h [1]
"Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial." [4] It is a sentence, unattributed to any source, which repeats—either word for word or in a close approximation—in hundreds of articles concerning the now infamous deaths and burials [5] of hundreds of children in Tuam, Galway between 1925 and 1961. This appalling sacramental indifference is referenced in major U.S. and U.K. publications and cited in leading online opinion journals like Salon [6] as more evidence of the cruelty of the Bon Secours sisters who ran the home and the Catholic Church in Ireland in general.
But, just as the original story, which left many readers with the perhaps now fixed impression of depraved nuns tossing deceased infants into cesspools (I kid you not), was inaccurate, there is no evidence to back up this other troubling and often repeated angle of the story. In fact quite the opposite is true.
Father Fintan Monahan, Tuam's diocesan secretary, told me this morning that the diocese has in its records thousands of baptismal certificates for the children that were born or brought into the home in Tuam. Beyond that physical evidence of the baptismal record, he asked the diocesan archivist to look further into the issue to see if any evidence of a past policy to refuse to baptize children born out of wedlock could be teased out of the diocesan archives. "We can find no evidence that it was ever the policy," he reports.
Beyond that, as a priest, he has never heard of such a refusal. It is not a normal practice in Tuam today, he says, or anywhere he can think of in Ireland, and it "would not have been a normal practice [to deny baptism in the past,]" he says.
"I have talked to older priests about [the allegation], and they're completely baffled," he says. "I would be very surprised if that was a policy anywhere," he says, adding, "I'm amazed that [the allegation] has been published."
Monahan can only speculate, of course, and perhaps there has been enough speculation on this matter as it is, that journalists may have heard stories of individual priests who may have resisted baptizing children who were born to unmarried women and drawn the wrong conclusions from such anecdotes. That of course does not excuse or explain the legions of journalists who have replayed this sentence (or a variation of it), without citation, over [7] and over [8] and over [9] again.
So far, I have yet to see corrections issued for either the original misleading reporting, the screeding and ranting that it inspired or for the unattributed and apparently groundless assertion that these deceased infants and children were denied baptism. In fact quite the contrary: Many opinion writers have essentially doubled-down on the tale of Tuam, arguing that it is irrelevant that the original story was got wrong[10], that even historical and economic context—health and economic conditions in Ireland then or comparable treatment and outcomes for orphans and abanoned children in other nations at the time—are in fact irrelevant. The only thread of this tale worth following apparently is the suffering endured by these forgotten children. But while their suffering remains undeniable and deeply sad, the full comprehension of it awaits a further and thorough investigation, one the international press has so far demonstrated it is wholly incapable of undertaking.
Links:
[1] http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-horror-part-ii
[2] http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-horror-part-ii#comments
[3] http://americamagazine.org/blogs/134864
[4] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q="Babies+born+inside+the+institutions+were+denied+baptism+and,+if+they+died+from+the+illness+and+disease+rife+in+such+facilities,+also+denied+a+Christian+burial."&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
[5] http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-gothic-when-headlines-attack
[6] http://www.salon.com/2014/06/09/the_catholic_irish_babies_scandal_it_gets_much_worse/
[7] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ireland-mass-graves-archbishop-of-dublin-calls-for-full-inquiry-as-evidence-of-medical-experiments-emerges-9513101.html
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/catholic-leader-seeks-irish-probe-into-mass-graves/2014/06/08/ea8bb1b4-ef3a-11e3-ba99-4469323d5076_story.html
[9] http://www.christianheadlines.com/news/ireland-investigates-death-of-800-babies-at-home-for-unwed-mothers.html
[10] http://www.salon.com/2014/06/11/the_pathetic_scramble_to_rationalize_the_irish_babies_scandal/
