Has anyone seen this movie? I put it on my Netflix queue, but the DVD isn't out yet since it is new. Because of the subject matter I doubt that it will come to our local theaters.

Are there any nonfiction books to read concerning these "laundries", and what does the Church have to say about them? Did the Church sanction them in the first place, or were they entirely a product of the convent?

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 12, 2003

Answers

Can't answer much, GT, but think about this -----

The bad stuff was going on (at least) during the pontificates of Leo XIII through John Paul II. Can you imagine any of those great and holy popes actually approving of what was allegedly done in those Irish "prisons"? UNTHINKABLE! Can you imagine Pope John XXIII saying that it's OK for girls and women to have to work like crazy for 364 days of the year, to be verbally and physically abused, etc.? UNTHINKABLE! It should be obvious that, if the allegations are accurate, some women -- very loosely called "religious sisters" -- went absolutely nuts up in Ireland.

-- Art (ars@gratia.artis), August 12, 2003.

I just returned from seeing The Magdalene Sisters. One would have to look very hard to find redemption in this story which only ended in 1995 with the closing of the last laundry. The Order (s)and its actions were based on very sick theology. As I watched it, carrying in my heart so many recent revelations (I live in Boston) and knowing so many old ones I had a sense that the church and its history is the same as world history - neither better nor worse. All the love, goodness, caring, heroism, we find in the world we also find in the church AND all the evils in the world - war, rape, murder, all forms of abuse, power and its misuse are all part of the church.

While I was watching that film I had a sense that the local parishes - our local parishes here in the US are such tiny parts of the world wide church that it is a fantasy when we have been able to shut out the wider picture because it has been hidden or we ignored it or made excuses for it or thought of it in the past. The evils are not exceptions that can be hidden or cleaned up. They are a part of the church/us - the whole church. This is not a judgement - rather a perception I had as I was watching the cruelty women imposed on other women. That particular evil ceased in 1995 though many of the estimated 30,000 women victimized are still living out their crippled lives.

At this point I am feeling that I need to stop being shocked as if the church is somehow above the rest of humanity. We need to tell our own history just as we have had to uncover the hidden history of women and minorities. Only when we let the light shine on the whole gathering will we be honest. Jesus knew that. HE sadly accepted Judas' kiss and Peter's denial.

There are practical causes for some of the ways the system has broken down - people making life choices at too young and age. Lack of preparation for work assigned. Poor theology. But the members of the church - the laity have the same range of capability and culpability of actions.

Maybe it is about facing our shadow - that we each are capable of great good and great evil. Though most of us have the choice to opt for the good, none of us does that perfectly.

To see where it is playing in US and Canada go to http://movies.go.com/movies/M/magdalenesistersthe_2002/index.html

Official film site http://www.miramax.com/the_magdalene_sisters/

-- Janis Roih (jroihl@gis.net), August 20, 2003.

Some of the blame though, has to fall on the parents who dumped their girls there and never cared what happened to them after that. How could any parent do that? We're not talking about parents of mass-murderers or sex offenders, we're talking of parents of young girls who got pregnant out of wedlock, or rape.

And the old double standard applies here--doesn't matter what a guy does, he wouldn't be sent to a place like this....

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 20, 2003.

Good grief! An anti-male comment of the radical feminist type, completely irrelevant to the subject matter of the thread!

When men say unjust things, they are labeled "male chauvinist pigs."

When women say unjust things, should they be called "female chauvinist sows?"

-- (Men@Are.OK!), August 21, 2003.

Were there any equivalent places for "wayward" boys? I doubt it.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 21, 2003.

The movie was written, directed, funded, and promoted by people who have no love-loss for the Catholic church or faith... so what makes everyone so SURE that it doesn't take license with the facts, expand some nastiness, delete some redeeming qualities, exaggerate the malice or insanity while burying any nuance or good that may have been done?

Are we just supposed to accept all the bad news we hear about the Church, blindly, just because Hollywood produced it?

The same thing happens all the time with so-called "historically based" movies! Look what happens in the movie about De Sade - all the historically provable characters who were Catholic and good, and heroes in fact are twisted into meanspirited, necrophiliac monsters in the movie version that praises De Sade as a revolutionary "free- thinker" when in fact he was nuts, a rapist, and a murderer?

Other "history-based" films have likewise lambasted the Church by creating fictional characters, or putting words or deeds in historical people's mouths and hands that they didn't say or do...such as 1492...

If you want to get a good look at anything, don't base your judgments (moral or historical) on movies!

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), August 22, 2003.

From the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

The Magdalene Sisters -- The severe living conditions in Catholic Church-run laundries in 1964 Ireland are sensationalized to the point of caricature in writer-director Peter Mullan's problematic melodrama "The Magdalene Sisters" (Miramax). The fact that the austere Magdalene asylums existed is undeniable. Undoubtedly, a number of young women sent there by their parents or guardians were treated cruelly. However, Mullan puts forth an oversimplified, worst-case scenario in which every nun is a monster and the only priest connected with the laundry has forced a simple young woman confined there to yield to his sexual demands. An audience has a right to wonder whether the film is attempting to throw light on a painful, little-known situation or merely genuflecting at the altar of sensationalism while exploiting others' suffering.

The film centers on four young women who were sent off to perform manual labor in facilities known as the "Magdalene laundries" in order to be spiritually rehabilitated for their alleged sins of the flesh.

Mullan's narrative presents them as physically and verbally abused by the nuns in charge of the laundry as if the four actually existed. However, these characters are fictitious, made up from composites of stories Mullan heard from those who lived in the workhouses -- a fact muddied by the coda that appears at the end of the film explaining "what became of" each of the characters.

As such, the movie's treatment of events exploits the facts to make it less a story of the four than a film aimed at positioning the church as one-dimensionally wicked. The nuns pictured are so uniformly sadistic and hypocritical that they make the infamous Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem like Mother Teresa.

Unlike what follows, the film's opening scene is well-crafted. Using scant dialogue, it cinematically depicts young Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) being lured upstairs during a wedding reception by her cousin, who then rapes her and proceeds to pin the blame on her. The next day her scornful parents turn her over to a priest who delivers her to a Magdalene laundry workhouse at the same time that orphaned flirt Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) and unwed mother Rose (Dorothy Duffy) arrive.

Insisting that they atone for their sins through hard manual labor, silence and no contact with the outside world, vicious Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan) brooks no questions and terrorizes the trio. Already veering toward madness is another unwed mother, the mentally challenged Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who believes she can communicate with her sister and toddler through her cherished St. Christopher medal. Overseeing the women's physical and spiritual well-being is a coven of Gestapo-like nuns.

This is the set-up. But beyond it, caricature trumps character. In place of narrative, the film unreels one horror after another on the four young women in lurid, episodic fashion: brutal beatings and malicious mind games by the nuns, including a group shower-room scene involving extended full frontal nudity and taunting insults aimed at dehumanizing their humiliated charges. The nuns, presented as consistently evil, money-grubbing, merciless hags, have no emotional depth. They are as exaggerated in their sadism as Ingrid Bergman is in celestial benevolence in "The Bells of St. Mary's" -- the film Sister Bridget sheds a crocodile tear over at a Christmas screening. Not one ounce of human kindness -- not to mention Christian compassion -- can be found under any wimple or collar.

This painting with broad brush strokes is better suited for the propagandist than the dramatist. Regrettably, drama is jettisoned along with objectivity since this kind of stacking the deck drains the narrative of any inner tension. The result is a cavalcade of cartoonish vignettes which present to viewers about as nuanced a picture of Irish nuns as 1915's "The Birth of a Nation" did of African-Americans. This pervasive shallowness extends to the girls themselves. Despite overall strong performances, they serve as little more than props, punching bags for the sinister nuns to vent their fury.

While some blame is attached to parents who so readily banished daughters in difficulty to the harsh conditions of these laundries, any attempt to understand the forces that shaped these institutions, which had much to do with the distinct religious and cultural milieu of the time and place in which they flourished, is rejected. The righteous indignation felt for the girls, while justified by the suffering they endured, is wrung out of the audience through cheap, kick-the-puppy melodrama where the audience is manipulated to cheer when the nuns get a taste of their own medicine.

It's distressing that any Irish women had to endure the deplorable conditions of these workhouses. But the film never attempts to move beyond shrill finger-pointing toward any meaningful insights. In place of a sensitive examination of abuse of religious power, Mullan's simplistic approach in depicting all the religious in his script as gleeful villains only serves to undermine the credibility of his film.

Because of an exaggerated theme of abusive nuns, brutal beatings, sexual violence including rape and forced oral sex with a priest, an extended scene of dehumanizing full female nudity, an attempted suicide, sporadic rough language and brief profanity, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. 2003

Also see: http://www.usccb.org/movies/m/themagdalenesisters.htm

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), August 22, 2003.

Thanks, Mr. Nelson, for helping us to know the facts about this movie. Many people have been assuming that it was a dependably factual depiction. I'm glad to read that it is far short of that.

I was also pleasantly shocked to see the source of this review. You said that it was from "the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops." Actually it is from their Internet site, but it was not written by a bishop (or a group of bishops). It was written (as are all USCCB reviews) by a lay man or woman hired by a bishops' committee to do this kind of thing for the last three decades or so.

This is the very first time that I was really pleased with a USCCB review. Since the bureaucrats who write the reviews have always seemed to be too politically liberal and theologically too tolerant, it was great to see that they would not put up with serious Catholic-bashing, while they have put up with a milder form of it in the past. Nice to see them giving the lowest possible rating to a movie -- "O" (morally Objectionable) -- though they ought to have given it a "C" (Condemned), the lowest rating of the now-defunct "Legion of Decency," which rated films for Catholics until around 1970.

A.

-- Art (ars@gratia.artis), August 22, 2003.

I felt compelled to see this movie in order to judge for myself the degree to which its portrayal of the Magdalene Laundries and the Sisters who ran them could possibly match reality. There is no question that the film is well-made in terms of cinematography and acting. Certainly the young women who represent those sent to the laundries do a superb job in creating creditable characters. On the other hand, the Sisters and the Mother Superior in particular are nothing more than caricatures. The latter is drawn as an entirely evil and sadistic witch, a character out of Dickens, brilliantly and comically acted but in no respect a believable individual, much less a religious sister. But in Mullen's world, there is no holiness, no God, no compassion or love. The Church and those w

-- Ulysses D'Aquila (daquila2001@aol.com), August 23, 2003.

I don't know why the Church is trying to defend itself. Whether the movie was exaggerated or not, it is fact that girls were taken away from thier homes and forced to work every day except christmas, for no wages. This is horrible in itself, excluding any sort of abusive treatment from the nuns, even. I haven't heard of one Magdalene saying she actually enjoyed herself in the Laundries, or that it made her a better person.

In high school, we learned about the Catholic church's shady history, how money cause corruption etc. Lately, we hear about the Laundries and priests using young boys, sexually. And people still think the church is good! We should've learned by now that religion doesn't make you higher than the law. If a nun murdered someone, would you let her off the hook simply because she's a nun?

-- Nanny (nannystark@hotmail.com), August 23, 2003.

nanny,

If you look enough you will probably find a boy abuser in your own family. Does this mean that your own family is no good?

One has nothing to do with the other. If it took you to learn what you said you did in high school, than I must say that you a very, very slow learner about life.

Chow-Cow!

-- Ty (.@....), August 23, 2003.

The Church does not have to defend itself because of sins committed by its members. The Church does not molest children. A few priests who are members of the Church did so, and hopefully will pay for their crimes.

Money does cause some people to become corrupt. It does not cause the Church to become corrupt, since the Church is divinely founded and divinely maintained. It cannot become corrupt, even if some of its members do. It cannot sin, even though all of its members do. The Church is not going to spend eternity in hell - or in heaven. But each of its members will end up one place or the other. The Church is the means God has provided for human beings to reach heaven. Those who listen to the Church, and live by its teaching, are saved. Those who reject the Church's teaching are lost.

If money causes a few susceptible individuals to become corrupt, it also enables the Church to provide more relief of human suffering than all other churches of the world COMBINED! The Church's tens of thousands of schools, hospitals, hospices, and other social service agencies provide education, health, and relief from suffering for millions of people, in every country on earth. What other church can make a comparable claim?

It is absurd and dishonest to take what some priest does, or some nun, and generalize it as a characterization of God's Holy Church. Rather, such incidents are prime examples of what happens when people do NOT live by the teaching of the Church. Do you judge a medicine by its effect on those who pour it down the sink? Or by its effect on those who take it according to prescribed directions? Those who take the Church's teaching and live by it include the great majority of the holiest people who have ever lived, as well as the greatest theological minds of all time. What other Church has produced a Mother Teresa? A St. Francis?

You state: "Whether the movie was exaggerated or not, it is fact that girls were taken away from thier homes and forced to work every day except christmas, for no wages". Really! Please tell us what source of information you have, other than the movie, which allows you to "know" this "fact"?? What you really mean is that since it was in a movie, it MUST have some basis in fact! No, it does not. No thinking person would come away from any movie thinking he had just learned the "facts" about anything. When the movie in question was an openly hostile attack against the Holy Catholic Church by a group of anti-Catholic bigots, all the more reason to reject anything it presents, or at least suspend belief until an actual source of FACTS can be consulted.

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), August 23, 2003.

Paul, I originally heard about these Laundries from reading a movie review--however, they have apparently been discussed on some of the major news shows. If people would look at my original question, I was asking about any nonfiction books on the subject.

And, for the others who posted movie reviews, of course I understand that some (perhaps a good deal) dramatic license was taken, but the fact that the Laundries existed and that young women were more or less forced to enter them does not seem to be in dispute.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 23, 2003.

Here is an ABC News story on them:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/Ireland_abuse030126.html

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 23, 2003.

Here is another report by CBS News, with more details:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/08/sunday/main567365.shtml

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 23, 2003.

While the Church can debate the veracity of the Movie all it wants, I have watched the interviews with the women who were forced into the laundries. Their stories are much more brutal than anything the movie portrayed and although the nuns were shown as one-dimensional, in truth- an attempt to "humanize" their jailors would create sympathy that has no place here. Again, the Church is made up of humans who make mistakes, the responsibility lies on the organizations that profited from this. And that includes the Church.

~Nia

-- Nia Foltchaem (nia@hotmail.com), August 26, 2003.

And what did other churches and states do with women in similar circumstances during those times? In other words, were those orders of nuns on the cutting edge of societal evolution, or were they even then backward neanderthals?

For example, if you do an in depth study of sanitary conditions in hospitals from the 1800's I bet you could find some pretty appalling stuff - as compared with modern standards. But what alternatives existed in 1803? If everyone else were just as bad or worse...then how morally culpable would a nurse have been for not being the paragon of cleanliness?

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), August 26, 2003.

Hi Joe

If only these evil actions were somehow mitigated by time and place, I thought the mnovie was set in the 1960's and the last laundry closed a few years ago(1995)???

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), August 26, 2003.

Concerning the Laundries, Yes there is some truth in that matter.I was one of the girls in the 1960's in Durban South Africa, that worked every afternoon in the Laundry,( The Good Sheperd Home ) (after school). Have come into contact lately and spoken to other girls about the awful times so many years ago. I have not seen the movie as yet, but hope to. Now please understand there was no sexual abuse, but the Home left a scar that I and I am sure others still carry with them today. Still sad.

-- dot (standot@m-web.co.za), September 04, 2003.

What was the source of this "scar"? Lots of kids have after school jobs, some of them quite physically demanding. What exactly made your after school job so horrific as to scar you for life??

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), September 04, 2003.

I've had some pretty horrible jobs.

-- jake (jake1REMOVE@pngusa.net), September 04, 2003.

Dot, are you talking about experiences in Durban, South Africa [I noticed the "za" in your e-mail address], rather than in the "Magdalene Laundries" of Ireland? If in South Africa, who was in charge of the place where you worked?

Thanks. John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), September 04, 2003.

Since there is another thread, I thought I'd bring this back to the top. I still have yet to see some official Vatican comment, even concerning the news stories, where I posted links to above.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), September 09, 2003.

Here is an article that will probably answer your questions about how the Vatical feels about the film:

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned Scottish director Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters" last fall, the based-on-fact film about the Church mistreating young women was awarded the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. That was followed by a condemnation from the Catholic League, and the Discovery Award at the Toronto Film Festival.

Mullan was delighted but slightly disappointed when the Vatican recently reversed its decision. He was enjoying the free publicity.

"The Vatican completely retracted," says Mullan through a haze of his own cigarette smoke during a press stop in Boston. "They initially said I was a liar, and that put us on the front page of the Italian newspapers for two weeks. Last February, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland took out a half-page review of the film in our biggest newspaper, recommending that every Catholic in the country go and see it."

In Christ, Bill

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), September 09, 2003.

golly gee, i mean the very idea that slave labor isn't morally repugnant borders on the rediculous. i mean really gentlemen, you don't actually believe that forced labor where women are kept in facilities for their entire adult lives is well let's see....acceptable??? i bet you've had some pretty bad jobs...how about a job where you are forced to work 18 hour days?? have you had that job? the documentaries that ive seen on the laundries told a far worse story than this movie ever could.

perhaps you cd explain to me regardless of sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, what part of slave labor is acceptable to you? do you think that it is acceptable for an institution to hold people in a work camp against their will and force them to do hard labor? i mean these women were kept in these asylums for their entire lives until they were dead. what part of that is okay with you?? regardless of the fact that any shred of abuse took place? which i think the "in real life" evidence proves quite fitfully.

from what i understand the only reason the laundries closed, the last one being in 1996, was because they were no longer PROFITABLE. b/c of modern technologies, everyone had their own lovely washing machine and therefore didn't send their wash out to the church's launderies anymore were no longer an economically sound business enterprise.

the very idea that you defend these laundries is quite interesting to me. i mean sure things were dramatized for cinematic purposes but how does that somehow mitigate the slave labor component? (and you really believe that no abuse took place when? do you believe these women just submitted themselves to a life of hard labor. i guess what happened was the these young women loved it there and were treated so lovingly by these women they never wanted to leave. im sure that's why the slaces here in america never left their plantations either, those masters were just killing them kindness, i knew it! you lads seem positively proud of these heroic nuns championing the cause of the church. mortifying, really. good luck to you men.

-- loosewoman (barb_linxxx@hotmail.com), September 10, 2003.

Barb, Read what I posted again. The Catholic Church WANTS people to go see the movie.

In Christ, Bill

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), September 10, 2003.

Bill,
I believe that you are presuming far too much. Based on what you posted, no one could accurately say that "the Catholic Church WANTS people to go see the movie."

Instead, what was stated was only an opinion and an alleged fact from the film's director -- pertaining only to one bishop, not "the Catholic Church." The director said this:
"The Vatican completely retracted. They initially said I was a liar ... Last February, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland took out a half-page review of the film in our biggest newspaper, recommending that every Catholic in the country go and see it."

These comments, I believe, are completely untrustworthy. Consider:
(1) He doesn't prove that the "Vatican completely retracted" anything, and I seriously doubt that the Vatican did.
(2) There is no "head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland." There are several Scottish Catholic bishops. He is probably referring to just one of the bishops. But I don't believe what the director said. No bishop is stupid enough to have "recommend[ed] that every Catholic in the country go and see" that movie. It has full frontal nudity and a variety of other disgusting trash. I wouldn't recommend it even to adults, much less to children (who are part of "every Catholic in the country").

Bill, I feel sure than most Catholic bishops around the world would recommend that NONE of the members of their flocks attend this pornographic hatchet job.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), September 11, 2003.

Saw the movie last Thursday. Regardless of its factual content, it was a brilliant film. The director did not abuse his artistic license, either by misconstruing fiction as fact, or with graphic, gratitutous sexual content. There are no claims that this film is the true story of the characters we see on screen. The painful, sexually explicit scenes were shot tastefully and honestly - with no nudity!

Unfortunately, my own search to find absolutely factual material on this matter has been somewhat fruitless. So far I've only found "Do Penance or Perish" by Frances Finnegan, a historian who pioneered research on this subject. I don't have a copy, but I suppose it's a start.

One of the many regrettable things about the laundries, however, is that the layperson must speculate on what the stance of the Church is - there is much secrecy and denial, and some tight-lipped sympathizing, but no definitive answer. All we know is that these places did exist, and women were made to work there against their will (at least in some, if not in most cases) for little or no reason. When they needed compassion, they were given a sentence (and their jailors wore habits). So I suppose, it no longer matters to me if the church sanctioned these laundries or not - or if they were started by the convent/s. The fact is these places could not have existed, or lasted without the explicit & implicit knowledge of many people - clergy, the state, family members, whoever used the stupid laundries... & so on. As much as I'd like to bash the solely Church for this, (& i do believe that it must accept a fair amount of blame), many other others contributed to this horror story. However, the silence must stop. The stance cannot be: "don't go see the movie, it's a lie, it's an exaggeration", when there is no counterpoint to consider. If it is a lie, then what is true? Why were 133 unmarked graves found in a convent's grounds?

-- Cecile Pemberton (afrodeity@hotmail.com), September 20, 2003.

I am convinced that the Magdelene Laundries existed in Ireland, but what exactly happened inside those walls I reckon will always be a subject that will not see absolution. Is religion unfairly cast as a villian in this movie? Its always easy to say religion is never the sinner and only humans are. But to list the number of atrocities committed by men in the name of God, the sufferings of the magdelenes pales in comparison to wholesale destruction of civilisations during the crusades. Religion is a very noble ideal that teaches men a moral way to lead their lives, hence it is in my opinion that it is too noble an ideal for men to ever appreciate.

The church tries to be too defensive when one of their men of the cloth trips up, to still portray to the masses that they represent the ideal to be reached, when they are but still human. Would it not be better for all if these so-called allegations are thoroughly investigated and if any wrongdoing discovered, to seek forgiveness and closure to the matter? To never admit to mistakes is the first step to committing it again. Would either religion or mankind as a whole benefit from this voluntary blindness? Faith may be blind sometimes, but as religion is supposed to be the pillar of society to seperate the sacred from the profane, we cannot allow it to hobble blindfolded and lead us all along on its way.

-- Francis Ong (voakenfold@hotmail.com), October 13, 2003.

The Crusades did NOT wipe out "wholesale" civilizations! The first (and only successful) crusade marched through Constantinople, and Anatolia, and Syria and Lebanon, without attacking or slaughtering every city and villiage in its path. The MUSLIMS in Beruit welcomed them through BECAUSE EVERYONE KNEW THEY WERE ON THEIR WAY TO JERUSALEM.

The only major battles fought were in Nicene, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

No civilization was wiped out - even after the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established.

If you want to talk destruction and wanton killing you have to look at the mongol invasion of the 1300's - which did FAR more damage to both Christendom and Islam than anything either did to the other.

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), October 13, 2003.

I wonder what the Indians in the Caribbean Islands think of the idea that their civilizations were not wiped out. While Columbus governed there, he held massacres of entire villages where natives were given the choice to either convert, or die.

-- Kit Kellison (kitkellison@yahoo.com), October 20, 2003.

Really? And your historical documents proving that Columbus wiped out whole villages???

He arrived with 3 ships the first time, all small, and 1 was ship wrecked. He never commanded a fleet... yet you claim he wiped out whole villages.

Seems like he's to blame for all the evil that came after him. Well, then two can play that type of blame-game. Name your hero and we can all blame him or her for all the evil that occurs after their lifetime.

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), October 20, 2003.

Dot (standot@m-web.co.za) wrote: "I was one of the girls in the 1960's in Durban South Africa, that worked every afternoon in the Laundry, (The Good Sheperd Home ) (after school)".

Who/what compelled you to go there every afternoon? The way that the setup at one of these laundries (in Ireland) was presented in the movie, the laundry was a place of incarceration -- not somewhere which you left and returned to daily.

-- Michael Alachouzos (alacos@icon.co.za), November 27, 2003.

Regarding Christopher Columbus' atrocities. One place to start would be Google. Anyone with a cursory historical education knows my assertions are true, you are bound to find a wealth of documents online to support my statement. One other place is "The Crimes of Christopher Columbus" by Dinesh D'Souza. He has tons of documentation in the book.

-- Kit Kellison (kitkellison@yahoo.com), July 30, 2004.

“In high school, we learned about the Catholic church's shady history” (Nanny)

I’m sure you did if your teachers were like most in secular high schools who love nothing better than heaping abuse on the Church, exaggerating the faults of any Catholic of the last 2000 years while ignoring the far more substantial history of selfless good deeds which the Church’s employees have done for humanity.

“The church tries to be too defensive” (Francis Ong)

It wouldn’t be, if those who attack the Church spoke the truth about the faults of people who ran Catholic institutions, instead of vastly exaggerating them and painting the Church as nothing but a sink of pure evil.

“hold people in a work camp against their will and force them to do hard labor? i mean these women were kept in these asylums for their entire lives until they were dead. “ (loosewoman) “women were made to work there against their will (at least in some, if not in most cases) for little or no reason” (Cecile Pemberton)

A little perspective please? These young women were not locked up. OK maybe they felt strong cultural pressure to stay there, but they were free to go, as many did. Yes, some were sent there by their parents because of fornication, or maybe what we would call today “hyperactivity” (and WE put them on Ritalin instead – that’s progress!?) Some were entrusted to the nuns by the police as an alternative to being prosecuted in court for minor crimes. Some had been seduced by men who had sworn to marry them, then disappeared overseas when they became pregnant. (Yes, men exploited women, but don't blame the Church for trying to cope with the results!) In addition to bed and board they were paid an allowance from the proceeds of their work, and often a gift of money or a trousseau if they left to get married.

Kit, it is true that Columbus and some other early European settlers killed some native Americans who got in their way, often after a cursory request (which the natives usually did not understand) to convert to Christianity. But this was insignificant in the destruction of native civilizations, the major culprit being the infectious diseases which the Europeans incidentally brought with them. The first Europeans to visit the inland of what is now the South of the USA discovered empty towns whose populations had been wiped out by disease before they ever saw a white man.

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), August 02, 2004.