Video: Tuam and the Catholic Church's Brutal History in Ireland

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

We have covered this story previously on this blog. It is about the children's bones found at the home in Tuam Ireland. These were mostly likely children that had not been baptized as according to Christian/Catholic mythology a child that is not baptized can't get in to heaven. I think that's what Limbo was for until some pope decided Limbo was a computer glitch and didn't really exist.

It is no wonder the Catholic Church has lost the power it once had in Ireland, and a huge aspect of this loss is due to the revolt of women and the struggle of women to control their own bodies and reproduction.

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church, once the religion of European feudalism, has become the dominant religion bolstering the power and spread of capitalism. In Latin America and other possessions of European colonialism it followed the conquistadors and the armies of Europe in the theft of material wealth and culture. I remember first seeing the Diego Rivera mural in Mexico city, the one with the Conquistador standing tall, looming forward with sword in hand over or at a native person. Behind the Conquistador was the priest with the crucifix held high. The choices for the colonized was the sword or the cross, in most cases, large doses of both. The same choices were offered the poor and working masses at home.

The Catholic Church is not the only institution of mass murder. Organized religion is not about god or spirituality, an attempt by decent honest people to explain and understand the world around them. Religion is indeed the opiate of the masses and the ruling class is the pushers.  In the French revolution the officials of the church split along class lines too, the priests among the poor having a different world view with the bishops and other church hierarchy standing strong with the feudal aristocracy and the rising bourgeois.  We saw the same in Latin America with the Liberation Theology that the Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican suppressed with violence when necessary.

The new Italian pope from Argentina was present during the years of the disappeared, when dissenters were often taken in planes over the Atlantic and dropped in to the sea. The US did the same with Vietnamese peasants.  The pope admonished greedy capitalism, he cannot avoid it given the conditions that exist today among the workers and poor of the world.  But he offers no alternative. It's just sinful evil people, greedy capitalists, crony capitalism.

The Catholic church has lost much of its power in Ireland but not all. As in Russia today, and here in the US, the top clergy and the religious institutions are intertwined with the ruling class and the state. But the Vatican's ability to control life and indeed, the economic and political progress of the Irish nation has been severely curbed.

Check out this video that we published some time ago. It's very powerful. Magdalene Laundries, Rape and Forced Labor.