The recent comments of two nuns who belonged to a congregation involved in running Magdalene laundries, broadcast on RTÉ on condition that the nuns or their order were not identified, have served to extend reaction to the recent McAleese report.
The confrontational tone of the nuns’
assertions – “all of the shame of the era is being dumped on the
religious orders . . . the sins of society are being placed on us” – has
been seized on by some as crass and self-serving and by others as
offering a necessary corrective to a one-sided narrative.
The polarity of the responses is predictable
and understandable, given the emotiveness around this subject recently.
The narrative of the laundries with which we have become familiar is one
of slavery, harshness and a legacy that includes now mostly elderly
women sometimes overcome as they recount cruelties, lost youth, and
mental and physical pain.
That the voices of the women incarcerated in
the laundries were heard was essential but it is not in any sense to
diminish their suffering or belittle their vindication by appealing for
more history and less targeting of scapegoats.
There is much in the
McAleese report that can, will and should be contested and it is to be
hoped that in time it will be rigorously dissected to test its accuracy
and the logic underpinning its content and conclusions.
In his recent apology, Enda Kenny
described the report as a “document of truth”, which is far-fetched;
producing a report that would justify that description is an
impossibility given the fragmentary nature of the evidence available.
The methodology of the report is also open to criticism, particularly in
terms of the weight attached to evidence.
To give one example, the contention in the
report that the laundries were not profitable is in no way justified,
given the acknowledgement that surviving statements of income and
expenditure have not been independently audited, and that “the only
available direct documentary record held by any of the religious
congregations in relation to the organisations and entities which used
the services of the Magdalene laundries operated by them relates to the
laundry at Seán McDermott Street, Dublin”.
That record consists of just a
single ledger from the 1960s.
‘Profound hurt’
The report also gives prominence to the assertion of members of the congregations that they “have experienced a profound hurt in recent years . . . their position is that they responded in practical ways as best they could in keeping with the charism [power to inspire devotion], of their congregations to the fraught situations of the sometimes marginalised girls and women sent there by providing them with shelter, board and work”.
That defence can be contested, and nuns of
course are not immune from embracing selfish distortions of reality, but
it does deserve consideration and context.
It is unfair and
unhistorical to decide all nuns involved in this area were devoid of
humanity, and the “bad nun” version of history needs to be challenged to
generate a more nuanced approach to the relationship between State,
society and sexuality, and in relation to power and gender in modern
Irish history.
Who were the nuns of 20th century Ireland
?
How were they trained?
What was involved in the discovery and
furtherance of a female religious vocation?
What did the nuns expect and
demand of themselves?
What did State and society expect from them?
How
influenced were they by Augustinianism and its emphasis on the perceived
sinfulness of human nature?
How significant is the assertion of one nun
quoted in the report that “we were institutionalised too”?
How were nuns affected, positively and
negatively, by class snobbery and their role in providing what Enda
Kenny referred to as a “solid public apparatus” to take the place of
personal scruples?
How were they affected by the abrogation of State
responsibility in a host of areas?
How effective and efficient were they
as administrators and businesswomen?
The truth is that as a society, we have little
grasp on the multilayered history of nuns in Ireland in the period the
McAleese report covers (1922-1996).
In 1987, historian Caitríona Clear
broke new ground in writing the book
Nuns in
Nineteenth
Century Ireland
, in which she presented the religious vocation as “the only
area” in which there was a career open to talented Irish women.
She
traced the relationship of nuns to male religious superiors, and
examined their social background and the enormous contribution they made
to the teaching and nursing professions.
Crucially, her book located
the nuns in the overall context of womens’ roles in 19th century Irish
life.
We now need the equivalent done for the
experience of nuns in the 20th century.
There were just over 8,000 nuns
in Ireland in 35 religious orders and 368 convents at the outset of that
century, and as late as 1989 there were more than 11,000 women in 128
religious congregations.
That suggests there is an enormous history
awaiting research and analysis.
‘Pawns in the struggle’
In the mid 1990s, UCD historian and Dominican nun Margaret MacCurtain, who did so much to pioneer the study of women’s history from the 1970s onwards, made the point that “the nuns’ story is integral to the history of women in 20th century Ireland . . . as a category nuns provide a map to guide the ignorant through the unexamined landscape of where and how women occupied the religious, cultural and economic space assigned to them in 20th century Ireland . . . There is a puzzling complexity about the place they occupy . . . powerful as negotiating tools in the State’s educational and welfare plans, south and north, they became in reality pawns in the struggle for control between church and State, between bishops and departments of government. Why that came about is largely unexplored . . . we need to hear the voices of women religious.”