53 Comments

• butlerreport | Mar 16, 2013, 12:16 PM EDT

  This should not have been reported with identifying the nuns. Anonymity has been a hall mark of dealing with the crimes of the church in Ireland - throughout all the reports the priests have never been named.

• Pittsburghkid | Mar 16, 2013, 11:28 AM EDT

  The stoning will quit when the Catholic Church supports Abortion, and Homosexual Marriage.

• CharlieM | Mar 16, 2013, 09:06 AM EDT

  Thanks, jacersagain, this time from someone who isn't a nun. It's refreshing to see you express thoughts totally beyond the ken of the sophomoric gang of Catholic-bashers who seem to haunt this website. They should be grateful that, when they meet their maker as they most surely will, He and not they will be sitting in judgement.

• seamus60 | Mar 16, 2013, 08:17 AM EDT

  Theres some real second rate waffle in the way of excuses for these nuns denial of their fore sisters." Wayward girls abandoned by society". A society that was shaped in thought by the thought police, the church. " Girls families made the decisions". Only after a long hard talking down to from the local priest who would always high-light and or exagerate the shame that would accompany a child born out of wedlock. The shame being a well designed product of the same thought police mentioned above. These nuns not prepared to identify themselves WHY ?. What could they be afraid of ? now that the laundries are closed down. Their complaints should go directly to the Vatican as its there the responsibility rests. It is there they have been tarnished by their leaders inaction.

• JimmieM | Mar 16, 2013, 05:20 AM EDT

  Easy isn't it to criticize the past when you don't have to walk a mile in their shoes? You may get a chance to judge fairly soon...The Obama is working on bringing back the days of world wide poverty.

• jacersagain | Mar 16, 2013, 12:29 AM EDT

  @ misswhisps ... thank you for kind comments but I really, in humility, bow my head down to you and your fellow-sisters. You don’t believe me saying that, eh? Well, you’d want to have seen me, in front of my computer here in home, silently bowing my head when I ‘red’ your posts, All Thanks fully belong to you...

• jacersagain | Mar 15, 2013, 10:43 PM EDT

  (more...) What I want to know is how the nuns of the Magdalen Homes and the Hospital nuns and their religious orders are going to be as equitably compensated for the unpaid work they carried out within Irish society in and of those times, and by whom? Try to do the maths... allow for millions of hours of work put in by all the nuns in their various capacities. Let’s see what figures you come up with, if you dare to.... I haven’t dared to... It would be astronomically beyond my simple brain but I’m sure there’s a brain out there good enough to calculate the worth of the Magdalen and Hospital nuns’ unpaid work. Maybe misswhisp might enlighten a few, based on her experiences...

• jacersagain | Mar 15, 2013, 10:39 PM EDT

  Just as worms come out of worm holes, so do some people come out and speak of their past in Magdalen Homes. I think misswhisp has, just like the two nuns above have, bravely come out of a worm hole to speak about the disregarded and unappreciated good that the vast majority of nuns in Magdalen Homes did. The ones coming out of worm holes only to complain are looking for monetary compensation these days, chasing the God of Mammon instead of embracing the love of mercy that God gives to all who repent (“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich (man or woman) to enter the Kingdom of Heaven”). I do fully accept and agree that women of the Magdalen Homes should be given recognition (especially with social welfare rights) of the contribution that they made alongside the nuns who ran Magdalen laundries that (mostly) cleaned and re-cycled hospital linen for patients in hospitals run by unpaid nuns in those days. What I want to know is... (More)

• jacersagain | Mar 15, 2013, 10:31 PM EDT

  I can’t agree with Seano's comment that there is an equal negative to a positive where the work carried out by all who worked in Magdalen Homes in by=gone years is concerned. (Equal positive vs. negative only exists in the phenomenon of magnetism... that invisible power that no scientist has ever yet come to grips with to explain, unless you accept the evidence out of what became known as ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’ – look it up online or e-bay the book on it for a good mind-blowing read.) On the contrary, as good man Seano knows, the vast majority of people on this planet Earth of ours are wholly good-living, well-meaning people. About 2% are "bad" in various ways and affect all of the 98% rest, in some way or another, just like the few bad apples in a barrel affect or infuse the good apples if left without care by someone of the good. That does still not excuse people concentrating on the "bad", as media people, LGBT people and internet trolls constantly do. In fact, as Seano truthfully says, the “bads” are an abomination.

• seanomelb | Mar 15, 2013, 08:20 PM EDT

  I found a half sister who was in a home run by nuns and her recollections are far different from yours misswhisp. For every positive there is a negative and in this case the negatives are an abomination. BTW I am not referring to MT in those remarks. I believe MT was misguidedby power and adulation.

• TOMMY60438 | Mar 15, 2013, 05:45 PM EDT

  WHY BASH MOTHER THERESA, THERE ARE NO EVIDENSE OF ABUSE OR AN INVESTIGATIONS OF ABUSE LIKE MADGELENE LAUDRIES, WERE GIRLS WHERE PLACED WITH THE BLESSING OF THE GOVERMENT FOR BEING IMMORAL (A FALLEN WOMAN) BEING THERE ONLY CRIME. THAT WAS WHAT THIS ARTICLE WAS ABOUT. AND WITH THE INTERVIEW WITH THE SISTER FROM THE LAUDRIES WHO SAID THERE WAS NOTHING TO APPOLOGIZE FOR, WELL I THINK EVERYONE OVER FIFTY AND CATHOLIC HAS DELT WITH SOME MEAN ASS SISTERS AT ONE TIME.

• eiriamach | Mar 15, 2013, 12:30 PM EDT

  No one has forgotten " the good [they] have done through all [their] years," but it is vitally important that we not forget the evil either. Ignore evil and it repeats itself and grows until it's like water to a fish and life seems impossible without it. It's sad to read of the nuns' self-excusing attitudes.

• Eireannach | Mar 15, 2013, 08:19 AM EDT

  It's awful that these persecuted communities have to speak up for themselves. The Irish media is all too ready to indulge in an orgy of vindictive blame games over and over. They need to take a good long look at themselves It is they who are damaging Ireland with their self-righteous rants, and 'holier than thou' lecturing. They need to grow the f*** up.

• jacersagain | Mar 14, 2013, 07:51 PM EDT

  One time, some good years ago, I met an old man who actually met and shook hands with Mother Theresa in a Nun-run hospital in Drogheda (Ireland) where he was recovering from a severe bout of alcoholism, one of many he had had previously, some of them extremely violent. He never drank alcohol again from that day that he held Mother Thereesa's hands and listened to her words to him. Miracle? The old man claimed it was, a private one. I never met him again but always remember his claim.

• jacersagain | Mar 14, 2013, 07:39 PM EDT

  I meant to add to my last post that what Mother Theresa did in her lifetime was no different from what the Magdelen Laundry nuns did in their lifetimes... i.e. look after those who were abandoned by all of Irish society in those times. The two nuns are right to speak out against tarring of all Magdelen nuns.

• jacersagain | Mar 14, 2013, 07:30 PM EDT

  Good God by Jesus Christ will Seano ever get his facts right about Mother Theresa, her huge charity and love of people on the ground and the power of her Rosary Beads over despots in all lands of our world!!

• seanomelb | Mar 14, 2013, 06:54 PM EDT

  Thank you BishopSean for your concern with my spiritual life. I have visited a number of third world countries in my travels. I have no, doubt Mother Teresea helped the poor. Why then build nunneries insted of hospitals with the millions she collected on the poors behalf. IT appears she was building an empire first and the poor came second. Maybe I'm been a bit tough on Teresa but it's not unreasonable to askk the quesion,where did the bulk of the money go.

• BishopSean | Mar 13, 2013, 11:06 AM EDT

  Hi, Seán Og. My hope still springs eternal for you, to help you get right with the Lord. You know, Seán, I saw Mother Teresa's sisters in action in very poor and destitute societies in Latin American and Africa. I know Their living out the Gospel message is very much appreciated by the destitute and abandoned. In my view, if you would leave comfortable Melbourne and visit an interview them on site, you would have a much better view of them. Blessings!

• seanomelb | Mar 13, 2013, 01:14 AM EDT

  Mother Teresa'S association with Papa Doc Duvalier and Charles Keating leave her suspect to negative analyses. Her "building programme' of nunneries world wide instead of building hospital also goes to credibilty. To paraphrase her own words the poor and destitute should be happy with their lot in life, hardly the words of a caring person.Hitchens got it right and the gullible castigate him for telling the truth. It is you BishopSean who are the revisionist.

• BishopSean | Mar 11, 2013, 11:11 AM EDT

  Compliments to jacersagain for standing up to journalistic herd instincts and historic revisionism. A Canadian skeptic is having at Mother Teresa of Calcutta now, basing his arguments on a book, THE MISSIONARY POSITION, which is an extradorinarily undocumented book by Christopher Hitchens. It is "open season" on Christians by our politically correct contemporaries. Discerning readers will see through this; they will assess blame where this is due and not smear all people dedicated to Jesus Christ, nor all Church institutions. Thank you, hacersagin.

• Smyrnian | Mar 11, 2013, 10:17 AM EDT

  Anglonorman is an abomination. :)

• Smyrnian | Mar 11, 2013, 08:54 AM EDT

  Jacers and Glounlathan have it right and well said too. I spent a dozen years being taught by priests, nuns and brothers from many different orders and 5 years ad an altar boy and I never witnessed or even heard of children being abused. Sure it happened in some places but it was the exception and not the rule. There are some in this website with an anti-Catholic agenda and they are using these incidents to foment hate and bigotry and, as said in other postings, they never give weight to all the good that was done by the many religious people who are still doing great work today. These posters show no tolerance and just hurl bilious criticism to feed their agenda. By the way, Catholic haters, don't bother telling me that my experience was an 'exception' ; it certainly was not.

• seanomelb | Mar 10, 2013, 07:24 PM EDT

  Your Wrong jacer the homes you mentioned and the church (or state) that ran them are just as culpable. Tto add to your list two Yeshiva schools in Australia are under investigation, The Salvation Army who ran orphanages in Australia are under investigation for cruelty and bodies have been found buried on their sites. The state has discovered that their are no records of some children leaving the Army homes and there seems to be a reluctance by the press in Australia to persue the mistreatment in homes other than those in the Catholic church which beggars the question as to their bias. There are good people in all religious groups and naming non catholics does not lessen the seriousness of what went wrong in the RCC. I suppose because we were (or are) members of the RCC we are disgusted by the people whom we trusted,in particular those who aided and abetted in the cover-ups. WE are affected more personally with what went on in the RCC but we must not forget it is not just a catholic problem.

• anglo-norman | Mar 10, 2013, 02:48 PM EDT

  The catholic church is an abomination.

• Bocktherobber | Mar 10, 2013, 09:56 AM EDT

  So the Magdalene slaves are "wayward girls", are they? Clearly, there are still plenty of hypocrites willing to push the horrible lies of that era.

• jacersagain | Mar 10, 2013, 08:20 AM EDT

  Seano – just as glounlathan says, it WAS just a few who were wrong to act as they did and like everybody, I condemn their actions and feel great sorrow for those who were abused. In all of society, 2-3% are statistically proven to sexually abusive, including mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters etc; that percentage also extends to people within all churches. Jim Hopper Ph. D. (look him up online) says up to 80-98% of children are abused in their own homes by parents and relatives in some form or another. Why, Seano, don’t you speak out on and attack the sexual abuse that happened within Protestant homes for boys and girls seen as wayward brats in their time – Bethany Home in Dublin? Lord Mountbatten, former RUC policemen and Nth Ireland’s Protestant Politicians and some members of its judiciary abusing young boys in the Kincora Home for Boys? No, they're not for you Seano – the Catholic Church is your biggie for attacks but you forget that the Catholic Church is much bigger than you and your atheistic snide attacks on it. Let’s get it straight... the vast majority of Catholics are good-living people, the Church’s priests and nuns are mostly good charitable people, taking on tasks that the rest of society (including me) shirks from, like the vast majority of Magdalen Homes nuns did in their times. I have never been an apologist for evil so please do not post lies about me. However, I am very strong against the abuse that is being flung upon the majority of good holy priests and nuns of the Catholic Church throughout the world.

• jacersagain | Mar 10, 2013, 08:13 AM EDT

  Maureen Hawkins – by what “all accounts” do you have proof that “many of the nuns were uncaring and cruel”?? Nuns had to be strict in keeping wayward girls abandoned by society under wraps but that doesn’t amount to 'uncaring' or 'cruelty' (just as my Dublin Christian Brothers’ School teachers, lay and religious, were strict but never cruel on us in school). One of the leaders in Ireland today of people who were abused in convents, a girl abandoned by her family, was a friend of my sister’s during her time in the convent where she lived (not a Magdelen Home) and often visited our family home. Back then, she never once complained about any abuse that she now alleges happened to her back then and was a very happy young girl, as I remember her, being cared for by nuns of the convent when none of her family relatives would take on the responsibility. As I constantly call for, let’s keep things in proper perspective and not tar all nuns with the same brush. The two nuns in the article above are quite within their rights to fight back against all-tarring mobs and media people.

• jacersagain | Mar 10, 2013, 08:09 AM EDT

  Jimod4343 – I never said anywhere below that it was ok for “grown up men to beat kids”. Do not distort posts under this article above which are supposed to be related to two nuns rejecting the blanket tarring of all holy nuns with the one brush. You talk about priests beating up brats of kids, which by your own writing below you admit to being, assuming a right to turn on a radiator that you had no business interfering with and you then go on to say that you and your “friends” tracked down priests who are now elderly to beat them up and are not yet finished doing so. You cur! Do yourself a favour - please get your own sick psychopath mind attended to before you do any more beating up of elderly men. Remember, you can’t hide either ‘cos your ‘puter has a unique address which can be tracked down by experts in police forces anywhere in the world. Your comments are sure to have been noted by someone.

• IrelandNorth | Mar 10, 2013, 05:54 AM EDT

  If Miriam of Migdal was a repentant prostitute (as retrospectively confabulated by Pope Gregory the Great) - and if she was a wealthy women who financed the early Jesus movement - would that not have meant the Jesus and his Apostles were living off the immoral earnigns of prostitution? Or should Pope Gregory not have though through the illogical conclusions of his shameless defamation of a good a decent woman.

• IrelandNorth | Mar 10, 2013, 05:31 AM EDT

  They have a point, ya know! Reviewing the past through rose- tinted retrospectacles invariable causes double-crossed vision. The real question is how did Ireland allowed itself to become a crypto-theocracy for so long? Answer, for the exact same reason it allowed itself become a foot stool of teh British Empire. Blame it all on Constantine!

• connemaragirl | Mar 10, 2013, 03:44 AM EDT

  Part of the problem was back in those days that the Church itself promoted those feelings,looked down on people,they ram the parishes and the people and during my parents youth they were even worse I was told so they have no one to blame but themselves, though some were actually good,more of them were really mean,especially to the poorer kids,I saw it with my own eyes.

• Maureen Hawkins | Mar 10, 2013, 12:38 AM EST

  "We provided a . . . service for the country." So did the Gestapo. If your country asks you to do cruel and immoral things to others, does that mean there are no grounds for an apology if you do them? That said, the nuns today in general are being badly by the Church: plenty of protection & pensions for pederast priests, nothing for the nuns--except, in a case like this, sloughing all the blame off on them. By all accounts, many of the nuns in the Laundries were, at best, uncaring, at worst, cruel, but what about the Church that taught a whole society to degrade, abuse, and victimize women if they strayed while protecting priests who did worse?

• jimod4343 | Mar 10, 2013, 12:06 AM EST

  Jacersagain so you think it's ok for grown men to beat up little kids do you? I witnessed priests beating up boys with their fists in a manner that you might see outside a night club these days. I was one of them. My crime? Turning on a radiator to heat the freezing classroom. Some of my friends have tracked down these bullies and given back the beating they deserved. We haven't finished yet. I want nothing to do with these sociopaths who deserve to be jailed for what they did. These so-called men of God can run but they can't hide.

• seanomelb | Mar 09, 2013, 11:59 PM EST

  BTW Jacer I attened a large Christian brothers school in Dublin and some brothers were sadistic and one brother (secondary college) loved snaking his hands up a kids short pants. Glounlathan what do you mean by a few are you living in a monastery or have you got your head permanently stuck in the sand.

• seanomelb | Mar 09, 2013, 11:54 PM EST

  You are still an apologist for the Catholic church "jacer the small minded"

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 09:00 PM EST

  glounlathan - that is one helluva great post. Thank you for putting things in perspective. God be with your son and the priests you write of. I attended a large Christian Brothers School in Dublin for ten years and never experienced or heard of abuse within it apart from a leather strap whack for being late for class. Those whacks actually warmed my hands after cycling to school in cold weather. Such kindness from the CBs...

• glounlathan | Mar 09, 2013, 07:30 PM EST

  Why is there os much talk about the small percentage that did wrong? Why is there not a proprtionate amount of talk on the good done? Why is there no one going after the Sunday night studs who fathered children and ran off and left their own flesh and blood to be thrown to the wind? Many of the people critizing now would not give scraps to their neigbors dogs not to mind help raise their children. These poor children were abandoned by their own immediate families, aunts, uncles and grandparents when the church took them in. The system may not have been perfect but these children came from the ordinary people of Ireland. There is an iriony here many of these families would critize the travelling people for their begging, but the travelling people always kept their children. The poor could always get free medical care in the hospitals where the nuns worked for nothing----how many hours do the modern day nurses give for nothing, and how many floors do they get down on their knees to clean when they have finished working in the wards all day? I went to a National School in Ireland and had the crap beaten out of me as did many of others, but the holders of the cane were not religous, and even though the schools were run by the Parishes, the whip holders were civilians. So grow up and see that fair play is done. I also went to a college run by priests and never saw one thing that could be remotely called abuse, and nearly forty years later have very good memories of some great dediciated people I met in that school.I have a relative, an only son, who gave up a very large farm to sweat in the foreign missions, and there he employed his engineering skills to bring water in a very warm climate to thirsty peolpe---he was only one of many. What about Fr.Damien and all the others? I am sorry for anyone the few abused but I am glad for the many helped.

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 06:59 PM EST

  Well, Seano, you know there’s a city in France called Bordeaux. You also know there’s a cake called Gateaux, dont’cha? You also know how both are pronounced, despite the ‘eaux’ in them, dont’cha?? Well, Seaneaux, for that last ridiculously dismissive comment of yours on the facts that I’ve posted below, you’re a right bollo.

• seanomelb | Mar 09, 2013, 06:27 PM EST

  If you wish to be an apologist for the Magdelene sisters Jacer make it short and pithy. We do not need ramblings about workhouses fopr the poor,we need justice for those who were beaten and mistreated.

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 06:04 PM EST

  (more from below) And now here’s how the opening of a Magdalen Home in Dublin City was reported in the Freeman’s Journal on March 28th 1892 (121 yrs ago): “The Magdalens: Blessing of New Building by His Grace, Archbishop of Dublin - Yesterday the Magdalen Asylum, St. Mary’s Retreat, Lower Gloucester Street, was the scene of a most solemn and imposing ceremony. The beautiful new church of St. Mary Magdalen and the building connected with it, which have been recently finished, were blessed by His Grace, the Archbishop of Dublin, in presence of a representative and influential gathering of the clergy and laity. The building, of which the sacred editics (sp? - the print is blurred on this word) form the crowning glory, are without exception the most unique and important of their class in Dublin. Their object, to afford shelter and solace to repentant women, the self-sacrificing and untiring devotion of the French Sisters of Charity, who, as ministering angels, direct the operations of the institution; and the fact that this is the only Catholic Magdalen Asylum within the city bounds, all tend to mark the Gloucester street establishment as one of the most pre-eminently deserving of the charity of our people. There is a debt of £4000 due in connection with the new buildings of the institution, and there can be little doubt that it will not be allowed to weigh long on the shoulders of the Sisters, the appeal on whose behalf yesterday met with a most encouraging response.”

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 05:58 PM EST

  (From below) First,the report in the Freeman’s Journal 162 yrs ago, printed March 14th 1851- “Robbery at the South Union Workhouse: Michael Tracey, Thomas Heavy, James Coogan, John Donovan, all urchins under 14 years of age, were charged with having in their possession two pairs of trousers and some other articles of wearing apparel, for which they could not satisfactorily account. They were met on the previous day by some of the police, having the property on them, and being unable to render satisfactory answers to the questions put to them on the occasion, they were taken into custody, and confined in the Newmarket station-house for the night. The prisoners had been inmates of the workhouse, but had been lately discharged from it. ¬ Mr. Wood Gibson Jones, a relieving officer of the union, identified the clothes as being the property of the guardians, and deposed to his belief of the goods having been stolen from the workhouse. ¬ The bench (i.e. the judge) dealt summarily with the case by ordering four dozen lashes to be inflicted on each of the offenders.”

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 05:54 PM EST

  (... more) By chance, I happened on some newspaper reports in a Dublin paper this week under the heading of “From the Archives” – two of which I’m going to post as verbatim transcripts (complete with errors that we today would see in report composition and printing) - one on a pre-cursor of Magdalen Homes, the infamous Workhouses in Ireland and the other on a Magdalen Home. The report on the workhouse robbery (see above) was printed just 3 years after the Irish Famine, so you can gauge just how desperate young destitute people were at that time and how they were dealt the “justice” of the day for their “injustice”. Please read both reports, noting the peculiarity of English words and expressions of those times and make up your own mind on the perspectives of those times vs. the perspectives of our times of today. Perhaps it might bring a new light of understanding by us people of today that will not be so harsh on what Irish society of by-gone decades and centuries had to live with and how they coped with it, especially when there was no such thing as electricity, or home heating other than a fireplace if you were fortunate enough to be able to buy coal, wood logs or bog turf. Whatever you decide, may you be thankful you were not living in those times and be thankful of what we have in today’s society by comparison. The two reports follow above...

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 05:49 PM EST

  (... more) One former inmate of a Magdalen Home wrote in the Irish Times newspaper in the past few weeks about how much she appreciated what the nuns did for her and how she adored the loving care she received from them, she writing eloquently especially of one nun that she described as angel. I think the vast majority of women of the Magdalen Homes would agree with her. The old film shots, shown several times on Irish TV, of the Magdalen nuns and the young women under their care, show happy smiling faces, so it cannot all have been bad. There is no doubt however, for a need to compensate the women for their laundry work and especially for their right to social welfare entitlements of today. But who is going to compensate the nuns for their freely given Christian hospital nursing duties and their social caring of the unwanted women of those times? By chance... (more...)

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 05:45 PM EST

  I think Joan1954 and slainte9 are right and others misguided in their comments. I really think it is all too easy, from our perspective of right and wrong today, to rush to ill-judgement of what people of decades and even of over a century ago saw as being a “good” way to deal with social problems in Ireland back in those days. Most people do not realise that hospitals in Ireland were for many years staffed and run by unpaid nuns who carried out their work as acts of mercy, love and caring in the way of the Lord Jesus. The laundry that Magdalen homes washed cleaned and ironed was mostly hospital bed linen and very little of the commercial laundry kind (see the photo above: notice all the bed sheets?). Most people, like my mother, washed their own family laundry in their homes in steel tubs before the invention of washing machines and dryers. So I think the nuns interviewed for America Magazine were right to stand up and say they should not be demonised for the work, education, food, clothing and caring they gave to thousands of young women who were otherwise abandoned by their own families and Irish society at large in those times. (More...)

• jacersagain | Mar 09, 2013, 05:32 PM EST

  culchiewoman, slainte9 is no apologist and I will prove so in my next few posts which I encourage all to take time out to read in full and make their own minds upon...

• seanomelb | Mar 09, 2013, 04:56 PM EST

  No one is "over the moon" about the abuse handsome. You should take some of your own advise on where you wear hat.

• culchiewoman | Mar 09, 2013, 04:52 PM EST

  Ah, slainte9...the voice of the apologist! Where would we be without it? Surely it's all the fault of the Brits and the New York Times. Nothing at all to do with more than 800 pages of testimony from women who actually experienced the abuse, slavery and torture of the Laundries. "Substance to some claims"? I think 800 pages represents more than "some". And joan1954 trots out the old "put it in the context of the times" excuse. So shall we forgive the Holocaust and just say that's simply what Germans did to Jewish people back in the day? The apex of the Laundries occurred in the 1950's -- we were already post-WW II and Holocaust -- do you not think the good holy nuns and priests were well aware that what they were doing was a violation of human rights and dignity? Please, give me a break. Wrong is wrong...then and now. The Church needs to understand that the way forward is not to continue to throw victims under the bus (which is exactly what Sister 'A' and 'B') were doing, but to acknowledge the wrong that was done, apologise and (if applicable) compensate the victims and progress as a society and as a people of faith. This method of attack and circling the wagons has not worked for the Church, and the declining numbers in pews continue to speak to that. Showing some compassion and remorse would be a huge step forward. Not one single nun showed up at the recent Magdalene graves memorials held in Dublin, Galway and Cork. And yet that simple act of compassion would've gone a long way toward reconciliation, rather than continuing the denial game via anonymous radio and print appearances. But they'll never learn, will they?

• handsome68 | Mar 09, 2013, 04:46 PM EST

  Am always amazed when people use today's cultural awareness when considering yesterday's history. My cousin in Ireland told me in 2011 that it is difficult for outsiders to understand the level of poverty, and consequently ignorance due to lack of opportunity for education, in Ireland in say, the 1920s and 1930s. I'm not sticking up for abuse, sexual or otherwise exploitative, but to those who are over the moon about it now, I say: start using your head(s) for more than a hat rack. (Excrement) happens, both then and now.

• olovely | Mar 09, 2013, 03:54 PM EST

  No apologies for exploiting tens of thousands of women to a life on indentured servitude with no pay. Traditional values can be seen for what they are.

• slainte9 | Mar 09, 2013, 03:22 PM EST

  The shame of this is that the way things are now, anyone can make any claim of abuse and the Catholic Church gets immediately thrown under the bus. In all our years of Catholic school neither I nor my wife nor anyone else we knew was abused. While there is substance to some of the claims most of what we hear and read about these "scandals" comes from people, for example Brits and The New York Times, who don't like Catholics in the first place and will exploit any mistake to vent their hate.

• bunkerisland | Mar 09, 2013, 11:34 AM EST

  Perhaps we should not assume every nun was a terrorist harming young women. Where the money actually went that was paid the laundries is not clear but surely not to any of those working in the laundries. We know the state endorsed and supported this slave labor approach to cloistering youthful women. Responsibility for these prolonged cruel actions rests with those managing the laundries and the government for promoting these dens of harm. Do we know of a single nun being brave enough to speak about regarding the cruelty taking place at the time? Can we find a nun that today will describe her courageous efforts to stop the madness? It seems evident the laundry staff did nothing to assist the youth in becoming independent and more confident young women, but rather sheltered and exploited them. Yes food, clothing and shelter was furnished, but more like a prison than a educational institution. Just how much class time did these women have. Very little it seems. The young women are described as homeless, but many of them were forced out by their guilt ridden parents and no effort was made to address the damage to the youth and their parents. Where any of these women prepared to leave, furnished a bit of money, some modest clothing and aided in finding a place to live and work to maintain themselves? Seems unlikely! We cannot excuse this behavior simply because it was in the past and many in the religious orders and state need to make amends.

• joan1954 | Mar 09, 2013, 10:39 AM EST

  Stevenstar, I understand your anger but it wasn't just these orders, it was also the Irish state itself who turned a bling eye. Money was needed. Look to parts of Latin and South America where the practice still exists. Parents turned their own children in I guess one might say one less mouth to try and feed. There is a tendency to lump the present day into what happened back then and that is not fair. An analogy would be lumping all clergy as bad just because of the actions of a few bad apples. Same here, one must remember the good that is done. You mention that they worked for nothing, perhaps so, but the something was clothing, food, maybe not much, and a roof over their heads which to use our standards today more than is given the homeless. We cannot judge their times through ours and believe me things have changed in Ireland.

• STEVENSTAR | Mar 09, 2013, 09:48 AM EST

  HOW CAN YOU DEFEND SELLING LITTLE KIDS OFF TO AMERICANS AND MAKING MONEY OFF THEM NEVER MIND MAKINNG THEM WORK FOR NOTHING .. OH THE MONEY GRABBING B*TCH*S !!!