“I didn’t see anything godly about that church. I didn’t see anything Christ-ly. All I saw was a bunch of bullies.”
Just finished watching The Magdalene Sisters and the documentary found on the same DVD, called “Sex in a Cold Climate.” Not an uplifting way to spend an evening, I’ll tell you what. It’s about the Magdalene asylums, institutions found up until 1996 all over Ireland, where women were sent for having children out of wedlock, for having been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted and so dishonored…
…or just for being pretty.
That way, they wouldn’t go astray.
A CBS News article from 2003 is chilling: the atrocities of those places were not discovered until 1998, and not reported until 1999. Up until five years ago, Ireland didn’t know that up to thirty thousand of its women were imprisoned and forced into slave labor in the Magdalene laundries. They were beaten into submission, scarred by being announced sinners who had lost heaven, forced to work “six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year” (documentary) for no pay. Many had lost their children to foster homes, adoptions, orphanages.
Some of the Magdalenes were sexually abused by the priests who came to take confession and give Sunday masses. Some women escaped, some went mad, some lived out their lives in the laundries from the time they were girls barely into puberty until the day they died. What kind of church, what kind of religion breeds such cruelty?
The same religion that institutionalized the abandonment of children born out of wedlock, babies dying by the thousands of neglect, lack of nutrition and syphilis – but at least they’d be baptized. At least, they’d go to heaven.
People genuinely believed this, and operated anonymous infant drop-offs until only a century ago.
Until less than a decade ago, women were imprisoned and enslaved by the thousands in Europe.
Don’t forget for a second. We are not out of the dark ages yet. Read this article, read it carefully, and then do me a favor and make an offering to the goddess of fertility.
Love and lovemaking are the reasons we are. A curse on those who profane that.
I just read a book by Kathy O’Beirne call Kathy – I had never heard of the Magdelene Sisters and found it unbelievable that this could happen to her in the 1960’s. How could this happen – and there was nothing wrong with her in the first place except a brutal and savage father. She went from reform school to magdalene Laundry to Assylum because she reported the priest for molesting her. I only hope that justice will be done and these poor souls will be helped to have a better life to help them repair the damage done in the name of religion.
This afternoon I watched the movie “The Magdalene Sisters” on the Independent Film Channel. The movie left a disturbing impression on me and a great feeling of sadness for the poor girls that had to live in those types of convents. What suprises me the most though, was to find out that these convents were open until 1996. I do not see how these enslaving dungeons were kept secret for as long as they were. All I have to say for priests and the nuns that treated these young girls and women with such cruelty is that ” You will be judged “.
I have just finished reading Kathy’s story, it only took me 6 hours, I couldn’t put it down. After trying to get justice the nuns are denying that Kathy even stayed in their institutions!!! Even now when faced with what they’ve done they are still underhand and lying. I just hope that when they die God is just.
i have just read this book kathys story how these men and women of the cloth !! can sleep at night i will never know.they hurt and abused these children for years and only for there own pleasure i hope they all go to hell as they continually told the poor children they would end up there.