The "Moral Authority" of the Catholic Church is dealt another blow
Irish convents as slave camps:
Operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order, the laundries were virtual slave labor camps for generations of young girls thought to be unfit to live in Irish society.
Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in "moral danger" all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to "wash away their sins."
They were completely cut off from their families, and many lost touch with them forever.
Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.
[...] Sadie Williams, 64, spent a total of four years in two different convent laundries. She was 14 when she was virtually kidnapped by two women who had determined that she was "in moral danger." Williams liked to take a walk in the evenings, after working all day at a bed and breakfast in Dublin. She said the women considered her much too attractive to stay out of trouble.
She was only 14 when she ended up in a convent laundry outside town as "Number 100," and locked into a cell each night. She says she almost never saw daylight.
I really should get around to getting myself formally excommunicated.
I really should get around to getting myself formally excommunicated.
Me too!
P.S. I got "Not Found" errors when I tried opening the comments area with javascript.
Posted by lia on February 1 2003 13:08
Apalling, but to leave the Church because of this is even more ridiculous. Don't leave Peter because of Judas. Would you leave the 11 faithful apostles just because one one stinking *ssh0le?
Are you sure this is not just an excuse for you to live your life "free" from obligations? Must be fun doing whatever you want without any accountabilty to God...
Still, those nuns must have had pretty bad childhoods...
Posted by Philip on February 3 2003 12:56
oh, and to add
There's no need to get yourself "formally excommunicated" to leave the Catholic Church, heh heh, just stop going to mass (and I assume you've stopped a long time ago) and start regularly attending another religion's services - i.e. get yourself baptized in a protestant church or something.
Posted by Philip on February 3 2003 13:01
I left the Church long ago, but my status is merely that of lapsed Catholic.
Of course, actually going through the process of being excommunicated would involve actively having a relationship with the Catholic Church again, and though there'd be a certain petty satisfaction in flipping them off by demanding excommunication, it really wouldn't be a terribly productive use of my time and energy.
And, yes, I'm quite sure this isn't an excuse to live my life "free" from obligations. But thanks for your concern.
Posted by Zed on February 3 2003 13:06
Excommunication is one of the more misunderstood rules of the Catholic Church, and it's worth looking into just out of intellectual curiosity. There are several copies of the Catholic Encyclopedia on the Web, with a comprehensive (yet still readable) article on excommunication. Try the link http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm
One key point that might make you reconsider whether excommunication is really what you're looking for:
"It is also a medicinal rather than a vindictive penalty, being intended, not so much to punish the culprit, as to correct him and bring him back to the path of righteousness. It necessarily, therefore, contemplates the future, either to prevent the recurrence of certain culpable acts that have grievous external consequences, or, more especially, to induce the delinquent to satisfy the obligations incurred by his offence."
Also note that excommunication means being "out of communion" with the Church, that is, not allowed to receive its sacraments or participate in its society. As for the sacraments, if you don't adhere to the Church's core beliefs, then receiving them would be at best meaningless and at worst hypocritical. Being excluded from Church society was a lot more important in medieval Europe, when to lose the favor of the Church would severely limit one's options in civil society as well. In America today, I don't think it means anything more significant than not being able to, say, teach at a Catholic school or join the Knights of Columbus.
As another ex-Catholic, I believe that any religious organization is a social group that is voluntarily belonged to by sincerely accepting that group's beliefs. For Christians, you have to believe that Jesus Christ died to redeem your sins. (One could get more specific with the Catholic beliefs, but if you reject that one, you pretty much cut the legs out from everything else.) If you don't believe that, then you are not part of the Church, without any need for formal excommunication ceremonies.
Posted by Jimcat on February 3 2003 13:57
Are you sure this is not just an excuse for you to live your life "free" from obligations? Must be fun doing whatever you want without any accountabilty to God...
What a lovely narrow view of the world! That's pathetic, Philip, really pathetic.
I grew up and realized I was an atheist after ten years in Catholic school, baptism and confirmation, so a) all the talk about god means nothing to me and b) I'd like to make it formal.
Posted by lia on February 14 2003 10:10
I used to be a catholic at one time, but am now just a Christian, as in the New Testament. The book of Acts has examples of conversion and tells us what they did to become Christians. One must believe in Jesus, repent of their sins, confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and be baptized in water (immersed).
Posted by terry on August 6 2003 17:58
This is digusting!
I was outraged when I read about the existence of these Roman Catholic slave centres.How could this ever happened in a democratic coutry?
The Irish Roman Catholic church should pay compensations to their victims like German firms have had to do to their former WWII slaves.
Posted by José M. López on March 17 2005 15:00
getting excommunicated doesn't mean that you have to stop believing in God or anything. obviously, you would have no priest to administer the holy sacraments, but you don't need a priest to believe in God, Allah, Yaweh, or whomever. technically, all you would be doing is disassociating yourself from a pretty messed up organization, for which no one can hold you accountable. SO THERE!!!!
Posted by ktg on May 17 2005 17:34