The Lost Children of Ireland | Hacker News Reader

The Lost Children of Ireland

nytimes.com

53 pointskeithm24 comments

If there's one minute fraction of a good thing to come out of this it's generational change that is now both ignoring and wrestling control of education & politics from the Irish Catholic Church.

It is all I can do to bite my tongue when I receive questioning looks from elder relatives for not going to church, not getting married in a 'real church' etc etc.

I respect my elders but I can't square the circle that is their tacit acceptance of the evils the church has done in Ireland.

Maybe it's a matter of being in the south Dublin bubble, but I can't think of anyone I know that is religious (aside from a vague cultural identity sense). For the most part I hear the church regarded with scorn.

Things like this may help - https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/school-baptism-bar... - though for all that I just added my daughter to an educate together waitlist. She's two months old.

> 90 per cent of schools are catholic

I wonder where those get money to operate from.

Is it really money gathered by good catholics, or is it effectively money from the state coffers that people of faith get, cross over and then pass as their own?

Truncate their funding and suddently you have 10% of catholic schools instead of 90%. There's zero reasons why general populace should baptise church in their tax money.

The vague cultural identity can have fairly concrete impacts though - baptisims, kids making their first communion in school thus religious instruction, Church control of schools etc.

From the 50 odd primary schools listed here as being ins South Dublin a quick read through puts a majority as religious run schools just based on the name: https://www.schooldays.ie/primary-schools-in-ireland/primary...

My wife is expecting our first child in a few weeks - I expect to go from the registrar office with his birth cert straight to the two nearest Educate Together schools.

I wasn't even thinking of baptism or communion, to be honest it was more of a "I guess my family would be considered protestant / Catholic" sense.

I am not so sure this will fix the problem. The Catholic Church had access to children, people that would take advantage of it sought the positions where they could exploit such power. Places where governments run schools have the same problem...the evil people that will exploit such power and positions always manage to find their way in...and then the organizations tend to always struggle with getting rid of such persons. The problem is with human nature. The only way to reduce (you will never eliminate) such problems is to deal with the violators with certain, swift and harsh punishments (death). You put a lot of blame on the Catholic Church (not that you shouldn't) - but where has the Irish government stepped in and purged the violators?

> The only way to reduce (you will never eliminate) such problems is to deal with the violators with certain, swift and harsh punishments (death). You put a lot of blame on the Catholic Church (not that you shouldn't) - but where has the Irish government stepped in and purged the violators?

If only Fine Gael had a Rodrigo Duterte on the back benches..

..and the insults ongoing, even if they are symbolic.

Ranking 6 year olds' right to go to a school by proximity and denominational affiliation is wrong, and every parent feels it.

Personally, I think we should rebuild monto. Legion OF Mary can pay for it.

It's similar in other countries, too:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29765623

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schoo...

And now we are basically told that these actual sufferers described in the article are "colonial oppressors" and sometimes "bigots", equally responsible for whatever is pegged on them.

Somebody have found an excellent way to distribute their responsibility on the whole population when amassing even more wealth for themself.

You seem to be pretty angry about something no one seems to be saying.

In Spain they collaborated in the kidnapping of dozens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of children from their mothers: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15335899

Residential schools basically still exist in America. They're more about making money now but still have very similar problems with developing an identity and abuse.

I'm afraid we are still having this all across the world, in the form of child protection services.

People who, contrary to their naming, only care about taking children from their parents and putting them in institutions or redistributing them to foster parents.

Whatever tiny grain of trust I had in them burned in many scandals they get themself in and then failed to get out properly.

Perhaps it was everywhere: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/bindoon-...

Not exactly the same, but there are kids suffering the same and worse conditions right now in orphanages throughout eastern Europe - Belarus, Romania, Russia.

I'm pretty sure most of children who was in orphanage in Russia are adopted already and there's a line for potential foster parents.

(On the other hand, people are reluctant to adopt teenagers who are otherwise entitled to free apartment as they come of age)

Expect Belarus to be the same but not sure about Ukraine.

In the case of Russia, I was mostly thinking of it's treatment of disabled kids by the state. Up to 30% of russian disabled children are institutionalized - maybe orphanage is not the right word.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/15/abandoned-state/violen...

Yes I can see how it is a problem. Not many people want to adopt a disabled child, and people will often reject heavily disabled babies after birth. It's not an easy problem to tackle.

Iceland shows promise in this respect, where they now have essentially zero Down syndrome babies thanks to screening.

> Russia should stop abuse of children with disabilities in state care

they write, but it seems impossible to me. How would you make overworked and irritated workers of institutions truly care about emotional well-being of their subjects?

These are the outcomes you get from a state church. The purpose of the Church is to be the opposition, not the right hand of government.

You do ask yourself when people in the US will turn away from nondenominational Baptism, it's about time.

Related, the "Verdingkinder" in Switzerland http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16620597

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