Magdalene

Long ago, before the bank guarantee scheme; and prior to the austere atonement for our fiscal incontenance, we were bankrupt. Ireland was a state devoid of humanity, of goodwill and of 

If there is one part of being Irish that I am 'shameful' for, it is the Irish catholic ethos that, through osmosis became imbedded in the fabric of Irish society; beneath the shadows cast by the stately house on the hill and the bricks of the steeple festered an acceptance that cruelty and lack of forgiveness for those in front of them was the way to please a concept alive in the thoughts and words of a concept. Gods Geatappo marched us through unspeakable acts of cruelty and to this day lack the ability to make an act of contrition that practices what has long been preached from their own literature.

And just as today where the Irish people are finding it difficult to forgive our financial forebarers, we must seek to ask how we can even begin to do so in our clerical community. The example led by Philomena Lee, whose story is portrayed in a recent film baring her name, is a cherished and deeply needed demonstration of faith and spiritualism over religion...of feeling more than rhetoric....being rather than a staged act.

The magdalen laundries are but one aspect where the Irish Catholic Church has purged a proud nation of its dignities. Their male counterparts in the vestries and classrooms of the institution too knocked us to the point where there is no act in this world that ireland are able to cast a stone at. Not yet. Redress is by no means flowing. The notion is still pursing the lips of many a lip. And while, like their monetary brethren, the thoughts and deeds enforced on the youth of a growing nation are not those of the entirety, there are many that are complicit in the knowledge and as guilty as sin for not standing tall. 

I look to the Philomenas of this world, and there are many, and I find solice in their dignity, in their moral compass and in their comfort of not seeking onto others. In return, we must stand by them and not cloak or nurse the sickly cancer riddled through its core. 

The story told in Martin Sexsmiths book, it's subsequent retelling on the silver screen and in the hundreds and hundreds of stories of abuse on every scale act as a necessary nose-rubbing. We may search for forgiveness but we should never forget.