The abuse took eerily similar forms
Oh gee, what was that I was just saying about the cruelties of Catholic “industrial schools” and orphanages toward the children captive in them? Christine Kenneally at BuzzFeed has a big story on the US branch. In spite of all the recent coverage of priestly child abuse, she says, the abuse in orphanages is all but unknown.
It is the history of unrelenting physical and psychological abuse of captive children. Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms: People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item. They were forced to eat their own vomit. They were dangled upside down out windows, over wells, or in laundry chutes. Children were locked in cabinets, in closets, in attics, sometimes for days, sometimes so long they were forgotten. They were told their relatives didn’t want them, or they were permanently separated from their siblings. They were sexually abused. They were mutilated.
Check check check check. It’s Goldenbridge and Letterfrack and the other Irish hellholes all over again.
I was sentenced to 5 years in Catholic school (grades 1-5) as a kid. I’ve often joked that Catholic schools of the period were great training grounds for future CIA agents since you either became resistant to physical and mental abuse or you broke. On day one you were issued your uniform and your guilt. The local public school kids were afraid of the Catholic school kids because there was nothing that a kid could do to you that matched what a full grown nun could do to you. I was whipped, slapped, struck with a closed fist to the ear, locked in closets, had my knuckles whacked with a meter ruler, and subjected to oral berating for up to 2.5 hours at a time. (I firmly believe that the Catholic church was an early proponent of the metric system because of the extra 15% kinetic energy delivered by a meter rule vs a yard stick.) Interestingly they never did anything that left a mark. Fortunately (or not depending on your point of view) I was a bit of a Newtonian fluid when it came to what I considered unjust discipline. My brother and I never said anything because we assumed that the nuns had authority over us. When they weren’t individually working us over they made sure to constantly instill a sense of worthlessness and fear.
We had to go to Mass every morning except on days with a funeral where we had to attend the funeral of some stranger (Still HATE the smell of incense).
Despite all this, based on later revelations of abuse we consider ourselves the lucky ones. Fortunately, my parents pulled me out of that school abruptly and I went on to achieve intellectual escape velocity a few years later.
None of this surprises me, since as a child raised by fundamentalist parents I experienced directly the sort of abuse that people who love you can direct toward you…if it’s someone who doesn’t give a flying fig about you, and is determined to turn you into a miniature version of a Stepford Wife, how much worse can it be? I don’t read these reports any more…they bring back too many horrible memories.
This is what can emerge from a philosophy based on the axiom that humanity is fundamentally flawed, if not outright evil, and in desperate need of correction, redemption, salvation and all the rest of it. (Said salvation having been provided by a god who generously satisfied his own craving for blood sacrifices to himself by serving himself up to himself as just such an offering. Etc.)