Reply #16: One wonders how so much ignorance abounds. It was general knowledge that the church was full of [View All]

[lib_wit_it]

abusive authority figures. I was behind Sinead all the way and was shocked at how much grief she got. From personal experience I knew the church was emotionally abusive--for instance, I had genuine questions about what they were telling us in CCD, and the nun could not handle that without treating me as some sort of evil threat.

And every Catholic school kid I'd ever known had horror stories to tell. Not sexual abuse, but other sorts of physical and emotional abuse like having students kneel on upturned bottle caps for punishment, making kids who were sick and vomited clean up the mess. That sort of thing. I worked as a remedial teacher for a state program that serviced private schools, and almost lost my job because I objected to one of the nuns punishing learning disabled students for not doing well academically.

Check out the film Liam for the general societal abuse to which the church subjected the Irish.

My dad used to yell curses at us and backhand us in the car on the way to mass, at which he would then get up and be lector, so I rejected that whole cult pretty early on. Yet he still tries to guilt me out by saying, "I know some day you will come back to the mother church." Yeah, Dad, and one day you'll go back to the mother ship.