Religion is an interesting phenomenon. In the story, the nuns tell the children
that they were born of sin and therefore, they deserve whatever suffering
befalls them. On the other hand, I've just finished a book about Dorothy Day,
the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. She had her flaws, but the
movement sprang from socialist roots. The people with whom she was involved
before she converted, were mostly atheists, Communists, and Socialists. Phillip
and Daniel Berrigan, the anti-war activists, sprang from the Catholic worker
movement. So did Jeremy Scahill's parents. Phil Berrigan left the Priesthood
and married. His wife is still an anti-war activist today. Think about it.
It's like Judaism. On the one hand, there's Israel. On the other, some of the
best known Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists were eastern European Jews
who emigrated to the US. And there's Chris Hedges, who is an ordained
Episcopal minister.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 2:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: a bit of terrible history
"God is Great, God is Good", but just where was God when the Church chose money
over children? Maybe He was busy watching over Senator Joe McCarthy as he
ferreted Commies out from under every rock.
My brother-in-law, Maurie Keating was raised in a Canadian orphanage back in
the 40's and early 50's. It was run by the Catholic Church and it was a home
for boys. Maurie told me stories that curled my nose hair. The Brothers who
ran the day to day operation were strict.
If anyone was caught breaking any of the multitude of rules, they were whipped
in front of all the boys. The boys decided that they would take turns
confessing, in order to keep from having to watch the same few boys get beaten
over and over. Maurie said to his dying day he would struggle against the
desire to confess to things he never did.
But it was worse than that. Some of the Brothers were Gay, and they took their
pleasure where they could. And they had a captive supply of young posteriors
to select from.
I think of such stories of misery when people like Mostafa lecture me, trying
to prove that there is a Supreme Being.
I think I preferred the Greek and Roman Gods. At least they admitted they were
flawed, and still they managed to have a fun time.
Carl Jarvis, still practicing Agnosticism, and having fun doing it.
On 9/8/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When I read fiction, I often learn bits and pieces of real history
that I never knew. The night before last, I started reading a book
called The Home For Unwanted Girls which takes place in Quebec,
Canada. In the story, there's a child in a Catholic orphanage and in
around 1950, all of the Catholic orphanages are converted to mental
hospitals. The orphans who were born out of wedlock, are subsequently
treated like mental patients rather than children. Their education is
ended. They are drugged at night and made to care for other patients
during the day. I couldn't believe that this really happened so I
checked Google and found a New York Times article from 1993.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MONTREAL -
On March 17, 1955, Herve Bertrand was an ordinary 11-year-old boy
attending classes at the Mt. Providence orphanage in Montreal. On
March 18, he became an "idiot."
The reason: The provincial government paid Mt. Providence, operated by
Roman Catholic nuns, 75 cents a day for the care of each orphan. For
mentally retarded children, it paid $2.75.
The orphanage decided on what it called a "change of vocation,"
transforming
itself into a mental institution and declaring its charges to be retarded.
Thousands of children in similar Quebec facilities were falsely
labeled mentally retarded in the 1950s. Many of them were sent to
psychiatric hospitals and put in overcrowded wards with real mental
patients and only a few overworked nuns to supervise them.
The orphans say they were beaten with straps, paddles and fists,
sexually and psychologically abused, restrained in straitjackets for
weeks at a time, plunged into ice water, lashed to beds.
A group of about 4,000 former residents of the institutions in the
1950s and '60s has filed a class-action lawsuit against seven
religious orders that operated a dozen orphanages or mental hospitals.
It accuses them of physical, sexual and psychological abuse and seeks
damages of $1.2 billion.
The complainants say 90% of those selected for the "change of vocation"
were
born illegitimate and were considered more shameful than other orphans.
Also, the other orphans sometimes had relatives who visited them, but
the illegitimate children had none, meaning institutional authorities
had no one to answer to.
In addition to the civil suit, Quebec provincial police and Montreal
city police are investigating scores of possible criminal cases
against individuals who worked in the hospitals and orphanages.
Bertrand, a plumber now 50, remembers "change of vocation" day.
"Sister Collette Francois came in around 10 or 11 o'clock and said:
'From today there will be no more school. Gather up your personal
affairs and return to your dormitories. From today onward, you are all
crazy, mentally retarded.'
"From that moment on, they began to put up fences, they put bars on
the windows and they gave each orphan a job in the institution."
Real mentally retarded people were taken from overcrowded hospitals
and moved to Mt. Providence.
"Several sisters cried; they knew they had done something bad,"
Bertrand said.
He and other Quebecois who suffered through those years all tell the
same stories of rape, sexual molestation, beatings, straitjackets and
even murder.
It was a period in Quebec some historians call the "Great Darkness,"
when the French-speaking province was ruled with an iron hand by
Premier Maurice Duplessis. Illegitimate children were social pariahs
to be hidden away, and the only place to hide them was in church-run public
institutions.
The horror was vividly brought to light by Montreal sociologist
Pauline Gill in her book "Duplessis' Children." It is the story of
Alice Quinton, a healthy girl put into a mental institution at age 7
and kept until she was 22.
The story is not new. Four earlier books were written in the 1960s,
including a 1961 work by Jean-Charles Page, "The Mad Cry for Help."
"Society was not ready for them," Gill said of the earlier books.
"They thought they were just people looking for attention."
Commissions of inquiry in the 1960s put an end to the practice of
keeping normal children in mental institutions, but did nothing to
make reparations.
"Society has to recognize that these religious communities did all
they could to help these children who had no means," said Sister
Gisele Fortier, a nun who is spokeswoman for the seven religious
orders named in the lawsuit.
She would not speak directly to the charges of cruelty and mistreatment.
"The question is now before the courts. I can neither affirm nor deny
anything," said Sister Fortier, who worked in Catholic mental
institutions at the time.
Pierre Lemarbre of the Quebec provincial police said the criminal
investigations are far from completion. He said each witness
interviewed leads to more names and more cases.
A judge is expected to rule on the admissibility of the class action
suit in September, said Danielle Girard, one of several lawyers
working on the case.
She said the trial is not expected before the end of the year or
sometime in 1994.
Bertrand, president of the former orphans who filed suit, was sexually
abused by a guard on several occasions between 1954 and 1959.
"It was a nightmare," he said. "All my life I have thought of all
these things that I lived through. I don't know if one day I'll be
able to erase that."
Bertrand's complaint to the court says he had to have rectal surgery
to repair damage from sexual abuse.
Yvon-Charles Houde, 49, today a bookbinder in Montreal, said the worst
thing is the file--the permanent file labeling him mentally retarded,
a file that follows him through life.
