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Post by Los Leandros on Oct 16, 2011 16:58:39 GMT
Despite John Water's saving/moderating presence, the Irish Mail on Sunday has acquired a particularly nasty on-going anti-Catholic bias. This weeks dredges up a story relating to the placement of children for adoption in 1970's Spain. An open minded, journalistically balanced reading of the story would conclude that this was a compassionate attempt to place children with good parents. Frequently the natural/single mothers had neither the will or resources to care for the children. But no, bad motives are imputed throughout. General Franco is added to the mix to further muddy the waters. Vile anti-Catholic propaganda at it's worst.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 17, 2011 12:55:20 GMT
I wouldn't be so sure about that, Los Leandros. From newspaper references to the British documentary on which this was based, it appears this began with a policy of taking away the children of supporters of the Republican losers in the civil war to have them adopted by supporters of the Nationalists. Quite a lot of horrific things were done in the name of "national Catholicism" by the Franco regime in the Civil war and the years afterwards - thousands of Republicans kept in prison camps into the early 1950s, Basque and Catalan cultural identity aggressively suppressed even among Basques and Catalans who had supported Franco, Catholic psychiatrists justifying the torture of prisoners by presenting it as a form of religious ascesis "purifying" those tortured. This doesn't justify the crimes of the Republicans, or even preclude the possibility that Franco was the lesser of two evils (BTW I suspect the documentary also has something to do with the current state of Spanish politics - the Left government, having led the country to bankruptcy, is facing electoral defeat and they have a long habit of responding to tight corners by playing the secularist card, recalling Franco, and claiming the Right are not really democrats) but we shouldn't deny the undeniable or defend the indefensible, which is what trads who laud Franco as a Catholic hero are doing.
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Post by Los Leandros on Oct 17, 2011 13:15:38 GMT
I'm afraid we will have to disagree on this one hibernicus. I know from some Spanish friends that the overall policy at the time was similar to the thinking here. However, I'm more concerned wth the media bias involved & presumption of bad faith. For example the very same has occurred here. The thinking ( & I think it has some considerable merit ) was that the infants would stand a better chance in life if adopted by a loving, married couple. There was no social welfare support for unmarried mothers, so they faced a pretty bleak future. The thrust of the media reportage ( whether it be Spain, Ireland, or where ever ) is that it was the policy of a heartless Church to punish the mothers. Bad faith is taken as a given. Of course the media dont tell us what great solution they would have supplied. In summary, I'm extremerly suspicious of the motivation behind the article. I'm not interested in promoting Franco, apart from suggesting he was the only realistic alternative at the time to an extremely nasty Stalinist/Republican axis. He was not perfect.
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Post by shane on Oct 17, 2011 13:31:57 GMT
While I agree with Los Leandros, surely these revelations from Spain, if nothing else, show that the Irish Church was not 'uniquely' awful in its attitude to single mothers (a claim I have often encountered --- ditto with the abuse, before the revelations from Europe emerged).
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Post by Los Leandros on Oct 17, 2011 14:14:48 GMT
Thanks shane. In fairness to the Church, ( regardless of country ) I believe it's policy was well intentioned. There was no social welfare, & the adoption allowed the mothers to start their lives again knowing that their baby's were in good homes. What is the NUJ'S alternative - abortion ?. The implication also is that the adoptive parents were some kind of ogre's. That is highly offensive to thee good people. In fact I read somewhere that in the 1950's/60's the likes of the Irish Times were strongly in favour of this approach. There is a large degree of what CS Lewis termed " chronological snobbery " in looking back with hindsight on the way's of previous generations & condescendingly reprimanding them. In fact there is considerable evidence that the current explosion of single parenthood is not good for the single parent, the children or society at large. Maybe our ancestors were right !.
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Post by shane on Oct 17, 2011 21:02:25 GMT
I think there's something in what you say. "Chronological snobbery" is something to be guarded against, and I'm not immune from it myself either.
As regards the Basques and Catalans, General Franco did made mistakes there. But perhaps it's not wholly incomprehensible either. That tension went back long before the Civil War. Basque and Catalan separatism could be very aggressive and fanatical. (Even today it is effectively prohibited for children to speak Castilian in most Catalan schools.) They should have promoted their cultural identities as regional variants within the wider Spanish framework rather than having it so associated with what was clearly a separatist agenda.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 18, 2011 11:20:50 GMT
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15335899 This BBC item on the story doesn't suggest we are just talking about single mothers, or about a consensual process - it opens by interviewing a married woman who was told her child had died when in fact it had been taken for adoption. I might add that one reason why there is so much hostility to adoption in certain circles is that it is seen as rich people buying children from poor women, and there is some basis to this - I suspect the programme taps into this wider anti-adoption agenda - but this does appear to be a case where the criticism has substance. We mustn't defend the indefensible or we'll discredit our legitimate concerns.
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Post by Los Leandros on Oct 18, 2011 11:50:44 GMT
I agree hibernicus that if such abuses occurred they are to be deplored. It's just that the tenor of the newspaper article was dripping with anti-Catholic vitriol. I know we should'nt shoot the messenger ( provided the messenger is credible/fair/balanced ), but if the messenger has a history, let's say of not being exactly sympathetic to Catholicism, we should at least not take everything he say's at face value. We need to know the facts. Were such abuses the norm or were they exceptional, etc. We know how certain RTE documentaries were skewed in such a way to present a less than fair/balanced view of the realities. I would say, proceed with caution.
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Post by Los Leasdros on Oct 19, 2011 8:55:56 GMT
Just wondering did anyone see the documentary in question on BBC last night. Mrs. Los Leandros insisted on watching the euro football, but in the course of switching channels I saw snippets of the documentary, so I can't really judge it.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 19, 2011 20:48:43 GMT
Speaking of the Mail on Sunday in general it tends to be a mixed bag - some very good (Mark Dooley) and some very bad. Fr Brian McKevitt has been recommending that people read it in preference to the SUNDAY INDEPENDENT. The British MAIL does go in for a certain amount of "family values" material - mostly hypocritical so far as the editors (though not the individual columnists) are concerned but then hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and better that than nothing.
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Post by Los Leandros on Oct 20, 2011 11:05:10 GMT
Sadly true. I find the Mail is the best of a bad lot. Mark Dooley & John Waters are excellent ( most of the others, particularly the Irish female " journalists " are dire ; knee-jerk feminism rules supreme - the gospel according to Germaine Greer ) , & in fairness their letters page allows quite a few pro-Catholic contributions ; unlike the censorship of the rest of the Irish media.
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