The God Squad

What the Irish People and State could do now to enable healing and restitution

Introduction

I was born in 1955 and was brought up in a psychologically and emotionally abusive environment – my father was a bullying, dominating, angry and uncaring alcoholic who had the ‘benefit’ of a Christian Brothers education. Luckily we were not poor and my father was not physically violent, but, nevertheless four of my five other siblings have had, and still have, serious lifelong psychological problems (four have spent various periods in Psychiatric hospitals). I was lucky to attend a ‘better class’ of single-sex Catholic school but, nevertheless, have spent the first 50 years of my life trying to cope with the damaging effects of childhood fear, uncertainty, guilt, self-doubt and loathing and feelings of being unlovable. Having grappled with the very deceptive, but soothing, effects on the tortured psyche of that all-pervasive drug in our society – alcohol , I can only now, with healing, leave it behind and begin to relax and trust life again (having found a really loving partnership).

So, like many in our tortured land, I am very distressed and angry to think that while many of us kids were suffering our own various hells in Catholic day schools and abusive home environments, many other, less fortunate, kids were suffering a nightmarish hell of tortures, incarcerated in religious-run gulags. Now I am feeling guilty at a lifetime of ‘whinging’ about my upbringing when other kids suffered far worse fates.

Catholic Church control of the State’s education system

Worse still is the dread realisation that the organisation which laid the foundation for the ethical and moral ‘standards’ which pervaded Irish society for at least the last century (and much further back than that) is still in control of the ethical and moral formation of 95% of the nation’s children. How can we allow this to continue?

To this day a huge proportion of Irish children, of very young and tender age, are being taught that they carry ‘original sin’ and are forced to go to confession to celibate priests who have had, all their lives, to suppress their natural, God-given, sexual desires. It is my firm belief that we do a grave injustice to the Nation’s children if we allow men, who are suppressing their own sex drives, to teach (or cause other young teachers to teach) these same children precepts that are almost certainly not true (original sin, purgatory, hell, heaven etc..) and that will most certainly cause them guilt, fear and confusion about sin, sex, and their own bodies.

Only truth should be taught in our schools – is this not a basic, moral standard on which we should insist in our education system? I would concede that some (patently invented) myths – Santa Claus, Sinbad the Sailor, The Fairies, etc are harmless and should continue to be taught, but the stories inculcated in children by the major religions are mainly about worship, judgementalism, fear and differentiation from others. Children are taught that these stories are very, very serious and are vastly more important than anything else they will learn from their teachers, their parents or their families. How can Irish parents allow this to happen to their children? The answer is: because, in most cases, they have no choice but to allow this to be done to their children. The only alternative is to have their children ostracised and singled out at school as ‘different’, if they don’t undergo the same strange and unsettling process as their peers.

It angers me to hear people say that we should be thankful to the Catholic Church for ‘giving’ us an education. The suggestion is that we would have had no education system if the Church hadn’t set it all up and controlled it. Of course, this is nonsense! Every country in the world has an education system and all in Europe (many being much poorer than Ireland) have had very comprehensive systems – many to a far superior standard to ours. The Catholic Church wrested control of the education system from the British government in the 19th century and has jealously guarded it ever since. The system was paid for in toto by the Irish people, either through their taxes, subsequently handed over to the Church, or directly, by contributions to Church coffers. The Vatican, where the ultimate responsibility for all this lies, did not contribute, but was a net beneficiary of donations to the Church.

The only way for us, as a society, to heal these wounds to our individual and collective psyche, and to show respect to the memory of generations of child victims, is to sweep away all the secrecy, open all the Vatican and Church archives, stop the teaching of religion in all State schools and cut all ties between Church and State – no more religious control of any hospital, school or care institution which is wholly or partially funded by the taxpayer. Of course, religious people will continue to work in all these institutions but they should not control them or form their ethical and moral ethos.

The moral position is, surely, that the bishops, priests, nuns and brothers do not own all these institutions; they hold them in trust for the Irish people who paid for them. The State must now wrest ownership and control of all Schools from the Catholic Church. If this requires a constitutional amendment, then so be it. No-one would suggest that the religious should be left homeless or destitute – they should be furnished with decent living accommodation, chapels, halls etc, sufficient to their reasonable needs. In fact some orders of religious (mostly nuns) have voluntarily taken these steps by divesting themselves of their large holdings of land and buildings, and giving them to worthy causes and communities.