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.

Brought up in Poland where apparently 90% people are catholics (the other 10% has emigrated)

I decided to severe my ties with religion at the age of 10. My grandmother (and the other older family members) was absolutely outraged. Apparently I was a pig without spiritual guidance of a priest.
The same priest who despite swearing celibacy was openly living with 2 nuns.
I said to my grandmother that I found it hypocritical. I was told that I shouldn’t question the authority/morality of a priest.

When Sinead tore the picture of pope (who was Polish) she was widely condemned for it, the outrage in media was palpable. The same media failed to mention why she did it. Pope John Paul II was guilty of covering thousands of cases of peadophilia.

Sadly in Poland it’s still the case, priests accused of paedophilia are still „serving” people. Misoginy and patriarchy is still well and truly alive in Poland. Things slowly start to change, here’s hope that in the autumn elections to the parliament will kick these „Christian” bastards to hell

I've got a few but here's one.

My cousin's birth mother. I don't know her name.

She found herself single and pregnant in 1960s Ireland. She didn't tell anyone but got herself to England to the 'naughty girls' home' as it was colloquially known.

She then went back to Ireland and didn't say a word to anyone, they just thought she had been working in England.

My cousin is early 60s and didn't trace her birth family until recently because she didn't want to be disloyal to her loving adoptive parents, but as one is now dead and the other in a care home she felt the time was right.

She found brothers and sisters and amazingly her birth father, her mother had passed away. Some of her siblings want nothing to do with her.

I wonder how many women were like that? Keeping the secret of a child for 50+ years.

I suppose she could have found herself in a Magdalen laundry which would have been worse.

All those subjects are taught just as they are in other schools.

They were not at my RC school in the late 70s early 80s.

Henry the VIII was terrible but his daughter returned the country to the church. We learned about 'the 40 martyrs' but not the hundreds of protestants killed.

Some subjects just were not taught because it was also a girls' school so no woodwork, metal work, technical drawing, electronics.

I did learn how to use a potato to starch a shirt - such a useful skill in the 21st century.

@FrenchBoule yes that’s why she tore the picture up he was responsible for covering up all the abuse moving priests around the bloody world how fucked up do you need to be to move one sex abuser to another diocese. There was a great film on the cover up of the Catholic Church uncovered by the Herald starting merge Streep I think. Mind you look at Prince Charles giving that nonce Peter Ball a grace and favour house

Spotlight that’s the film

An Irish friend, exactly the same age as me, once told me how she and a few friends were walking in their home town of Limerick, when they saw the door of the Protestant church standing open. This would have been when she was a young teen, in the 60s.
One of them said, ‘Dare we go in?’

The others were horrified, honestly thinking they’d be instantly struck dead.
But the brave one did go in. The others watched, terrified, waiting for the thunderbolt to strike her.
But she just looked around and said, ‘Oh, it’s just like our church.’

From then on, my friend said, the ‘spell’ of the indoctrination they’d been subjected to, always taught by nuns, was utterly broken.

As someone who’d been brought up very vaguely C of E in the SE of England, I was almost dumbstruck to realise how the education and experience of someone of my own age, living not so very far away, could have been so vastly different.

All those subjects are taught just as they are in other schools.

They were not at my RC school in the late 70s early 80s.

I was referring to the curriculum of the present day @sashh

Hmmmmm. Let’s put the nun’s lies aside.

What I witnessed on the show round was:

1. music taught within the spectrum of religious hymns (depressing, dour and joyless.
2. sports heavily pushed (since the school receives top-up funding from national lottery funding - found that odd as surely that’s taking cash from gambling? Is that not sinful?). Majority of children on the destination leavers list had only gained scholarships into decent schools because of sporting endeavours- I guess sports doesn’t conflict with catholic belief?
3. prayer time x 3 a day (morning, lunch, afternoon). How can any teacher justify that absolute waste of school resources and teaching time.
4. Liturgical calendar followed rigorously and all students and parents expected to attend mass.
5. Maths and English didn’t appear to have a religious bent
6. Didn’t show us the art room, not necessary apparently.
7. They pride themselves on training their own teachers so they can ‘do it their own way’. To say I was horrified is an understatement.
8. Vast swathes of parents lied about being catholic to gain entrance. Those parents suited the deceitful, malicious culture perpetuated by this religion. Why they lied to achieve such mediocre results remains a mystery.

I can honestly say it was the most depressing hour of my life, listening to 5 year olds being indoctrinated. I felt like my skin was burning - so I legged it.

My father attended catholic school and was beaten with a metal ruler so hard,
my grandmother removed him and threatened to give the priest a hiding. Bless you Grandma, you live on inside me!

You wouldn't believe the weird ideas my nominally C of E classmates had about Catholics . One Friday the dinner lady even asked me if I was eating fish because I liked it ' or because you have to'.
The common misconception was ' your lot worship statues '. Although one chap had a theory that Catholicism is really a Babylonian pagan Goddess religion - because of Mary I suppose? His dad had told him this 😂

Our kids were opted out in the mid nineties. They were still invited to the Communion Breakfast. In secondary school the deputy headmistress tried to talk them into opting back in for Leaving Cert because ' it's easy points'. They still chose to give it a miss. A girl a year above them got pregnant, had the child and returned to school. She is still married to the boy.

I'm in Munster a small town pop 1600. It was quite homogeneous even in the 90s. But there a many different nationalities here now. We were told in the 70s we couldn't be ' a la carte Catholics'. But it seems most people here are just that ?

We were 'proper' catholics in that we went to mass but there was no real conviction behind it. It was more a case of my parents not seeing any other option. My dad used to drive past the local church to one further away as the mass was shorter 😂

"Because there’s no excusing the abuse, people ignore it, otherwise they’re uncomfortable. If you acknowledge a problem, you become responsible for being part of the solution. Far easier and more comfortable to seize on a red herring to argue about as distraction."

"Nobody will ever say out loud, “I know the church is responsible for the murders, abuses and torture of children, but it’s not directly impacted my life, so I don’t care.” but actions speak louder than words."

Could be. I've mentioned what happened before on threads here and it's like I'm invisible, and it's never been acknowledged. So thank you @ChubbyMorticia

@orlajane yeah, weirdly enough, I’m experiencing the same.

My great-grandmother was Irish and my grandfather was raised Catholic, but became a loud and proud atheist when he left home. Unconscious on his deathbed, a Catholic priest was brought in. If he'd been able to speak my grandad would have dismissed him, but he couldn't. I've never raised it with my mother but I find it infuriatingly arrogant, presumptious and disrespectful.

I can't speak about Catholic schools in the UK, but I can assure you that what you've described isn't anything close to Catholic schools in Ireland in 2023. For a start nobody lies about their religion to get in! Being Catholic is not a criterion for admission any longer, so Catholic schools in Ireland are not allowed select pupils on the basis of their religion. (Minority religious schools can still select on this basis.)

Schools can't/don't train their own teachers? There are centralised training colleges.

In our local school a specialist music teacher attends. Most of the music is decidedly not religious, more traditional Irish, tin whistles and so on.

Sacrement preparation (1st communion and confirmation) does happen during school time. A lot of teachers do wish this prep was done outside school hours and I think this is on the way. There might be some hymns done at these times. Also Christmas carols at Christmas.

Yes, there are prayers said, takes approx. 1 minute each morning and evening. Here prayers are often said in Irish , so it doubles up on learning the language (which is a compulsory subject in all Irish schools).

Loads of art done.

Don't understand your problem with sports in school. (And gambling isn’t considered 'sinful' unless it's abused. You appear to have some strange notions with regard to Catholicism.)

Lastly, the nun wasn't telling 'lies' when she said God makes rain. She was saying what she believes. If you don't agree that's absolutely fine, though I'm not too sure why you were considering Catholic schools at all really.
It''s possible to read Genesis and Darwin and to take meaning from both, and it's possible to teach children both religion and science.

Also, I am very sorry about what happened to your dad. Things have changed. Schools aren't the brutal places they once could be, not the ones I've experienced anyway.

How do you know?

If you were taught like that and your children were taught the same how would you find out it was wrong?

The curriculum is publicly available. I see my children's books and help with homework and projects.

I am not so befuddled that I cannot grasp the difference between religious and scientific education! Is that what you meant by your question?

We had a school priest in our Catholic school who openly propositioned the boys and took some to bed. When it became too obvious, he was discreetly moved to another parish.

I recently looked up the minutes from a church discussion of the issues at that time. They said that because he had not successfully raped the boys, no actual sin had been committed.

The nun was telling lies unless she prefaced her statement with "I believe that ...."

This.is the problem with religion in schools ... it is taught as fact rather than opinion/belief.

No, lying means there is a deliberate intention to deceive. For the nun to lie she would have to be knowingly saying something that was false.

She was saying something she believed to.be true.

You can accuse her of being mistaken, sure.

Yes, when my DC did RE at non Catholic Primary I made sure that they knew religion was based on belief not fact.
In Catholic school’s belief is taught as absolute fact and any deviation from that is seen as unacceptable

And so it continues.

RE GCSE is a different syllabus in catholic schools .

I know quite a few people- through teaching mainly- who seem to sleepwalk into sending their kids to catholic school and take the religion up as a result. Having gone to a catholic school for sixth form by accident (just where there was a space) that was all I needed to see. Terrible church, terrible people, hypocrisy left, right and centre.

I hope it's OK to join in - the Catholic crisis affected my life.

I was abused by my mother as a child - lots of physical abuse, drowning in the bath, kicked down the stairs etc - and I left the family and went no contact and entered herald - I was about 24 when I did that.

By 30 odd, I'd bought my first flat and worked as a DV advisor - and all day long, women would tell me about abuse - people hurting them, controlling them, ruining their lives and their confidence - and we'd take the cases to court and enter the barristers - taking money for defending someone who has hurt other people and continues to hurt them, and never ever admits it. It used to piss me off so much.

So I get home from work one night, I've made my dinner and am eating it with the news on and the story about the Catholic church being accused of covering up decades of sexual abuse - they refused to cooperate with the allegations for TEN YEARS - and it was that, ten YEARS that prompted me to pick up the phone and ring the police and report the abuse I had suffered.

I was just so sick and tired of people pretending to be good when they are not good - TEN YEARS - I mean HOW do you live with that? And still think you can reflect yourself as good to the world?

This is how Sinead and the Catholic church scandal affected my life - by bringing about one of the acts that I am proudest of - I reported child abuse, I am one of the numbers, among many others, who stood the fuck up and spoke.

An unmarried colleague worked in a Catholic school and was told her pregnancy was against ‘church law’ and she was to deny it if pupils asked. She was also told it was expected that she be married when she returned from maternity. She got another job and never went back. This was within the last decade.