Today's stories of carceral Catholicism in Ireland make for unbelievably grim reading. They sit alongside the horror stories we (*those who want to know) have already heard about Mother & Baby Homes, Magdalen asylums, industrial schools, forced psychiatric incarceration.

For all too many of us they also touch on personal and family trauma in many ways.

For others of course they bring up a powerful personal, family or institutional will to forget.

There are no neutral voices in this.

The Taoiseach is blaming society in order to deflect attention away from the Church as a whole, the religious orders, the civil service, the political parties and the Gardai. All were actively complicit in the day-to-day functioning of these institutions.

To this day there has been not one trial of anyone involved in running these institutions, in sending ppl to them, in funding and inspecting them, in catching escapees and returning them.

The abuses were illegal then, and there is a de facto amnesty now.

It is true that much of society colluded, & we need to talk about that.

But power was massively centralised in that society, and most blame attaches to those with that power: the state (incl parties, civil service, guards) & the church.

This is what Martin is trying to deny.

At the same time as he is trying to avoid the action that wd necessarily follow from recognising this he is also appealing to the other perpetrators, their descendants and those who identify with the organisations involved.

Those who colluded in sending relatives to M&B homes or in their psychiatric sectioning. The loyal Catholics who won't hear a bad word said. Those for whom the Guards are always right. Those who defend the history of FF&FG.

This is where it gets into the realms of myth. The denial of atrocity - the politics of memory - involves claims like "nobody knew what was happening", or "you couldn't speak out" or "it was the moral climate of the times".

See how these contradict each other?

It can't *both* be true that nobody knew and everyone thought it was OK. Or that everyone thought it was OK and were simultaneously afraid to say ... that they thought it was OK?

These are lies (not always conscious) told to defend or minimise the horror.

The horror is both that these things were done...

...and it is that others colluded, stood by, handed people over, talked about something else - and continued to vote for those parties and support those churches (CoI was not innocent).

Nobody can seriously claim of C20th Ireland that ppl didn't talk about ethics and morality *interminably*. It was like the radio running in the background.

And many of the acts committed (notably false imprisonment) were illegal at the time even if tolerated by the system.

It is also not true that nobody knew. People scared their kids into good behaviour with threats that they'd be sent to Artane, for example. Just like some kept their kids away from priests who were known to be dodgy.

But "know" and "know" are two different things.

I worked in WIT's Good Shepherd campus in the late 1990s - an old Magdalen asylum.

Some of what were now office doors had bolts *on the outside*.

People looked at me strangely when I asked about it.

Management didn't feel it embarrassing enough to even remove the locks.

Of course people knew.

And ... people resisted.

I talked to one woman who had a baby outside marriage, in Dublin, in the early 1970s.

The matron and priest visited her ward full of unmarried mothers.

Each and every one of them bar her was bullied into signing the adoption papers.

She refused - and was ostracised by many people on her own estate.

There were real costs, absolutely - but people had choices.

Remember this is a society where the pious people went on about moral choice as though it was the latest episode of a Netflix phenomenon.

Others helped young people to escape from industrial schools, or got young women off to England ahead of family, priest, guards, nuns.

Brave people, making a *genuinely* ethical choice. One we should remember and celebrate.

But remember too: you didn't have to vote for FF and FG. There were actually other political parties. Those who did, chose to do so.

And (gasp) you didn't have to go to church; and you didn't have to be Catholic or Anglican.

Not everyone was.

Yes, there were costs for being an atheist or a communist.

Costs often levied by the same ppl whose descendants say "but nobody had a choice, everyone was doing it".

But people did have that choice - and not everyone was doing it.

There were feminists. There were even Buddhists.

*Not* easy. But also - despite the myths - not all "English", "Protestant", "middle class" or whatever.

People resisted carceral Catholicism in many different ways.

They deserve to be remembered.

And: remembering them puts the spotlight back on those who kept on voting for FG and FF, who filled the pews - and whose descendants can't acknowledge that this was *done*.

It puts the spotlight back on the nuns & brothers, the guards and civil servants, the local councillors.

And it puts the spotlight back on the institutions those acts were done through.

Religious orders, who continue to avoid real reparations, fail to remember *where the bodies are buried*, and reinvent themselves ... as specialists in attacking sex workers.

A state and civil service, local councils, and police force who were centrally involved in making all of this possible.

Of course a FF Taoiseach wants to minimise, deflect, deny, spread the blame around ...

talk sh*te to bury the horror.

Just like those missing bodies. /fin