Recently yet another gem of evidence surfaced proving the collapse of Irish educational standards. A professor at a Joke Irish University—where rigour goes to die—can’t tell the difference between evidence and ego. Yet somehow, he still delivers sermons on “critical thinking.”
Professor Thomas Garavan of University College Cork, told the Irish Examiner that “I would have expected more evidence-based analyses supported by historical evidence, greater objectivity, and most of all compassion.” That is exactly what is expected of a professor on any subject, even Leadership Practice. Garavan lets the side down rather badly.
Despite a long list of publications and expected expertise in human behaviour—though only in a narrow corner of the field—he discards even the basics of his training. He conjures up the fantasy that women, acting against all self-interest, chose to abuse and starve children simply because they were of an illegitimate birth. Not a shred of evidence supports this defamation. If he wants a debate on the bungled way some commentators have mangled vintage medical terminology, then game on.
The hidden evidence tells its own story: 79 of the 796 death certificates from Tuam belonged to children born to married parents. That single fact alone demolishes the central canard on which the entire scandal rests.
And yet, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission—stocked with academically trained individuals—proved itself to have all the trappings of scholarship—none of the substance. Their errors were not accidents, but the inevitable result of straining to appease their political paymasters and conjure abuse where none could be found. They trawled through over one million documents and unearthed precisely nothing. Not one. A million pages, and still no abuse. It would be funny if it weren’t so grotesque.
To their credit, the Commission stopped just short of outright invention, even under crushing political and social pressure. But every one of their errors stemmed from false assumptions, born of ignorance in vintage medicine and a slapdash grasp of social history—and, by sheer coincidence, every error favoured the abuse propagators. Still, the Commission managed to prove one thing beyond doubt: every allegation made by Catherine Corless was false. Hence, her rage.
Let’s be clear: nobody—not even a Professor of Leadership Practice with a library of buzzwords—can plough through a 3,000-page investigation report and truly understand it without serious further study. Most people, therefore, subcontract their thinking to others. Enter the Irish Examiner, which has led the charge in publishing falsehoods by the column-inch. And its readers? Duped again. Thanks for buying the paper—consider yourself a fool.
History wasn’t written by the victors this time, but by the fools who bought the newspaper.
He claims that his mother was resident in the home and that his aunt died in Tuam home. Well, the sad facts that can be gleaned is that his grandmother lived in dire poverty. It was mainly the poor who sought admission, as more well-off women took care of their own problem. She got pregnant not once but twice, suggesting that she was a vulnerable woman deserving of sympathy and refuge. That is what she got at Tuam, all the evidence supports this.
In the period studied by the commission, there were 175,923 illegitimate children born outside the state care system. That is real evidence that it was mainly poor and destitute women who applied to get into a mother and baby home. There are many more family secrets to be revealed by the excavation. Some will not be pleasant.
It is out of compassion that I have not been critical of the people who have made obviously false claims about Tuam and other institutions. Many of them are suggestible and vulnerable, but some have genuine complaints. Most of them relate to their foster parents because they were too young to have a memory of the Home. Moreover, the nuns had no responsibility for this system, it was the state, and it is the Irish state that bears full responsibility for failings in foster care.
Fr Kilcoyne has more evidence on his side than Prof Garavan.
EJ
Fr Kilcoyne’s remarks
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41695316.html
Note the deliberately misleading headline, and note it was one person who complained.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41697461.html
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