Nearly 800 infant remains found in septic tank at nun-run Irish unwed mother and baby home
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.
https://www.foxla.com/news/babies-dead-septic-tank-ireland-nunsOpen linkView original on lemmy.ml881
Comments333
I'm old enough to remember everyone getting all bent out of shape by Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope.
She was a couple of years early, but right.
But she paid a huge price for being too early :(
Didn't she go full Islam afterwards though? Like... Bruh.
No. Show your work.I have been educated today.
Fuckin' weird move, Sinead.
I mean, it was 26 years after the pope thing but she did convert to Islam. Even changed her name.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/29/1190953443/how-sinead-o-connor-found-peace-in-islam-after-a-lifelong-struggle-with-religion
HUH. Okay, fair enough.
Oconnor was a victim of child sex abuse. Can you blame her for going after her church which actively hides child rape and murder? I think whatever your views are on Islam, you should let her have this choice without judgement. Shaking your finger at rape victims is.. not a great response here.
Can you blame her for recognizing and turning her back on a harmful patriarchal religion that victimizes women and children and turning to… Islam? Yeah, I can.
I don’t. Her talent doesn’t make her anything special outside of that talent. A person can do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Also, it happened during a time when Muslims were facing torment from the outside world because of 9/11. She wasn’t the only artist to convert to Islam during that time, but most of the ones I remember reading about at least had some potential connection to the religion through their ancestry.
Some people cannot fathom a world without religion, even when they see the destruction in what they’re familiar with. If you spend your heart fighting one enemy, it’s a lot easier to miss the crimes of the enemy next door, especially if that enemy is a perceived underdog.
Edit:
2018 is when she converted apparently, but she still would have seen and felt the post 9/11 world. I don’t know much of anything so disregard everything I said if you want to or tell me why I’m an idiot if I deserve it.
I question your judgement, and hers, but I also think people should be able to make poor choices so long as bystanders aren't hurt. If she's funding jihad, that's a problem (and I don't know if she is or not). If she's living and letting live, I'm not going to criticize. I'll make my own, different, poor choices.
Not immediately... She was pretty much blacklisted for like 20+ years
Kinda, though I think her idea of Islam was about as idiosyncratic as her view of Christianity.
She was a seeker, and someone who could only do things her own way.
Islam in and of itself is not problematic, not anymore than Christianity at least. Like with literally every religion, it's the strict conservatives within the religion that are the ones who enforce ridiculous mores and dress codes and other things that are detrimental to the health of the followers of that religion.
It's just funny that she could see the cruelty towards children and women in one religion and not another that is equally culpable.
Again, religion does not equal church. She spent a lot of time as a Catholic trying to make other Catholics see the evils within the church. I think she just became tired of being the town cryer in a world that doesn't give a shit. And Islam, the religion and belief system not the various organized churches, might have held some amount of peace for her soul. Criticizing her for converting and not starting a whole new crusade to stop the myriad of abuse found within the various sects of Islam is just silly. Especially since there are already a million voices pointing out the faults in the Islamic churches already.
Sinéad AKA Shuhada begs to differ
"This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim. This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant. I will be given (another) new name. It will be Shuhada’"
— Shuhada’ Davitt (@MagdaDavitt77) AKA Sinéad O'Connor
She left main stream catholicism before the SNL incident: "The 51-year-old was previously ordained a priest by a breakaway Catholic sect, the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the late 1990s" source: Irish Post
She was a troubled being (who wouldn't be with her childhood?), so not all her decisions are relatable. Converting to main stream (Sunni) Islam still sticks out as weird.
Yeah, you are still pinning her for her belief in Islam because members of Islam have been and continue being vile detestable people. But they aren't vile detestable people because of their belief in Islam any more than the Christians, Catholic or otherwise, are evil because of their belief in Christianity. They are vile and detestable people regardless of their belief. Their religious beliefs isn't the source, though it does end up being a justification for those acts. But that's just sophistry used to cover their own prejudices.
She dumped Christianity and chose a different religion. That doesn't make her culpable for the evils of that religion any more than anyone else is for the deeds of others who believe in the same religion they do.
It's worth mentioning that Joe Pesci did SNL the following week and said "I would have gave [sic] her such a smack. I would've grabbed her by her ... eyebrows." AFAIK he has never apologized for this.
Not only Joe Pesci, also Madonna and others. But fuck Joe Pesci for not even apologizing after her death.
Oh FUCK Lorne Michaels. What a lying sack of dog feces.
She didn't really explain much at the time though, and when she did it never got a lot of publicity. People thought she was just attacking Catholics as a whole.
All most people saw was her ripping up a picture, going "fight the real enemy" and then a bunch of smear articles about her going mental.
I remember that and I still listen to Mandika.
Sometimes, all it takes to be ostracised and threatened is to be the first to say something that's true.
Religion is fucked up.
Don’t trust any religious people.
They’re all sick in the head.
Religion is a social cancer. Sometimes it's benign and the host reabsorbs it. Other times it's spreads and kills living tissue
I'd say it's like a tailbone. It was once useful (when we were apes), but has long since lost all purpose. Now it is just a useless appendage and if you touch it the wrong way, you can end up paralized for the rest of your life. We can't go without though, because it's attached to out spine and muscles.
There's only two religions in the planet that do this kind of fucked up shit with any frequency, and it's only because they're the norm in both of those regions. Don't make yourself sound like a literal Reddit atheist. You're here exactly because Reddit sucks. Don't bring it back.
Many people are religious without doing this kind of shit.
Only two? Hahahahahaha
Show me examples of Buddhists, Native Americans, or Paganists doing this kind of stuff. The literal reason Islamism and Christianity are particularly bad is because they're mass-adopted and politicians take advantage of that.
Just remove all religion from politics and there won't be any problems. Human rights dictate freedom of religion AND FROM religion, not just the later.
Have you heard of the Rohingya genocide? Buddhists absolutely do fucked up shit.
I would agree with you that not all religion is bad. But singling out Christianity and Islam as the exclusively bad ones is absurd. All religions have some really important things to teach us philosophically, but at the same time, pretty much every religion has been used to justify some pretty bad atrocities.
Holy shit. A nuanced take on religion on lemmy not downvoted into oblivion
And let's not forget what the peace-loving Sinhalese Buddhists did to the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
All religions are poison. Picking which is worse between lead poisoning or arsenic?
That’s all you bud.
I’ll be poison free.
So like I used to be anti-religion. But when I studied the history of religious thought, it seemed like every criticism I had of religion I was able to find a religious tradition which explicitly accounted for that criticism, and it made me realize a lot of the essential beliefs that I had about religion in general were simply untrue. Like there are religious traditions that literally deny institutionalization (so you can’t even associate religion in general with organized religion), there are literally religions that explicitly reject the existence of any kind of deity (so you can’t even identify religion with a belief in some kind of a god). In general, it seemed like the only thing that literally all religions had in common was that they represented a set of metaphysical beliefs that an individual has attached themself to for whatever reason. And I realized that it’s kind of impossible to never make any metaphysical assumptions about the world we live in. And I started to ask myself questions like “is it even possible to reject the entire category of religious thought in a meaningful way while still retaining the ability to reason about the world?” And “is there actually a good reason why I don’t want to think of my own humanist ideas about the world as religious in nature, or does it just make me feel kind of funny because I had already prejudiced myself so heavily against the concept of religious thought?”
Weird. I had the exact opposite experience.
I find every religion to be a liars den of lies.
And all religious people are liars fools or worse.
Humanism and religion are polar opposite ideas.
Don’t apologize for religion. It’s gross.
Keep that shit away from me and my kids. You bring it near my kids we are going to have a fucking problem.
I feel like you didn’t actually try to understand any of what I just said. I hate to break it to you, but it’s literally just a fact that there are religions that make metaphysical assumptions that are literally equivalent to secular humanism. If you think that they’re actually contradictory, it just means that you probably actually haven’t tried to study the history of religious thought from an actually critical perspective where you didn’t just presume that you already had it all figured out.
This is not a position born out of logic and reason, but out of hate. I hope you get better at some point, you obviously have suffered a lot to become filled with rage this much.
Bingo.
All religions are hate groups. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
You nailed it.
You’re so close to getting better yourself.
You don’t sound like someone who is doing well, why would anyone want to be like you? The folk replying to you are applying empathy and patience while you shut everyone down with vitriol.
Being angry isn’t fun, anger slowly drains you of your joy and energy. Anger only feels like fun when the alternative is to face pain
If you think every religious person is evil then I'm sorry, but your religious trauma is not an excuse. Go back to reddit.
Not necessarily evil. But every religious person is damaging to society and the environment out of ignorance, because, for example, their voting is based on beliefs disjunct from reality, including absolute morals that will vilify a substantial part of the populace for no sane reason.
The people are not all necessarily evil. They are mostly indoctrinated and duped. The religion itself is just as evil as any other virus that weasels in.
A lot of words to apologize for evil.
No. You go back to church.
Fuck your god.
Buddhists - Rohynga Genocide
Native Americans - Aztec human sacrifice, up to 20,000 per year.
Paganists - not a thing. Paganism is a description, not a religion. But there are plenty of neo-Nazi neo-pagan groups who love burning churches.
Tell me you know nothing about buddhism without telling me you know nothing about buddhism. While we're at it, opinions on hinduism?
Smaller religions have been sacrificing children since the stone age.
I'm not saying its all bad, but singling out two religions in your general area and blaming the problem on them being "political" as if religion isn't based on dictating social norms is ridiculous.
I agree with the freedom to believe, though. Doesnt mean that there arent inherent dangers to this stuff. You're in a thread about murdered babies, please keep that in mind.
Well, there was the mass murder of Muslims at the time of India's partition. And the murder of Gandhi by a reactionary Hindu fanatic. Then, there were the anti-Muslim riots organized by the BJP when it was getting started. And now, there's the persecution of non-Hindus by the same BJP now that that snake Modi is in power.
So, I'd say that Hinduism is a vast, diverse family of religions, but brutality and bigotry are certainly part of at least some variants of it.
Christians, Muslims and Jews. Disproven. Now go away, troll (or misinformed idiot)
If you're not religious why are you upset that some people didn't get a proper burial?
There were death certificates so it's unlikely there's foul play, unless there's some details this poorly written article is missing. It's just they didn't observe proper religious ceremony on the disposal of the deceased.
So your argument is that religious people are bad because some religious people don't always follow religious ceremonies? Like if you don't think religion is good, why would you be upset over improper disposal of the deceased?
I dont agree with the original commenter, but come on.
This is a thread about babies.
Do you really think people need a religion to see that throwing their dead bodies in a septic tank is an incredibly disrespectful and dehumanizing act?
I dont need to wish for a christian burial to understand the implications of christian nuns doing this.
Proper disposal of the deceased isn't limited to religious people.
Yeah, I'm sure there was no foul play in an abusive institution dealing with most vunerable members of society.
Why do people simp for organized religion so hard?
Because it's fun to troll atheists ;)
I don’t give a fuck about proper burials.
Burying bodies in cemeteries is an incredibly selfish thing. All cemeteries and golf courses should be converted into income based housing.
I only said religious people are fucked in the head. Full stop.
All religious people are mentally unwell and a danger to society.
I hope that cleared it up!
Honestly I think that thinking that having a place for people to grieve their loved ones is a selfish thing is realy fucked in the head.
Sure, plant and dedicate a tree. Or a bench by a lake. Or keep an urn on your mantle. Or thousands of other ways. But, sorry you can't live here because we need this space exclusively to grieve?
Well, the tree thing is reality for those that chose forest burials (at least thats a thing in my country).
I think we would run out of benches by lakes rather quick. Also, that is a thing already.
Keeping an Urn is not legal everywhere. I agree the it should be.
The thing is, that humans want to do something with he their loves ones remains. We are incredibly social creates, to the point where our bonds last beyond death. We have buried our dead for thousands and thousands of years. Neanderthals buried their dead. It's just an extremely human way to process grieve, complete independent of any religion.
So having a dedicated space to do so makes total sense. Of course that takes up room. But I'd argue that having a park like, walkable and often very beautiful place in your neighborhood is a net win for everybody. Unless you think that we should also get rid of parks and other recreational areas.
And, you have the possibility to visit a dedicated place of grievance close by, which is sensible especially for elderly people.
We would run out of benches by lakes.
But not land to bury dead people forever?!
I find your lack of logic.. disturbing.
Fair enoth.
Anything of value to add to the rest of my comment?
You don't need a grief theme park full of buried corpses. You can grieve anywhere.
Believe me, I've done it too many times to mention, both for family and friends.
It's good that this works for you. I'm sorry to here that you had too.
Other people wish to have a dedicated space to grieve their loved ones.
I am (honestly) interested to hear your other arguments against graveyards.
Saucy! No sequitir! Illogical! And removed by mod!? LOL
Wait what? 20 deaths a year and because there is a death certificate there is no fouls play?
The article mentions "tens of thousands" of births but doesn't state the numbers of people that were at this particular site. The infant death rate ranged from over 60/1000 down to 20/1000 for developed countries and higher for worldwide estimates.
Lacking numbers for the number of births there's no way to compare to the averages, but yeah 20 deaths per year could very well be a normal rate. We tend not to think a lot about infant death rates because it's not a fun subject, but it's it's a historical fact.
I get that people are addicted to being outraged, but a higher infant death rate over 60 years ago compared to today's rate may not be something to get super emotional about until there's specific allegations of foul play or at least some data to indicate there was something out of norm besides improper disposal of the deceased.
There were death certificates so the government at the time was aware of the number of deaths, and they didn't seem to think it was out of the norm. Though it's possible they just didn't care. But in that case the government would be complicit in this so there should be hard questions asked about the government, not just the church. But that doesn't seem to be happening, so it seems the controversy is just about corpse disposal 60 to 100 years ago.
There is plenty of evidence for the abuse and unaliving of children before the bodies were hidden.
Sources:
You realise you don't need to be religious to believe that people deserve a proper burial right? There doesn't need to be some man in the sky watching everyone 24/7 for people to be buried with dignity
Yeah, burial is mostly just to make sure critters don't drag your rotting bits out into the open and your putrid parts don't contaminate the water supply.
That's the practical aspect, but I believe the dignity and respect shown throughout the process gives people some closure.
Cremation works really well to prevent that and doesn't waste as much land.
And there's no point trying to convince Westerners of the environmental benefits of sky burial.
These homes existed purely to punish unwed mothers, because Catholicism. Don’t even try to minimise the deep national trauma still felt today because it might show a weirdo cult in a bad light.
Priests molested altar boys. That's some real fucking trauma that left lifetimes of emotional scars on people that still alive now.
But sure something that happened to some dead bodies over 60 years ago is something you want to devote your two minutes of atheist hate towards today. You're well adjusted and have everything in the proper perspective, LOL.
That's not very fair. It's fairly safe to assume that each of those babies were linked to lifetimes of emotional scars, too, just not for the babies.
You don’t think it was traumatic for young women (plenty of whom are still alive) to be kidnapped into these institutions, physically and mentally abused, and have their newborn child (again, a great number still alive and wondering who they are) forcibly removed from them, with no idea where they ended up?
Holy shit.
Article - 800 dead babies.
You - There was no sign of foul play why would you heathens care about burial?
Get your fucking head checked.
This is the second time this week I've seen this argument:
(The last one was about marriage)
I suspect that you're a religious person making a slippery slope fallacy.
Did you just randomly select some fallacy from a list in an attempt to sound clever?
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.
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home .
Confinements. Punishment. Detention. Reoffending women.
Damn those fucking monsters. Worse of all I bet the lived with no consequences...
Is it possible to pin replies? For some reason this was almost at the bottom for me.
Also I can add some more sources, that Fox article is really bad:
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?
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.
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 used to love The Cosby Show. Unwatchable now even if they would still air it.
That was one of my comfort shows, and I can’t watch it either.
I could never stand the smugness and "credit to his race" overtones.
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.
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!
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
If your society cannot or will not support an unmarried pregnant woman on her own, your society is a failed one.
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.
How could these nuns think they would be admitted to heaven?
One of the selling features of Christianity is that you just need to ask Jesus forgiveness and it will be granted.
With Catholics you're supposed to confess to a priest, but same difference to them, basically
If they pay an indulgence, even the rich will get into Heaven.
(So there must be a massive divine operation passing camels through the eyes of needles)
Honestly if hell could be livestreamed I'd love to have a kick out of watching a 24 hour stream of them burning on it.
Catholic Islam is a radical sect
Sorry *Christianity
You were right... same God, different prophet
Because they didn't allow abortion. That's how
"The remains ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years old." So not abortions but stillbirths and dead children. Conditions were appalling, rampant disease etc.
If you wait till it's born, it's not abortion anymore but sending those poor little angels directly to God who's the only one who will ever be able to properly care for them or whatever kind of bullshit they used to justify what they did..
I'm guessing that God probably knows the infant mortality rates throughout history.
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.
My brain took a moment to register the word infant. As in the child was already born.
I love how the headline says as if this happened recently. Clowns.
What the fuck
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
Naww... hell is gonna be cool. The real hell will be "their heaven"
But abortion is immoral, right?
nope, not if you wait for 9 months before exercising that option, apparently.
Not in the 4th trimester
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:
This is probably from poor medical care.
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.
which is exactly what they wrote:
There are thousands of diseases that historically kill newborns. Modern medicine helps with a lot of them from vitamins to antibiotics to surgical interventions.
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.
No it's not. Most of the infants died from bacterial or viral infections.
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.
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.
The end.
They can't effectively advocate for themselves when they're delusional or paranoid.
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.
It's not all in the past. They are still abused today.
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.
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/
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...
i assumed you wanted them gone.
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).
Sick bunch of Penguins.
Hello. I am a Linux Penguin. Please do not associate me with the evil Penguins. Thank you.
How do they determine age with a DNA test? Wouldn’t say look at the remains from the death baby’s? I have questions.
I don’t know how the laws are in different countries but just analysing and matching them against anyone sounds highly illegal to me. Next, people need to first be sequenced. Unless they asked them, how do they have their data if they are highly private.
Maybe my question was misleading: for me it sounded like they only analysed the infant DNA and did not perform matches etc. if they used skull size etc to identify the victims it wasn’t a DNA analysis to identify the victim.
dna gives you parent gives you when they were there? assuming they kept records of who lived there.
But that would mean they collected maternal samples as well. And they didn’t say that. In the 60s that is highly unlikely.
databases just kind of exist
See my reply to a different comment.
no. if you're going to be that lazy, don't bother.
The article is crap. The DNA is used to ID siblings, relatives. That's however not the only thing they got wrong
See here for example: The true horror of Irish mother and baby homes | ARTE.tv Documentary
Thank you for the arte documentary. Will watch it immediately.
Here is some more links on the disturbing stuff:
Probably radiocarbon dating?
Antitheism needs to rise.
Ok, atrocities aside, how the hell can you tell age from DNA? DNA doesn't change as you age.
Ummm this article is either old or this has happened multiple times now and I am really not going to investigate further myself because I want to go to bed unsad tonight.
It appears that this is a new article with updated details on a news story that's been evolving for a decade. So, it's the same one you've heard about before, just with a bit of new information.
Yeah, it's an old story. What's new is they've started excavating it.
The article is new because the excavation just started, the home operated between 1920 and 1961. But it has happened in multiple locations in the UK. So, all of the above.
Ireland is not in the UK.
June 17, 2025... seems pretty new
Playing devil's advocate here, could it be that they ran something like a baby euthanasia outfit? like, no contraceptives back then, extreme social stigma surrounding birth out of wedlock, poverty forcing women to give up their newborns, giving them up to the nunnery, which had no resources to deal with feeding caring and raising thousands upon thousands of children, and so either A) simply took it upon themselves to take the logical step and cull some of them, or B) that a high number of babies died of natural causes (neglect, malnutrition, sudden infant death syndrome, disease, whatever) and they simply disposed of them.
I don't know what else could explain this, it's not like we're seriously talking about gangs of murderous baby killing nuns roaming the streets at night and snatching up babies by the hundreds for lust murders, right?
As far as I'm concerned, the only crime here is the institutionalized psychopathy of a religious patriarchal system that refused to take responsibility for giving people a legal and moral avenue to raise children that were brought into life in violation of religious law.
Makes more sense to me at least, I may be fuck way off wrong.
So you think they "care" so much about these single women and their babies that they would kill their babies and hide their remains in a septic tank?, what's wrong with you. Don't you think the more humane thing would be to promote contraceptives and safe sex and safe abortions in case of accidental pregnancies, and run proper orphanages for the unwanted kids. But of course the actual church is against all of this, cause the idea that religion has anything to do with morality is ridiculously stupid. All religions are cults full of dumb fucks desperate to matter in this meaningless existence.
Nuns, historically, have not had much if any authority in the church. I think just a couple of years ago they ousted one of the only female pastors in the USA.
What made you think I'm talking about nuns, I'm talking about those in power, who's orders they follow willingly, they could choose not to and walk away or expose the church higher ups, they choose not to, so don't tell me about nuns being powerless, what they are is soulless
If only it were so easy. I've been atheist since middle school but I was raised by a Catholic and an Evangelical, if a person actually believes they suffer for eternity for not appealing to the source of all true good then you're not going to convince them to walk away because of the church's policy on condoms. And even if you did convince a handful, it's not going to dent the Church's bottom line. Real change has to come from the higher ranks.
Yeah to me it sounds like the babies died of such causes and weren't intentionally killed. I can imagine that trying to get rid of the bodies in other ways (burial, cremation, dumping elsewhere) would make the many deaths too visible or obvious, and would lead to questioning. But they could be hidden in the sewage.
Fuck no.
You have a bad situation where babies are dying - a lot of babies - you don't hide it. You scream for help.
You dump murder victims
That's not how shame based religions work though
mate I was fucking raised roman catholic
My ¢2, devil's advocate, maybe they were trying to protect the women from emotional trauma, they'd still have some but, maybe an attempt to reduce it. Obviously they could have done different things to do that better, but, maybe it was what they thought was their only option. New Mom's baby dies, instead of telling her that her child is dead, they hide it and tell her that it was adopted or transferred somewhere it would be taken care of or whatever.
It's far fetched, probably unlikely, but hey, devil's advocate, it's a possibility.
Article says
So basically just Dysentery, yeah. The nuns were no saints (lol) either, though, because they punished the unmaried mothers and put them through hard labor (lol).
This is a terrible time for jokes, I'm so sorry about that. I always make sure to ask for forgiveness (lol).
dude... WTF is with the (lol)s in your post? None of what you said is funny, or even reads remotely like it's even trying to be a joke.
Right, okay
"they're no saints" is funny because they're part of a religious organization who revere saints
"made to do labor" is funny because in english Labor is a term used to describe the final step of childbirth
"ask for forgiveness" again because religion that reveres asking the lord for forgiveness.
Hope that helps you out, buddy.
The first rule of comedy is reading the room.
What, too soon?
Wow! 3 years!
There’s a behind the bastards episode about it if you’d like to actually educate yourself on why so many of the children died and why they were so callously thrown in the septic and stop sounding so ignorant
Or you can just tell us why, instead of being insulting and vague about it. Hell, you didn't even link which episode has the information you say he is ignorant for not knowing about.
There's probably significant overlap with the Linux warriors here who will respond to people's legitimate questions with variations of "why don't you just not do that and instead do this other thing that doesn't solve your issue" (and also not explain how to do that either).
This! Im gonna get down voted for this im sure but I've been using Lemmy instead of reddit for almost a year now or so but the hive mind is almost worse here than it is on reddit! People here seem to not be interested in actual discussion unless you agree 100% with them. It's frustrating, I was hoping Lemmy was gonna be better.
Oh well, at least there's less bigots and my app still works haha
Hey, let's try and be the change we want to see. I tried, and just ignore the dumb snotty children, not worth neither your nor my time.
No, it's pretty annoying when people don't link shit that should be easy. At least when I'm doing it from mobile, I'll promise to do it when I get home.
Btw, here's the Behind the Bastards episode. Part One: How The Catholic Church Murdered Ireland's Babies | BEHIND THE BASTARDS
Wow, yeah, i just randomly read through this thread- i basically never read replies because it's full of the shit you're talking about and I was just thinking, damn, this is even worse than reddit.
Lots of identity confused kids in here, I think, I ever only hear this type of jargon and lack of openness and anti-intellectuality from that demographic.
Fucking shame. Came here from reddit to get away from that.
Which episode?
Part One: How The Catholic Church Murdered Ireland's Babies | BEHIND THE BASTARDS
Could have been worse, could have been atheists running the home.
Given the shit apologists write ITT you really need to use the "/s" marker.
Yeah, like that'll help.
Wait, I think you're right, I always write my comments in the deadpan sarcasm of a Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley. I assume it carries over TCP/IP and HTML... Guess not.
Oh, and here: /s, apply to my first sentence.
Ever since Trumps 1st term satire and sarcams have been slowly dying. Since then it's gotten so bad that now matter how outlandish your post/comment is - there is a maga cult member who'll top whatever you wrote and is completely serious about it.
Yeah, I'm going to use /s every time.
Imagine how bad it might have been if it had been Satanists...
Better marinade, I guess?
There would have been no remains.
Ah yes, because atheists eat babies. I remember now.
Finally someone gets the reference! Stupid down voters.
We should hang out and put a fetus on the grill.
If there was an infant death, it would also have been reported to authorizes and given proper respects. The number of deaths is way to high, but SIDS is real and atheists wouldn't have dumped the bodies in a mass grave in the backyard.
This was my original comment:
Get informed and stop being an apoligistI indeed misinterpreted the intention of the comment I replied to and leave this here so the comment chain still makes sense. However, I still disagree with the word choice especially with putting SIDS forward.
Sources:
You vastly misinterpreted the intention of my comment. I was merely pointing out the other thing the church is guilty of.
You linked me the Behind the Bastards episode, but I also linked that same souce earlier.
Sorry, in the context of the many apologists in this thread still trying to smear the historian and to gloss over the atrocities and you bringing up SIDS I missed you intention.
I still disagree with youur comment though. I think that is it less likely for an atheist organisation to commit the same atrocities and there being no known incidents of similar coverups. Still, any organization starving and mistreating children will try hide their crimes and their victims bodies regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof.
In short: I agree with your intent but I disagree with how you worded it.
My only point is that even if an infant dies under the watch of a secular or atheist org, which even with top facilities, statically will happen eventually, the deceased will be treated with dignity. SIDS is the first example I could think of because people still aren't sure what causes it or what to do about it.
I think I understand where you are coming from. The undignified disposal of corpses is the least of the commited atrocities in in this facility. The infant mortality rate was 5 times the average of the time, the children were malnourished and abused. Take a look at the other sources.
In this context mentioning SIDS comes across as an apology. If a non-denominational facility would murder and abuse children at this rate they'll also hide the corpses. The core issue isn't dignified burial but abuse and murder.
Most of the infants died from bacterial or viral infections.
well beat my record.
I feel like maybe only people who have vaginas and can get pregnant should have a say in the whole abortion rights issue. So I'll step aside and just mention that my drainage system has zero bodies in it. So you know, like most normal people should probably have more voice than the Catholic church with rapist priests and 800 abortion bodies in their drain pipes. But yes, we should all be allowed to present evidence :).
Just a note infant <> aborted....these were likely babies born and died of disease and preventable causes.
So much to hate about this situation; but I don't think abortion debate is relevant here.
Yeah it was a gut feel...then read the comment.... Even much worse.
This isn't the only place this has happened. More info here.
https://youtu.be/Bwabh4zbmZ4
Flush alligators not children.
Maybe don't flush alligators either.
You seem biased.
1+1=2.
What?!!
The Sanctity of Life
Scopes reports that the babies were buried in an adjacent structure and that the number is undetermined. An amateur published that number without evidence.
Until additional information is uncovered, it is not possible if the grave was a result of legitimate or initiate reasons.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/18/796-children-septic-tank-ireland/
Based
But only men do horrible things, right?
Imagine reading this headline and instantly jumping to this in your head.
If it was an order of male monks found with 800 dead babies, "men are absolute monsters" would absolutely among the top comments.
Just the age we live in.
Since nobody seems capable of remembering women can be monsters too, I thought I'd help y'all remember for the next time you have the impulse to villify men.
I like how everyone claims all religion is fucked up but there's only one where this is actually extremely common... and the other religion that is mass adopted has different problems.
Mixing religion with political policy here is the problem.
The problem is religion.
Go back to /r/atheism.
You're in the vast minority here simping for religion
I'm agnostic. I just don't think atheism is my religion, unlike some of the people on this thread.
Most people have watched religion destroy lives. In fact we all have. Just a matter of admitting it. It doesn't require any sort of special magical thinking to admit that.
what