How difficult is it to be a Catholic now?

I wasn't raised Catholic but my late DH born and raised in Ireland was and he had nothing but praise for the nuns and brothers who taught him. His was a very poor family and he had endless stories of the kindness and help they received. He had great respect for the local priest, nuns and brothers yes they were strict but he never mentioned any cruelty. Thats not to say it didn't happen in other areas, just that wasn't his experience.

My Mother was catholic and my Father was Protestant. When I was 8yrs old, a neighbour 'reported' my Mother to the local priest. I stood at our door with my Mother as the priest berated her for marrying a Protestant and told her I was a bastard. My normally mild mannered Father eventually heard the conversation and told the priest in no uncertain terms what he thought about Catholisism. That was in 1958. My Mother also told me her experiences at her convent school and the cruelty of the nuns.

Catholicism

FlicketyB Yes excellent posts, which gives a perspective to social situation in Ireland well into perspective.

I was brought up a catholic. My father was born into an Irish immigrant family, they had been in the UK a few generations 3 or 4 I'm not quite sure. He had 7 siblings, 1 sister joined an enclosed order of nuns, The Poor Clares, another joined some other order and lived out the rest of her life in Melbourne, in a home for "wayward women" , a third sister went into service.
The whole family brought and hung onto all of their believes and tradition in the UK through the generations. I was always told sex was "dirty" but it became clean if you got married ???? If I had got pregnant before marriage I would of, without a shadow of doubt been sent away, because to them it was the worst sin anyone could commit. I went to the same church as them and never got the impression it was the church which condemned people as much as my family

I think it would probably be fair to say that the treatment of unmarried mothers back in the 20th century up to relatively modern times could have sometimes been harsh wherever they lived, although Ireland does seemed to have a particularly horrifying record.

I grew up in a town in Surrey that was well known for it's "mental hospitals". One of my closest friend's mother was a psychiatric nurse in one of them. My friend recently told me that many of the inmates were young unmarried mothers who were incarcerated in these places for many years because they would have been deemed, at the time, to be mentally unstable when in fact all that had happened was that they had become pregnant outside marriage, shock horror! I don't know if any GNs here have read the excellent book, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which dealt with this very subject.

A very good book, Terribull. I read it a few years ago -was it by Maggie O'Farrell?

As a child I went to 10 schools in total, some catholic, some secular, many of the teachers at the catholic schools were not only not nuns but not catholics either and I really cannot say that there was ever much difference in the behaviour of teachers in any of the schools, whether nuns or not. There were nice ones and ones that scared the living daylights out of me, sarcastic ones that made me shrivel up and work badly and incompetent ones. Some nuns I liked, several I loathed. Talking to DH my experiences at school were no worse than his.

I think the biggest difficulties were for those of us who were in the boarding house of our predominantly day convent grammar school. Many of the nuns had joined the order in Ireland and were a product of it's culture. Some were highly intelligent and intellectual and in the stultified culture of Ireland at the time, becoming a nun and going to France for the novitiate and training as a teacher must have seen an opportunity to good to miss - but they then found community life and teaching teenage girls who left school for work or further education just as they became interesting was still limiting and frustrating and they did at times take it out on us.

But compared with stories I have heard from other boarding schools of my era, mine was in no way exceptional.

Yes Marelli, Maggie O'Farrell

TerriBull I know exactly where you mean. I used to visit one of those when I worked in L.B Hackney. Many were built out there in the early 1900s to actually provide the patients with a healthy country environment.

Given the state of many inner city living conditions at the time it was an enlightened approach, although it left patients far away from familiar environments.

Impressive posts flickety and mice elf. Agree will everything you both say.

No point in repeating it. There are good and bad everywhere, even in RC schools and the church. We need to learn from the past and endeavour to ensure that these things should not happen again.

I enjoyed reading the book too Terri

Whilst doing part of my training in a psychiatric hospital I was shocked to read some of the case notes regarding patients who had been there 30/40 years due to their mother being raped by their grandfather. It was assumed these babies would be mentally impaired but sadly that was not the case although they remained in the hospital unable, after too many years of being institutionalised, to live independently in the outside world.

Single sex institutions in isolated places, often seem to breed a culture of bullying, whether English public schools or convents.
What is maybe different about this current Irish case is that it is not just a case of victimising the supposedly immoral girls but failing to give basic care to the children they were looking after. But it may be a while before we find out what happened. Presumably there are still some older women around who remember being inmates there.
Eloquent and interesting posts Flicketyb but - well - do you use the first world war and the aftermath to excuse the ways the nazis behaved to jews and other minorities in the second war? Because starving babies to death, if that is true, is not so different is it.
I note that a senior cleric has already started the process of distancing today's church from the atrocities of the past. What's new?
In the film Philomena, based on true events, it was 21st C nuns who were covering up what happened in the past and deliberately hiding the truth about adoptions from those who came to them to enquire.
The current pope is obviously hoping to use his massive PR machine to try to get people to put the sex abuse scandals into the past and think he is a jolly nice chap.

Martin Sixsmith, author of the book on Philomena, has written here,
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651484/I-thought-Id-seen-Philomena-And-I-nuns-secret-grave-800-babies-By-Martin-Sixsmith-exposed-Sisters-sold-children-fallen-girls.html

For those who would prefer to read what the 'senior cleric' actually said rather than rely on selective reporting here is the statement:

tuamarchdiocese.org/2014/06/statement-of-archbishop-neary-in-support-of-home-inquiry/

As for cover ups and disgraceful treatment, sadly Ireland does not have a monopoly. Here is just one example:

isnblog.ethz.ch/government/dirty-swiss-secrets

Thank you MiceElf for the link. And apologies for not reading the original in full before. However I still think it is a very "distancing" comment.
I think the difference between abuse that springs up in a children's home and abuse that has occurred in the Catholic church is that the church is a huge, wealthy, global business that for centuries ruled European culture. Popes ordered kings to start wars. Many thousands were tortured and murdered for questioning its rules and beliefs.
It is still immensely powerful and immensely lacking in humility, which is one of the "virtues" that it preaches and pretends to. It has a long and inglorious record of guarding its own reputation by covering up crimes and misdemeanours committed by its officers. It is misogynistic to the core.
So that is why i would argue Flicketyb that this sad story is not just an Irish story, because it is a direct result of the global rule of the Vatican.

Your reading of the statement doesn't sound like distancing to me, I thought it sounded genuine and appropriate. But I suppose we all read between the lines based on our own subjective views.

I don't understand the logical connection of your last sentence Jess M. Did you read the second link I posted? Was this the result of the size of the RCC? Or indeed action by the RCC?

The church is indeed huge, but to describe it as a single entity with all members believing, acting and thinking in the same way is a huge misconception.

No one is denying the many evils perpetrated by some members of the RCC, but it is not unique in having members who fail to adhere to its core principles.

Most institutions can become currupt and autocratic if they are not held in check. Unfortunately after independence in Ireland the Catholic Church was basically told to deal with education and some other welfare issues and the Irish state opted out of checks as to what was going on.

The moral of this is that all institutions must be held accountable, must be frequently inspected for signs of maltreatment of people and so on.

You have to assume that schools, hospitals, prisons churches and so on, can easily become corrupt and damaging to people. But, alas, vigilance is often ignored.

Yes I agree about isolated institutions, as mentioned above. Not distancing to say it was the French nuns and Galway council what did it?
However the RCC is not just bunch of members is it? (as are the Quakers) It has a very hierarchical top down management and power structure. Very little power or influence is given to members - none as far as I can see. I note that the C of E has a synod that allows members to express their views and influence policy but RCC has nothing comparable that I know of. RCC is ruled by celibate men who have a huge vested interest in maintaining their power.

Power is scary wherever it exists and can lead to corruption. Power that invokes the authority of god is even scarier in my book.

I always find it surprising that those who are not members of an institution feel very qualified to pronounce as fact what they feel to be the case.

Top down hierarchical structure? Perhaps in theory but in practice, no. PCCs take place, the PP struggles to do a thousand tasks, the faithful help or hinder according their circumstance or view. What happens and is reported in the media has bugger all to do with ordinary parish life.

This forum produces RCC bashing threads every month or so together with assertions by those who have a visceral hatred of the church. So be it. I'm sorry that Mishap is scared by the church, perhaps she'd like to get to know and have some serious discussions with church goers (no members - people. come or go as they please) and maybe her fears might be dissipated

Some of my best friends are members of the church (in fact more are churchgoers than not) and we have interesting and respectful discussions. My 2 best friends are vicars. They understand my concerns, and in fact share them.

Ah, but do you have any friends in the RCC? We all have concerns, some of them grave concerns, shared by clergy and laity alike, as do members of any institution which has failed to live up to the the principles on which it was founded (I hesitate to mention social workers for example) but there seems to be a great deal of prejudice on here which surfaces very regularly.

As for some your best friends being vicars, some of my close friends are social workers, medics and police officers. That doesn't make me condemn the entire instruction on the basis of some of the corruption and appalling practice to be found there.

The huge difference imho, between what governments, including the UK and my own, did with children- and what the Church(es) did- if that the Christian religion (see previous thread) and Jesus, specifically required to care for young children- and that punishing young children for being sinners due to the 'sin' of their parents- was so utterly and totally against the teachings of the Church.

MiceElf, my father was a Catholic, ex-communicated for marrying a protestant divorcee. Where I live the community is 50/50 Protestant and Catholics (due to massive Italian, Spanish and Portuguese immigration in the 50s, 60s and 70s)- many of my friends are practising Catholics but are currently distancing from Rome and the Vatican, and throwing themselves into the ecumenical movement, as they have grave issues with the attitude of the Pope and Vatican re contraception, abortion and the treatment of gays. My father's favourite sister was gay and committed suicide in the 40s due to the guilt and sin put upon her btw.