs and don't see the inside of a church from one end of the year to the other. So many hypocrites. And everyone has an opinion when you opt out. It boils my piss.

I also have no positive experiences to share. My paternal side of the family all experienced the full misery of the Christian Brothers, awful people.

I would just add that I know a lot of good, decent, people who do genuinely believe. I feel bad for them.

The worst thing is so many are so unquestioning/ not bothered to kick up a fuss about realising change. The schools here are still mainly catholic (not sure of the % now) but it's still very high. Mass attendances have fallen dramatically. But nobody can be arsed to demand change. It's easier to send them to the local catholic school than organise to get the school divested to a non denom/ non religious model. And many people are actively suspicious of the ET type model.

My mother decided my husband must be a terrible bully and abusive as I didn't baptise my children. Obviously I'm a downtrodden wife and she brought me up better.

She cannot and will not accept that I want no part of the Catholic (or any other church) for my children.

I opted out at the age of 16 after realising all the absolute misogynistic , icon worshipping bollocks…..it led to a huge sadness from my lovely ( most of the time)Irish catholic mum but she accepted it….because she was always my mum first and catholic second, so I realise how bloody lucky I was….. to be fair she found the later “ revelations” about the church horrific and spoke her mind after Mass ( she was very outspoken) and often cried about the atrocities….she kept her faith right up until her death….. Me?? You must be fucking joking !!!

Oh and when Mum was “ home” on holiday aged 21 she was sat with her Father ( who was a good man and very well read) and his friends and they were discussing back then , circa 1954 , why boys weren’t joining the priesthood in their droves anymore and Mum said “ let them marry”…she was asked to leave the room…..seriously she was told she knew nothing and to please leave !!!!

Any religion that bans their priests from expressing their sexuality is brewing up trouble.

Why are religions so obsessed with sex?

The Catholic schools today are different to the schools of my parents time. Kids are treated well. Lots of people are at least culturally Catholic and are quite happy with the education provided now. It's not always that they think things need to change but can't be arsed.

Mass attendances have fallen dramatically but people still go at Christmas, weddings, funerals and I think it still means something to at least some of them then.

I hear your point but I have to say I disagree. I was born in Bessborough late 70s so it was more 'above board' then and much of the cruel practices had stopped, not the actual act of taking babies from women, obviously which cannot be justified. However I was passed by a woman who did not want to be a mother to my family who desperately wanted me. There is a presumption that all women who had babies pre 1985 in Ireland wanted to be mothers, yet we presume the opposite now of pregnant young women. For those that did not want a baby it was a solution to a problem that worked. I'm not saying my birth mother didn't suffer for her decision, she did and had a lot of guilt. If she had been pregnant in the UK or in later times I would have been aborted. So please don't feel bad for all adopted people, many like me are extremely grateful to Bessborough and Tuam and for the chance at life it gave us.