There was a bitch nun on Liveline (Thu, 21st).
Sr. Anne Murphy of the Sacred Heart of Mary Order was moaning about how tough things were for the nuns, that it wasn’t just the Magdalene women who suffered.
Her main complaint was that the now elderly cohort of nuns who ran the brutal Magdalene launderies shouldn’t be blamed for their crimes.
Blaming them would, according to this individual, make them the new Magdalene women.
So who is this bitch nun? Was she kidnapped, sold into slavery, abused or raped during her career? No. In fact the bitch had a great career as a nun and is still very happy in her freely chosen life.
Here’s a brief outline of her very happy career as she related it on Liveline.
She was educated by the Sacred Heart of Mary Order and had no complaints. She enjoyed every minute of her childhood/education and at age eleven decided to join the order.
She joined at 17 of her own freewill and with the full agreement of her father who assured her that if she ever decided to leave she would be welcomed home with open arms.
She knew exactly what she was getting into. She knew it would be tough, she knew her hair would be chopped off but didn’t mind because it was the life she wanted.
She didn’t mind giving up her name and loved her new name, Immanuel, which she chose from a list of three.
Although life was tough She was well treated in every way and had the best of medical attention.
After twelve years of happy service she decided, of her own free will, to leave and return home. There was no problem and her father welcomed her with open arms.
Two years later she decided, of her own free will, to return to the order and has been there, happily, ever since.
Now Sr. Murphy didn’t serve in a Magdelene laundry but she was prepared to come on live radio and defend those nuns who did serve in these institutions that were little more than slave camps.
So let’s compare the experience of a Magdalene laundry victim and Sr. Murphy’s happy experience.
The day before Sr. Murphy’s spoke with Joe Duffy a women called Geraldine related her story on Liveline (Wed, 20th).
In 1963, Geraldine and her sister, aged 13 and 14 were kidnapped by the Catholic Church, imprisoned and forced to work as slaves.
Geraldine’s parents paid a substantial amount of money to the nuns at Stanhope Street residential launtry to have their daughters educated.
The parents were told that the institution was a school, the best in Ireland, so their daughters would receive a good education.
The girls never received an education there. Their hair was brutally chopped off and they were immeditately put to work in the laundry. All letters to and from their parents were intercepted, even pocket money sent by their parents was robbed.
Unlike Sr. Murphy the girls were not offered the choice of selecting a new name, instead their names were robbed and replaced by a number.
The replacing of a name with a number is common practice in slave camps because it helps to destroy the self-worth of individuals reducing them to a virtual sub-human status. People in this mindset are much easier to control and exploit.
When holiday time came the nuns wrote to the parents saying the girls were behind in their studies and so had to be kept back.
On one occasion, and showing great courage, Geraldine challenged the matron asking her why she and her sister were not receiving an education. She was promptly told to get back down to the laundry where she belonged.
It was only when the girls mother became seriously ill that they managed to get home and tell their story of horror.
Most of the girls in the laundry were kidnapped and enslaved in the same manner.
So Stanhope Street was no flash in the pan. It was not a place of happiness and enlighment, it wasn’t even a place of charity.
It was a well organised, ruthlessly run slave camp where Catholic nuns, in full knowledge of what they were doing, committed crimes against humanity.
In common with her diseased church Sr. Murphy made many excuses for the crimes of her religion. In particular she peddled the most common lie, that it was only a minority who were guilty of such horrors.
We know this is a lie from the Murphy and Ryan reports which demonstrated beyond question that these crimes were endemic, well organised and known about at every level of the Catholic Church.
So not only is Sr. Murphy a bitch, she’s a lying bitch.
It may be argued by some that my language is too strong in this case, I would disagree.
I have never attacked any individual member of the Catholic Church just because they are members of that organisation.
But I have no problem challenging, in the strongest terms possible, any member or supporter of the Catholic Church who attempts to justify or lessen the crimes of that diseased organisation.
Sr. Murphy is deserving of the title ‘lying bitch’ because of her obnoxious attempt to equalise the relatively happy and voluntary entered life of a nun with the horrors suffered by the inmates of the Magdalene slave camps.