Sir, – Archbishop of Tuam Dr Michael Neary asks that the inquiry into the Mother and Baby home in Tuam be broadened from a focus on one particular religious congregation to address the “roles and interrelationships between Church, State, local authorities and society generally ... In this way we will be enabled to move genuinely forward” he said. (Home News, March 11th)
In other words, the way forward is to blame everybody for what happened in Tuam? When everybody is to blame then nobody is to blame, not the Bon Secour order, and certainly not the archbishop’s own organisation. Dr Neary’s proposal to blame everybody is certainly the best way forward for the Catholic Church.
Why he must not be allowed to get away with this line of argument is because it implies that the Irish as a race were a cruel people by nature. Perhaps we became so, but we were not always so. Any inquiry into Tuam must include the question, “who or what introduced that cruelty into our culture?”
We know that rats and their fleas introduced the plagues to Europe. We now know that negative religious dogmas around sexuality infected a largely uneducated and superstitious Irish population prompting many to engage violently, even against children. Any genuine way forward in understanding Tuam must include a study of the source of this violence. – Yours, etc,
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DECLAN KELLY,
Dingle,
Co Kerry.
Sir, – The vast amount of concern for the treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies expressed in your letters columns is well and truly deserved.
In the midst of all this shameful affair the name of Catherine Corless shines like a beacon in the dark. Her research into the history of the Tuam baby home was a much needed epiphany for a society that chose for so long to keep the collusion between church and state in this affair a dark secret.
I will always link her name with that of Noël Browne in his fight for the Mother and Child Scheme in 1951; both rank among the great patriots of recent times for the most vulnerable section of our population. – Yours, etc,
JOHN F FALLON,
Boyle,
Roscommon.