Sir, – I was a boarder in Galway grammar school from 1943 to 1949. Each Sunday morning and evening, dressed in our best clothes, we walked in crocodile to our respective churches. En route we passed a very large building, in its own grounds, and through the large closed gates we often saw some uniformed girls going to and fro. We were told that the premises was used as a laundry and that our clothes were sent there each week for washing and ironing.
It is only recently that I fully realised that this was a Magdalene laundry, that the occupants were not there of their own free will, and that they lived under such dreadful circumstances.
Be it of any small comfort, should there be any of those workers still alive, I add my sympathy to them that they had to endure such structures, through no fault of their own. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – What an extraordinary contrast between your measured editorial (February 6th) and your exaggerated and sensational coverage of the Magdalene issue. The general tone of your paper is doing enormous damage to the reputation of this country. Your antipathy to church and State is depressing. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – John Waters (Opinion, February 8th) makes a case of some commentators unfairly “placing blame only selectively” when it comes to the Catholic Church and its role in the Magdalene laundries tragedy.
Certainly blame should not be selective, but it should be proportionate. That is, although there is shared responsibility, it is not equal responsibility.
Three facts are evident: the Catholic Church with its claim of moral authority and superiority set the standards where, for example, unmarried mothers were considered fallen women; the church held itself out as of higher moral standing than the secular world, but failed to live up to that standard; and the church resisted accountability to government authority, as it historically has. The State’s main responsibility falls within its failure to insist on church accountability, a failure resulting from its long-standing fearful reverence and deference to church authority.
On balance then, from these examples, the church bears three times the responsibility to that of the state for this tragedy. – Yours, etc,