A bunch of frustrated women taking out their frustrations on children and teenagers. The abusers and abused were both the subjects of injustice.

The Roman Church is continuing the criminal tradition of the rotten, acquisitive empire that spawned it in the fourth century when the thug emperor, Constantine, created it and suppressed the evolving religions of the people. The history of brutal suppression of religion along with rational thought continued for centuries and did not begin to crack until Martin Luther and King Henry of England broke ranks with it a thousand years later. Its habit of allying itself with corrupt, brutal regimes has continued until our times and is reflected in the back trail of its current Pope. Of course it is unsurprising that it retains an ingrained sense of entitlement to use captive children as punching bags and playthings. Stories may yet emerge of similar brutality towards children in the Eastern Orthodox church which, like the Roman church, has a long record of tyranny in alliance with thug regimes.

Adele, would the girls have been better off staying where they were?

Hasbeen, that is a stupid question and you should know better than asking it. They would of course been much better off if they had been treated humanely, instead of which the Catholic Church treated "fallen women" and illegitimate children as pariahs to whom no mercy or forgiveness should be given.

Davidf. You are right. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church of the day didn't treat the misguided females who forsook everything to serve their God, much better than those poor unfortunates who were in their care. To those women it also should be forced to make an apology and provide some compensation. It seems to be incapable of providing real compassion except occasionally at the parish level.

David

Davidf

'A bunch of frustrated women taking out their frustrations on children and teenagers.'

Why is it that we don't apply the 'frustrated men' trope to the abuse committed by priests and brothers? It's assumed that these men are simply being evil or mean rather than succumbing to frustration.

The assumption for nuns, however, is that the abuse they commit is the result of living an unnatural existence devoid of sexual/reproductive fulfillment - i.e. not being someone's wife or mother.

Certainly, the lives of nuns and priests in earlier times (not so much today) were not exactly 'normal' but they WERE voluntary - so the 'frustration' theory doesn't really add up.

The past abuse committed in all institutional contexts - Catholic or otherwise - had a lot more to do with the wider repressive social attitudes of the times. These were times that demanded total obedience to authority and treated poverty, vulnerability and 'difference' as crimes deserving of punishment or self-inflicted failure needing 're-education'.

Emperor Julian

'...the rotten, acquisitive empire that spawned [the Roman Church] in the fourth century when the thug emperor, Constantine, created it and suppressed the evolving religions of the people.'

Great summary! I often wonder what kind of a culture the West might have evolved into had the pagans won. I also believe that, for all its achievements, Western culture is pretty mixed up psychically speaking, and that this stems from being so violently disconnected from its ancient pagan spirituality.

The issue with all subjects such as this is balance. This is lacking both in the article and in many of the comments. I suspect that most readers have little or no knowledge of the Good Shepherd Sisters other than that derived from the article.

The title accuses the leader of the order in Australia of denying history, yet the article is clear that it is a case of omission in one particular summary document, which is quite different to denial.

I do agree that there is much to be deplored in how Magdalene laundries, run by the Good Shepherd Sisters and other Catholic orders, denied basic rights to many under their control. The Senate Report (referred to in the article) highlighted abuses in a wide range of Catholic and non-Catholic institutions and had little particular focus on Good Shepherd Sisters.

Magdalene laundries originally achieved notoriety in Ireland and were the subject of both an official government inquiry and an apology from the Irish Prime minister. What is notable about the inquiry is that despite countless sad stories of exploitation and abuse of women in these institutions, a large majority of the women who shared their stories with the Inquiry said that they had neither experienced nor seen other girls or women suffer physical abuse in the Magdalene Laundries.

For balance, the following article is worth a read: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/02/25/the-magdalen-laundries-were-used-as-reformatories-where-girls-were-sent-without-due-process-but-they-were-not-brutal-anti-catholics-have-lied-about-them/

Bren, I don't know how you came to conclude that the article you linked us to provided "balance ". It was written by a committed apologist for the church who cherry-picked the evidence to suit his line. The welter of strong negative response to that piece should have given you the cue that if it's "balance" you aspire to you needed to find something more reasoned and based on the range of available evidence.

Dear Killarney,

You remind me of the joke when a mother buys two ties for her son's birthday. He showed up at his mother's house wearing one of the ties, and she said, "Wat's wrong with the other one?"

I don't deny that priests can be frustrated also. However, that was not the topic.

There is a question of how voluntary entrance into the priesthood or the nuns' orders were. Both sons and daughters were often designated for the church, and sometimes there was intense pressure on them. Even though entrance could be voluntary a teenager might not fully realise what he or she was committing himself to.

Actually I believe that we would have a much better world if the Roman Empire had not become Christian and had stayed pagan. The pagan world of many gods was much more tolerant of other beliefs than the monotheistic religions. It also fostered a spirit of enquiry which Christianity in general opposed. Hypatia, a brilliant female astronomer philosopher and mathematician, was murdered by a Christian mob in 415. Servetus who was a great anatomist who was aware of pulmonary circulation was put to death in Calvin's Protestant Geneva in 1553. Bruno who speculated on the existence of other solar systems was burned at the stake in Catholic Rome in 1600. It was no coincidence that the rise of Christianity meant the beginning of the Dark Ages. Theodosius, the Roman emperor, who made Christianity the official religion severely persecuted pagans who remained loyal to their faith.

It was Theodosius not Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and suppressed other beliefs. Constantine issued the Edict of Toleration which gave Christianity equal status with other religions.

Without the ascent of Christianity over paganism we would have been denied the Inquisition, the Wars of the Reformation, the Dark Ages, the Holocaust informed by the centuries of Christian-inspired hatred, the witch hunts, the Crusades etc. The triumph of Christianity over paganism was a defeat for tolerance and reason.

I think David f is half right and half wrong about who was responsible for clamping "Christianity" on the citizens of Rome. Constantine started by tolerating the cult, but the overthrow and replacement of Hellenism proceeded throughout his reign, until in the last years he had converted the new “Christianity” into an imperial rather than a Christian organisation and tolerance of it had morphed into a concordat with it rather like Musso’s with the same lot under fascism. Constantine took control of a Sunni-Shia-type spat between the Nicene creed (which asserted Christ was the born son of God) and the Arian creed which asserted he had been created, and ruled for the Nicene, outlawing and rigorously suppressing the popular religions (Hellenism), and by the end of his rule he had started the pillaging and tearing down of the traditional pagan temples.

It’s true, though, that later Theodosius blossomed as a suitable patron for the “Christians”, massacring 7000 circus fans in revenge for some slight or other, and around the same time declared the “Christians” the official Roman state church. Theodosius thus formalised the work initiated and virtually completed by Constantine.

To Killarney: Thanks for your comment. You’ll see why I have taken as my pen-name the name of the only halfway decent emperor Rome ever had! Foolishly he got killed invading Persia – unwise then and unwise today.

The behaviour of religious orders when it came down to the welfare of children who were deemed 'at risk'was often one of blame the victim. As someone who grew up Catholic, I saw this in everyday life: if you were poor, you did not work hard enough; if you were sick, you must have done something wrong so do penance; if you were a child, you did as you were told... regardless. Child abuse and exploitation are not limited to the religious institutions but instead we must recognise, acknowledge and rectify the hurt and damage that all institutions have inflicted because we as a society have washed our hands of the sick, the damaged, the elderly, the poor and the young. We take no personal interest and invest institutions (govt, religious)with the power to do as they see fit. No one wants to get their hands dirty.

The worst part is these charities get TAX EXEMPTION so technically the taxpayer are subsidizing commercial businesses.

Emperor Julian

‘Foolishly he got killed invading Persia – unwise then and unwise today.’

So true! Stay tuned, though. Current unwisdom towards Persia escalates by the day.

Margas

‘... we must recognise, acknowledge and rectify the hurt and damage that all institutions have inflicted because we as a society have washed our hands of the sick, the damaged, the elderly, the poor and the young.’

Exactly! I suspect the media likes to focus so much on abuse in religious institutions, especially Catholic, because it takes the heat off our society’s increasing ‘secular’ callousness towards the growing tide of have-nots.

David f.

‘I don't deny that priests can be frustrated also.’

True. And I’m not saying that you do.

I'm pointing out a double standard in how abuse by priests and nuns is perceived. Why is the former deemed, semantically speaking, to be driven by evil, and the latter by (sexual) frustration?

However, I do agree with all your points about paganism and tolerance.

Philip S

True. Get rid of these archaic tax exemptions and most religions would collapse very quickly.