The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
Satanic Panic was projection.
If we do shit like this, imagine what they could do!
Yeah, and the irony is that in the Bible, Lucifer never even asked for an animal or human sacrifice, but god did.
Excellent name.
Also, under the Christian dogma, Satan has no authority beyond what God allows. Who then is truly responsible for his actions?
Satan is God’s QA guy. Maybe a bit more prone to destructive testing than he really needs to be.
The serpent never even told Eve to eat the fruit (the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, why would God create such a tree and why wouldn’t he want humans to have such knowledge? So stupid). All it did was tell her that it was an option.
Not to mention they literally had no concept of good and evil prior to eating it. Therefore they literally could not have known disobeying God was a bad thing. It’s all just so fucking ridiculous that people buy this shit.
Yeah it’s absurd. Even if taken completely allegorical.
I asked that question when I was a kid in catechism class. To the credit of the Dominican brother who was teaching the class, he wasn’t reactive, but later had a side-talk with me about demanding logical consistency from allegory. But that realization planted the seed that eventually led to my abandoning religion.
If we go after things that weren’t said in the Bible then hell as we imagine should be among the first. Maybe that’s the reason clergy are so beyond repair?
And while we are at it, the description of hell we used to is Dante’s storytelling of Hieronymus Bosch’s interpretation of an Irish monk’s account of a early medieval Cork knight’s ba
gd trip.Since Dante died almost 2 centures before H. Bosch, that’s some insightful storytelling.
Ok I fucked up the time line, apologies. Swap Bosch and Dante but the rest holds. Check out “Visio Tnugdali”.
It’s always projection
The band names are thick in the comments.
If your society cannot or will not support an unmarried pregnant woman on her own, your society is a failed one.
Religion has historically provided a safe haven to the sick and twisted among society, where they’re allowed to act with impunity due to their perceived status.
That’s not directly due to the religion; but rather due to the societal pedestal being devout seems to put people on; “a holy person could never do that to a child” etc…
The reality is, other areas that benefit from this sort of status too find themselves riddled with bad actors… Just look through charity organisations and I can guarantee you’ll be combing over a sea of sociopaths buying themselves good credit with public opinion rather than people looking to make a difference because they want to (not to say these people don’t exist; they just don’t end up running the show normally)
mental health nurses who work in an asylum/“hospital”/“mental health unit” too according to a friend who works in one as a nurse.
All inequality creates abuse.
Your last paragraph reminded me of Ashton Kutcher… I can’t watch that 70s show anymore. It was my favorite tv show of all time.
I can’t watch that 70s show anymore. It was my favorite tv show of all time.
I used to love The Cosby Show. Unwatchable now even if they would still air it.
I could never stand the smugness and “credit to his race” overtones.
That was one of my comfort shows, and I can’t watch it either.
You mean Masterson? Or am I forgetting some gross shit Ashton Kutcher did?
The both of them are complete gross. Ashton started a charity when he was with Demi on combating child sexual abuse and exploitation, and he wrote a letter defending/supporting Danny in the trial.
Ah right, I remember that.
To be fair, those are two different levels of shittiness… I would say his monetary contribution probably accomplished much more than his letter.
Yes, gross thing to do. But does it really compare to the actual crimes Masterson committed?
Being an enabler is just as responsible as being a perpetrator.
The rosy romanticisation of what should be a humanitarian entity is probably worst with Buddhism. The Buddhist majority-Burmese oppressing the Rohyngian Muslims, some Buddhist monks advocating for dominance in South East Asia, and even pre-CCP Tibet where the dalai lama and his ilks were decadent and corrupt, seem unfathomable for many who view Buddhism as the most secular and least dogmatic religion. There was an article I have read lamenting this corruption in Buddhist communities, and I was like “they are still humans, what do you expect?”
Fuck off sino shill, CCP is not doing any Tibetans favour’s by invading their country, they are a bunch of corrupt dictators
Not making CCP any better here, but truth is truth and doesn’t care about your feelings. Was it China’s business to invade Tibet? No, but pre-CCP Tibet was a corrupt theocratic state similar to Iran and Renaissance-era Vatican.
And what’s your source for any of this, I can bring up multiple sources for the atrocities done by the CCP on their own citizens (tiananmen square massacre) and those of neighboring nations, can you back up any of what you claim about Tibet, and even if it were true that does not give China any rights to invade them. Should the other countries invade China for their corrupt leaders then?
Take a deep cleansing breath. Now look at it with this more neutral framing: the last time the lamas were in power, what was it like? Was it some ideal, benign society or not?
And whether life under the CCP is any better is a separate question. From what I can tell, there’s been a systematic effort by the CCP to extinguish all aspects of Tibetan national identity. That’s probably Han racism packaged as anti-nationalism, but regardless, it’s shitty and slow-motion genocidal.
Amongst others these:
Both the old theocratic feudal state and the CCP oppressed state are bad
@[email protected] is not a “Sino-Shill”, none is questioning the atrocities of the CCP. Please re-read this thread.
Unhelpful American chiming in: if the Finns, or Danes are feeling feisity we could really use a regime change…
I don’t want those fuckers taking over, building saunas and nice bakeries everywhere, forcing us to have government accountability, good universal healthcare and employment rights.
Actually, I may have spoken too soon…
You could literally google and see sources what life was like in Tibet before. China is bad, and Tibet before was bad. Many things can be true at the same time. It is just the fact of life. No one is backing up China, it is only you problem if that is you are being emotional on a factual statement.
Look into any situation where there is a massive disparity of power between some people and other people and that’s were you will find the most abuses and I totally agree it’s for the reasons you said of there being far less risk for the abusers due to their “status” and that such places actually attract the worst people in society so it’s a bit of self-fullfilling prophecy that putting too much power and not enough transparency and accountability in a position will invariably end up with it being abused, even if you start with the purest of people and the purest of intentions.
This is also probably why there was (and only time will tell if that’s still or not the case) so much child sexual abuse in the Catholic church: adult in high standing in the community and implicitly trusted by all vs child (generally from a poor background).
Thinking about this over the years (mainly for Politics, but it applies to other areas) has led me to conclude that the “good” exercise of power is impossible to get from a static situation (i.e. the idealistic idea that “give power to honest people” solves it) and instead it has to be setup as a dynamic mechanism with frequent rotation of people and multiple unrelated (ideally, competing) people watching over each other other (which is probably where the ide behind the Three Pillars Of Democracy) and whose power balances.
Exactly concentrating power in the hands of a few is a recipe for disaster, doesn’t matter if you elect uncle Roger to the post. Power needs to be distributed and the people who have it should be in constant fear of losing it if they don’t work towards gaining the favor of the masses by working towards the betterment of society. This is why I find morons who pick political sides as if it’s a sports team so stupid, neither side should think you belong to them, they should worry about you flipping your mind all the time.
Couldn’t agree more!
To the “religion is what makes us civil” crowd, fuck off all the way to whatever hell you believe in or just the sun.
Disclaimer: This is not a call for violence.
Understood, I will go and punch a nun.
You could start by exposing the next Mother Rasputin or Mother Teresa.
I have never understood this pseudo-argument. Christian morality is based on the fear of eternal punishment. Do these fools even realize that?! Morality can be explained much more comprehensibly and naturally through evolution and empathy.
It’s a major self-report without them even realizing. They’re basically saying that, without the threat of eternal damnation, nothing would stop them from raping and murdering.
My main issue in discussions on religion is that either side generally claims that either “it makes us civil”, as you say, or that “it’s the cause of evil”. In reality it’s neither. Religion has traditionally been (still is, I’m afraid) a powerful form of crowd control that in past times has steered some believers into doing better deeds by the duality of the hell-heaven system, and likewise has twisted others into extremism and using religion as justification for evil acts. Most of the time it’s just a simple way of life that rids you of the need to question the universe and to carve your own path. As a “Muslim” I sometimes, in some ways, envy those that simply view the etiquettes, laws, and traditions that govern their lives as unquestionable truths. There’s no need to search for purpose, you’re already born with it.
Humans are flawed and evil. That is true with or withour religion.
Sorry for rambling.
Religion, from the start, has been used primarily as a means of control. It is a system that is built for “flawed and evil” humans to exploit in order to oppress and control others.
Anything good that might come from that is incidental and in spite of that.
I think you nailed it here. The successful religions are the ones that are useful as tools for the powerful. It’s not the cause of evil, but it’s something that lets powerful people convince people to do awful things.
On the other hand, for the believers, it’s a source of community and comfort. They’re given simple rules to follow and promised that their suffering is not in vain. It gives them simple answers to complex questions.
It also allows people to get over feeling bad. A bad thing is “part of god’s plans”. A bad thing you did is not really your fault because a trickster god made you do it, or the devil made you do it, so you don’t need to do any self-reflection. Or, a bad thing happened to you or someone you love, that’s just a bad god, or a devil, or a complex part of a god’s plan, so you don’t need to worry about it. This is all really useful for leaders, because they’re inevitably closer to the gods than the people they control, and they get to use excuses like “you’re suffering because the gods are unhappy with you” or “it’s your lot in life, because you were born to that caste” or “this was all because of this wicked group of other people who believe in a different god, so we should kill them and take their land”.
Humans are flawed and sometimes evil, but religion is a very useful tool to manipulate those people.
I’m pretty sure it’s more like: religions define what we find civil as a society. Personal spiritual beliefs define what people find acceptable and unacceptable. Religion align spiritual beliefs among social groups.
Numbers 31:18
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
You can keep the “religion defines what we find civil as a society.” Miss me with all of the shit.
Id say religion tends to be more of a reflection of what a society finds as civil. Look at other religions around the world, or historical religions and there are some things that would be entirely unacceptable in my local society at least.
I find them more to be a reflection of a small group. Then it is pushed on others to force them to assimilate. Christianity, Hindism, Islam, Judaism, and every other group has “do what we say or else.”
So slavery is cool, then?
“civil”
Recently in England there was a Turkish man burning the koran… a Muslim guy came out and lunged at him several times with a knife he just happened to have on him shouting “you will not burn my holy book” or some such, the book burner was charged by the police (the bible can be burnt in England but for some reason the koran cannot). Kier Starmer didn’t want to progress an investigation into child abuse because of how it will expose the Muslim men abusing working class young white girls because their religion states girls who don’t cover their hair are sluts.
All these institutions of god trying to tell us our souls will be saved if we follow them. and that the “other” religions are prophligates, infidels, devils and heretics. LMAO
I’ve yet to find one that isn’t hiding a history of butchery
Religion is such hypocrisy. No wonder people are turning away.
On one hand, they tell people don’t use birth control, no abortion ; on the other hand, they don’t protect them.
What in the fuck
Every time I run into a pro lifer, I tell them about what happened in Ireland.
Most of them ignore me, some say it’s worth it.
They’re not pro-life. They’re pro-forced-birth.
*pro-birther. If they were really pro life there’d be less school shootings, etc. pp.
My dad recent got a decent payout for being the internationally trafficked childhood victim of one of these unwed mother homes…
Not worth his lifetime of trauma, nor the issues that came with being sold at age 4 to a “keeping up appearances” family that sent him away to boarding school on top of everything…
But it’s something… he’s mid 70s, so you know, totally enough time to use the money.
I love how the headline says as if this happened recently. Clowns.
My brain took a moment to register the word infant. As in the child was already born.
religions don’t deserve to exist.
Religion is the last mental illness you can’t call out or treat. When you have Mike Huckabees et al going around ushering in the End Times, we should have the power to medicate these people into a barely functional stupor.
Inb4 hot takes that are especially relevant in June.
Pray for my soul.
I agreed up until the end. Forcefully medicating people into a “barely functional stupor” is a horrific human rights violation.
So is allowing someone with delusions to cause mass murder. I’d say that’s even worse, just based on the body count.
Not every religious person wants to commit mass murder.
It’s not. If you see someone with a clearly broken leg and unconscious, do you wait for the person to wake up?
No, because that person is not able to have any say in the matter (they are unconcious). All we can do is operate in their best interest, by getting them medical help.
However, a person with mental illness is concious (in this case) and can advocate for themselves and we shouldn’t deny them the right to do so. That would be oppression.
Do you think all schizophrenic people should be forcefully medicated even if they don’t pose a threat to others? Because a lot of religious people aren’t a threat to anybody. They aren’t all extremists.
However, a person with mental illness is concious (in this case) and can advocate for themselves
They can’t effectively advocate for themselves when they’re delusional or paranoid.
Do you think all schizophrenic people should be forcefully medicated even if they don’t pose a threat to others?
Nobody mentioned schizophrenia but you. And the assumption was very evidently that the people in question did pose a threat. In the case of Mike Huckabee, an actionable and immediate one.
And yes, I know involuntary commitments have been horribly abused in the past. But I also know that there are times when such a process is necessary. I know people close to me who would not be alive and had the potential to harm others if they hadn’t been sectioned. And the most severe case wasn’t schizophrenia, it was during a bad bipolar manic phase. Not that there are good ones.
I know involuntary commitments have been horribly abused in the past.
It’s not all in the past. They are still abused today.
All we can do is operate in their best interest, by getting them medical help.
The end.
They can exist - if they pay taxes.
I’d rather they not, though.
Sure but you might be making some assumptions that don’t really apply here.
You mean assumptions about the 800 dead hidden babies in what is a very common finding inthese settings? Those assumptions?
Yes, those assumptions.
Do you think they had a valid and good reason to hide 800 dead babies in a septic tank?
It wasn’t a septic tank.
It was a structure with 20 compartments which was originally designed as some kind of sewage management system but was never used as such.
So your question is really, do I think they had a valid and good reason to bury 800 infants, who had died from various bacterial and viral infections over a long period of time.
The obvious answer to that is yes.
It was a refuge for mothers and children. There’s no indication of any abuse or neglect of the deceased at this time. I’m sure there are many valid criticisms to be made about this time and this place, and certainly there are valid criticisms to be made about religion, but this refuge is not the baby murder facility you’re looking for.
There’s a snopes article with a lot more information which challenges the assumptions you’re making:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/18/796-children-septic-tank-ireland/
Your god hates you, which is why she made you stupid.
Except that Snopes article does not even agree with you.
It’s time you stopped excusing and glossing over the atrocities committed.
Sources on how fucked up Irish mother and baby homes were:
Why did they hide them, then?
the idea of banning religion is painfully tyrannical, like how could you do that without instituting a thought police or a state sanctioned belief system…
however, in reality, they most toxic part of religion of organised religions, when they are big institutions fighting for political power rather than maintaining their beliefs and communities.
possible solution: progressive tax on religious institutions based on their size, a small community of 50 to 100? tax free, you have 1000s of congregants? start rising, megachurches with 1000 thousand people? 95% tax…
banning religion? I didn’t say ban it.
i assumed you wanted them gone.
I do. religion is a profound evil, and the cause of nearly all human suffering.
God has caused the bloodiest and most brutal wars ever fought, which were all based on religious hatred. Millions have died simply because ‘God told’ Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians it would be a ‘good idea’ for them to kill each other.
- George Carlin, Comedian and Social Critic
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been . . . the most destructive to . . . the peace and happiness of man.
- Thomas Paine, Political Philosopher (1796)
The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.
- Richard Nixon, even this Dick thinks so
I don’t think religion itself is evil. But corporate religion. Organizations and individuals that claim religion as the reasons for thier own sin for profit. People waving the bible as an excuse to do harm unto others.
Worship of a higher power or purpose shouldn’t ever be used as a reason or means to commit sins. That’s the major problem. Corruption and hypocrisy is rampant because people gather power under the flag of religion. Power easily corrupts the more it gathers.
agree 100%
but will be pedantic and complain about your usage of “sin”, as it is a Christian concept and not necessarily a bad thing.
Sin/evil deeds then. Many decent religions denounce evil deed and have good morals. Then there are other religions that promote sacrifice of life (your own or others).
Looks like all the kids died of disease? Definitely evidence that the world has gotten better not worse.
Well, some things. Science and medicine are two of the things that I count as consistently bettering our lives.
Don’t jinx it, the antivax crowd certainly is growing. And then there is Maha.
The disease / pre-existing condions being “born out of wedlock” and “being in a catholic children camp”.
Since the excavations just happen now as survivors and the general public wont shut up about the atrocities, and ITT there are still plenty of apologist I’m not sure how thick the veneer of better is.
Listen, the Child Mortality Rate from 1935 for ages 1-3 was 13 times that of 2020, according to USA HHS data compiled in a report by GovInfo.
Do I think these children had exasperated risk factors such as psychological stress and malnutrition? Yes.
Do I think these Nuns were practicing health and safety in accordance with a proper understanding of germ theory? No.
Is anybody surprised that this many babies died? No. The shock value here is they didn’t even get buried properly. They’re not psychopathic murdernuns, they’re just the regular people whose sin is never learning the truth or not believing it, of which still exist in droves today.
Sorry, I should have put the sources list at the bottom of my reply.
First off you can’t compare US mortality rates to Irish ones, especially if you can’t apply it to the numbers.
From the Wikipedia article on Tuam: Writing in a 2012 HSE report, Declan McKeown, a consultant public health physician and medical epidemiologist stated that the infant mortality rate in the home were “similar to those recorded at Bessborough” (another mother and baby home), which were five times the rate for Ireland in 1950 and 65 times the 2012 rate. McKeown stated that these rates were equivalent to the infant mortality rate in Ireland in the 1700s.
That seems disturbingly high, don’t you think?
EDIT: Disturbingly high and a common occurence in these facilities in Ireland.
Also check out at least that 1st Arte video. It is not long and features a couple of survivors.
After consuming the sources below I have to say that the disposal of the bodies is IMHO the least atrocious thing that was committed.
Sources:
DNA analysis found that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years.
Ok, atrocities aside, how the hell can you tell age from DNA? DNA doesn’t change as you age.
This is probably from poor medical care.
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Not really abortion if it’s post-birth, is it? Once they’re born, if you kill them, that’s simply murder. The line is drawn at birth. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? “Billy was killed at age 13 months and Tommy was killed at age 11 months. Thus Billy was murdered and Tommy was post-birth aborted…” No. They’re both murdered.
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Not really abortion if it’s post-birth, is it? Once they’re born, if you kill them, that’s simply murder.
which is exactly what they wrote:
no this is post-birth abortion… aka murder….
There are thousands of diseases that historically kill newborns. Modern medicine helps with a lot of them from vitamins to antibiotics to surgical interventions.
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You have a serious case of “didnt read the article” going on here. The deaths were already recorded - they were known and nobody was hiding the deaths. They were hiding the bodies.
They pulled up the septic tank because there werent any graves for all the death certificates. This is improper burials. The reason there are so many deaths is likely just poor medical care as the article notes the place closed in the 1960s.
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No it’s not. Most of the infants died from bacterial or viral infections.
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