Proviso that I need to really get through the #motherandbabyhomes report but I’ve read the executive summary and it is startling the hierarchy of blame often starts with society and the has state and church added on the end without as much commentary.

The #motherandbabyhomes report is not denying the role of the church and state but it is much more focused on forefronting societal failings without providing the context of who directed, set the tone and enforced that view of society that allowed those institutions to exist.

This tone shift does allow for a societal reckoning that is long needed, especially engaging with the role of gender, class, race and other marginalizations that facilitated such rampant institutionalization of so many people. But that doesn’t left off the main protagonists.

The creation of ‘a Catholic nation’ with the special relationship between church and state written into the 1937 constitution was not merely rhetoric; the Irish state strives for a Catholic, middle class morality that sought to control deviations from its ideal vision.

There was also a strong pragmatic element to this relationship between church and state - the Irish state could not afford to maintain its social obligations and heavily relied on the church to fulfill its soft institutions, from schools and hospitals to social warehousing.

As we have seen in the Ryan report and McAleese report the state not only gave over responsibility for the most vulnerable to the church but they turned a blind eye to their abuses and even facilitated them. With absolute power came absolute abuse of that power.

So while we should not look at #motherandbabyhomes as institutions that functioned outside society, even more so we cannot displace the hierarchy of blame to a society that was directed and controlled by the state and church. Most particularly, the church must accept its blame.

The need to examine the roles and complicity of church, state and society is not limited to the past. #motherandbabyhomes only closed in the past 20 years. Their survivors and victims are many and should be our first focus. Our next focus should be the present day church + state.

The church still has a huge amount of power in directing and controlling the lives of Irish people today in their enduring leadership of soft institutions of state - education, medical care, social services - while they undoubtedly have a role it should not be the leading role.

I cannot help but think the tone of this report - it’s focus on the complicity of society in particular - is diverting our gaze from understanding where the power really lay, how much it was tied up in worldly goods and deeds and how much of it is maintained #motherandbabyhomes