Una Mullally: The State and Church worked together to oppress

On Tuesday, at a press conference, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin, said “we did this to ourselves.” Martin was of course talking about the report into the Mother and Baby Homes. Who is this “we”?

In the Dáil the following day, Martin ended his apology on behalf of the State by saying, “It remains our shame.” Who is this “our”?

One of the greatest generation gaps in Ireland is that new generations refuse to internalise and process the guilt of oppressive forces as personal shame. That’s over. We’re not doing it any more. It is not ours to carry.

I was left wondering why I was so unmoved by these strong words from the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, and the Minister for Children, the three men who spoke in the Dáil before a woman’s voice was heard. At this stage, we could all write “impactful” State apologies in our sleep. We know the format because we’ve been here before. The power of “big moments” depletes with repetition.

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I was also left angry by the focus on blame falling to “society”, both in the report and in the rhetoric of some politicians. But who influenced that society? Who were the architects of 20th-century theocracy? Who were the oppressors? We know of course that individuals, families and communities colluded in demonising women, but this did not magically happen, it did not occur in a vacuum. It was designed.

The State and the Catholic Church worked hand in glove to oppress and repress, and compounded that by forcing people in Ireland to internalise guilt and allow it to manifest as shame. That’s over. We’re not doing that anymore. It is worrying that such a reflex reappeared this week in the political sphere. When society is to blame, no one is to blame, and such an approach deflects responsibility from where it truly lies, and allows the guilty forces to shirk accountability.

The dominant forces in shaping culture in the 20th century in Ireland were threefold: the Church, the State, and the Church in collaboration with the State

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were the dominant political forces in the 20th century, so all of this happened on their watch. Fianna Fáil bent to the will of the Church at seismic moments to allow Catholic dogma to supersede all else, from the influence of John Charles McQuaid on our constitution, to Charles Haughey’s appeasement of intense lobbying by fundamentalist Catholics, which resulted in the drafting of the constitutional ban on abortion. Bertie Ahern tried to strengthen that constitutional ban even further. That was not in the 1950s, or the 1980s, that referendum was in 2002.

Three years ago, more politicians in Martin’s party than any other campaigned against women’s bodily autonomy. How can we possibly take seriously anything a member of Fianna Fáil says about women’s rights? Their young man on the up, Jack Chambers, characterised the report as “a powerful record of the suffering endured by so many at the hands of Irish society.” Society. There’s the blame falling to everyone and no one again.

Chambers campaigned against women’s bodily autonomy as a man in his twenties in 2018. One wonders, if that was his position in the 21st century, what on earth would his position on women’s rights in the 20th century have been?

In the past, I think people may have digested these apologies by members of government differently. I think they would have meant more. But what means more to us now are the words of survivors, and the words of remarkable campaigners such as Noelle Brown, Maeve O’Rourke, Catherine Corless and others. Those are the people we turn to now. That is a victory for society, and speaks to the importance of non-partisan citizens who work to progress society and seek justice for the good of society, as a healing force, one that works outside the egoism of politics and power.

Culture does not appear, it is formed. People in Ireland in the 20th century were products of a culture, as we are products of a culture now. Sometimes we have a hand in shaping that culture. Sometimes we don’t like it. Sometimes we find it alienating. Sometimes we find it comforting. Sometimes we find it oppressive. Sometimes we find it welcoming. Sometimes we internalise it so efficiently that we believe it to come from ourselves.

Rejecting the narrative that 'we' did this is not about shirking responsibility, but identifying not just the how, but the why and the who

The dominant forces in shaping culture in the 20th century in Ireland were threefold: the Church, the State, and the Church in collaboration with the State. All of this was upheld by patriarchy, misogyny, and sexual repression, which remain the main characteristics of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church today. Their guilt and self-loathing was meted out through systemic violence and oppression. That is not our shame. It is their guilt.

We see the evolution of the political consciousness and the aspirations for society now in the reaction to the report. One aspect of this is that public did not swallow the Government’s version of events whole. Another aspect is that some TDs outside of Government, particularly Catherine Connolly, called out the shortcomings of the report and the process of its delivery. Another aspect is how media has broadly centred the experiences of survivors. The latter is a continuation of how our public discourse has evolved to foreground those who are most impacted by oppression in conversations about it.

This report, with all of its inadequacies, is not a conclusion. It is part of a truth-telling that needs to continue, where justice, accountability, transparency, and action will be demanded by a society that is gradually removing itself from the indoctrination our parents and grandparents suffered, which doesn’t and hasn’t happened over night. Rejecting the narrative that “we” did this is not about shirking responsibility, but identifying not just the how, but the why and the who. Let this report – with all of its shortcomings – offer an exit strategy from this culture of shame. We owe justice to survivors, and we owe honesty to ourselves.