Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in Cork’s Savoy Cinema he said, "You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it." He called Ireland’s penal institutions "a disgrace to the nation," and later said "I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character." However, his words fell on stony ground.(H/T Fr Ray Blake)
He wasn't simply ignored. He was taken to pieces by the Irish establishment. The then-Minister for Justice Gerald Boland said in the Dáil that he was “not disposed to take any notice of what ........... said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.”
In relation to the Christian Brothers, this is relevant:
Indeed no one mentions, as Dr. Woods, a former minister for Education in Ireland pointed out, that corporal punishment, prohibited by Edmund Ignatius Rice was introduced after his death on the Insistence of the organs of state in Britain.H/T E F Pastor Emeritus
4 comments:
"... corporal punishment, prohibited by Edmund Ignatius Rice was introduced after his death on the Insistence of the organs of state in Britain. H/T E F Pastor Emeritus"
Corporal punishment, outlawed today, was generally considered an appropriate corrective in past decades. Did the organs of state in Britain insist upon the additional element of sadistic brutality? Upon sexual molestation? I think that came from the hearts of the perpetrators themselves.
I have to agree with Dorothy.
There is a world of difference between corporal punishment (which did none of us any harm in my schooldays) and sadistic brutality.
That the latter was unjustly inflicted on poor, helpless and vulnerable children is despicable. Sexual molestation is unspeakable.
I somehow doubt the British state played any part in encouraging this.
"Dr. Woods, a former minister for Education in Ireland pointed out, that corporal punishment, prohibited by Edmund Ignatius Rice was introduced after his death on the Insistence of the organs of state in Britain."
Talk about a straw man! The undertone of that comment would appear to be the same old depressing tune: "blame the Brits". By that logic, we warm, emotional, pain-sharing and empathetic Irish ought to have immediately abandoned corporal punishment at the removal of the uber-evil "organs" of the British State once independence was gained in 1922.
Words really do fail.
The undertone of that comment would appear to be...Well I suppose you could find various "undertones" but my own interest was in countering the "guilt by association" of the saintly Edmund Rice whose pioneering educational policy remains a landmark in Irish history.
The other "undertone" as far as I am concerned is that corporal punishment was used almost universally in schools, and sadistic brutality happened in non-Catholic schools in Britain well into the 1960s.
There is no excuse for child abuse and the Church (and indeed Catholic Ireland) should have been exemplary in its care of children. That this was not so is a cause of shame. Nevertheless, I refuse to accept the idea that it was only in Catholic schools, or in Ireland, that such abuse happened.
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