Response to Andrew Sullivan "The Dish" Regarding Tuam

Andrew Sullivan has denounced this blog post.

I said that there is nothing "Catholic" about the horrors that occurred at The Home in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, an institution run by nuns where a mass grave of dead children was recently discovered.

Sullivan replies,

"Yes there fucking is."

Apparently Sullivan assesses himself as so important that he can speak abusively to a person like me who is not famous and who is not present.

Sullivan rants about others' lack of righteousness while behaving like a bully himself.

Sullivan goes on to say

"These children were treated as sub-human because their births violated a Catholic doctrine that there can be no sex outside of marriage. The young women – denied contraception, of course – were equally subject to horrifying stigmatization, hatred, and inhumane rules that took their children away from them. None of this would have ever taken place without this doctrine."

There is no Catholic doctrine that illegitimate children should be treated as "sub-human" as Sullivan wrote.

I am Catholic. I grew up in a very Catholic world. My friends had children out of wedlock, and nothing like what happened in Tuam occurred. My friends' kids are adults now and no worse for wear.

Something evil was going on in Tuam. Something that is utterly foreign to me as a Catholic.

That same evil victimized children in Romanian orphanages, in the offices of Portuguese socialists, in the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, where, for just one example, doctors purposely infected retarded children with hepatitis, in the mind of Harvard and MIT scientists who fed American boys radioactive breakfast cereal, in America's child protective agencies, where children who are obviously being abused are returned to abusive parents who kill them.

Discarded children, especially discarded female children, are nothing new. Andrew Sullivan should educate himself by reading "Bare Branches" about female infanticide.

Andrew Sullivan should educate himself by reading Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize Winner, who told us about the hundred million missing women and girls in Muslim, Hindu, and Confucian Asia.

I lived in Nepal. I watched as the families living on either side of my rented home methodically starved their youngest daughters. I attempted to intervene by providing the families with lentils. They cooked the lentils and fed them to sons. Destruction of the youngest daughter is standard operating procedure in the Indian subcontinent. Oh, but those are Hindus and Muslims, so Sullivan doesn't care – can't use these facts to pursue a vendetta against Catholicism.

People who are troubled by the news from Tuam should not waste their time ranting against Catholicism.

Ridding the world of Catholicism will have zero positive impact on children. My guess is that given Catholicism's role in providing social services, it would have a negative impact. If we roll back the clock to BC, we find a Roman legal code that mandated infanticide for daughters after the first; we visit Sparta where defective children were exposed; in Carthage parents sacrificed their children to Moloch by burning them alive. Drums were used to drown out the cries.

When Catholics abuse children they do so against their own teachings. That is not true of all belief systems. Some belief systems either mandate mistreatment of children or take no stand, thus, effectively, condoning it.

The solution to horrors like Tuam is not to demonize Catholicism. Not to insist, falsely, that child abuse is a Catholic thing – it isn't. The solution is to return to Jesus' teachings on children. "Whatsoever you do to the least you do to me." Those are the words that matter.  

Sullivan's evident concern is not abused children; they exist, to him, solely as an excuse to stir up hatred against a religion.

I am a survivor of child abuse. I attended 12 Step meetings for years for survivors of child abuse. My brother and sister survivors came from every racial, religious, and economic group. We were white, black, brown. We were rich and poor. We were Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, and Buddhist. Some of us were abused in institutions. Some of us were abused in foster care. Some of us were abused in our natal families.

For all of us, one thing was very, very true. Others saw, and did nothing. Catholics saw and did nothing. Buddhists saw and did nothing. Jews saw and did nothing. Atheists saw and did nothing. Angry, arrogant loudmouths like Andrew Sullivan saw and did nothing.

When I witness child abuse, I do something.

When I talk about child abuse publicly, I advise others to do something.

I do not waste time attempting to exploit the suffering of children and say, "Oh! The reason this happened is because you are a Jew / Italian / from South Asia! So let's hate Jews / Italians / Asians!"

To do so would be to betray abused children, and to use their pain to monger hatred.

Those who insist that child abuse is a Catholic thing are betraying abused children.

You can read Sullivan here. But why waste your time?

Rather, go to a site like World Vision or Big Brothers Big Sisters – and help a child who needs help.

And next time you see child abuse – DO SOMETHING 

Coincidentally enough, I recently blogged one chapter of my own child abuse experience. As I mention in that post, I turned to a teacher of mine I admired, even though she was anti-Catholic. She was a gay rights activist. She let me down. I feel no animus toward her for this, or toward gay rights activists. People do bad things. You can read that blog post here. 

There is another post on the Tuam topic here.