by Grania
Here’s a true story that made me a little teary-eyed when I read it. It’s good for taking the edge of cynicism off you and restore your faith in humanity a little bit.
It’s written by Donal O’Keeffe, self described blogger and writer.
Read the rest of the tale here.
Note for non-Irish: “garda” is the Irish word for police, and is often used in the form of “guard” as well.
Yes – it is Dickensian – amazing that it was the 20th C when it happened.
There seems to be a lot of historic baggage hanging on the term “Cruelty Man”.
I’ll think of this next time some religious idiot asks me where I get my morality from.
And as GBJames points out, the term “Cruelty Man” is some indication of how entrenched Catholic morality was in Irish culture.
How very poignant and heart-wrenching. I’m glad it ended well for at least a few children. How can people trust these people of the cloth when there’s been so much institutionalized abuse?!
Yeah, that story certainly does evoke strong emotions. It is a challange to retain decency and compassion when the highest authorities conspire to create and maintain such cruel values and institutions. Such acts of compassion as related in this story are things to be treasured as examples of the best things humans can achieve.
Wow, what a powerful story, full of happiness and grief, intermixed. Thank you for sharing this.
Also: The recent movie, The Guard (2011, with Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, and Mark Strong) is very good, in my opinion.
Sometimes there is a bit of hope and not often does it get in the news. Like this rich guy down in Kansas City who give out a ton of 100 dollar bills around this time of year. This year he gave a lot of the money to the police and had them hand out the money.
Considering the relations right now between the cops and the people it turned out to be a very good idea for all concerned.
That is very cool.
Here is that story – I think the video is on this page as well. I watched it a few days ago but of course can’t remember where I saw it.
I like the woman who was totally pissed at first then got the money and was so happy. 🙂
I hate getting pulled over – that horrible, sinking feeling!
I’ve got real mixed feelings about this. The upside of happy surprise is, of course, the source of positive vibes. But I also wonder if it is actually legal for a cop to stop a driver without any legitimate infraction being involved. The gift is fine, but it comes following that horrible sinking feeling. I’d rather they found a way to give the money away without scaring people.
I thought the same thing. I guess a lot of people like being scared as part of a joke but I don’t. I have a big amygdyla & I hate being scared for any reason!
+ 2
That is similar to my grandmother’s story. Her family came to the the east coast of Canada during the potato famine (the so-called potatoe Irish). Her mother died, leaving her husband and children and it was now the depression. My grandmother’s father worked to keep the girls, mostly running booze to the US which prohibited it but he couldn’t care for them so he simply gave them to the Church. So weird that you could just surrender children like you do an animal (which I also don’t like BTW but that’s a different story). The nuns were horribly cruel to them and my grandmother, who the Church turned against when she married my Baptist grandfather, carried a life-long fear of nuns. They’d do things like make her stand outside all night in a tiny night-gown for daring to play basketball (that was a boys game). She was estranged from her sisters and she once ran home (or her sister did) and begged her father to keep them but he couldn’t manage and took her back; I can imagine it must’ve been horrible for him to give up his children.
The were adopted out I believe and by complete serendipity, my grandmother ended up living, as an adult, right near her sister and they were reunited in adulthood.
The odd way they treated children back then is evidenced even in the 40s when my grandmother adopted my father from the infamous place that killed the babies of unwed mothers who couldn’t afford to pay for the childrens’ birth and buried them in butter boxes – they became known as the “Butter Box Babies”. My dad was lucky to have escaped that place and my grandmother adopted him much in the way you would adopt a dog from the Humane Society today; she simply walked into a room full of children & selected him.
Wow. With that family history, no wonder you are an atheist. What is surprising is that so many with similar family histories are not atheists, and are still Catholic (or whatever sect visited misery on them).
My grandmother remained a believer but she never went to any church though they did force my dad into Sunday school at a Baptist church, which he hated. I think his parents were somewhat apathetically religious. My dad was an atheist his whole life (but also different genetic stock :))
These family stories are really interesting windows. My wife’s Irish grandfather came to America as a young man in the early 20th century to escape the Catholic Church and remained an agnostic/atheist all his life. (Although his daughter, my mother-in-law, was raised Catholic. Although raised Catholic, my wife took after her grandfather.)
My own paternal grandfather was agnostic/atheist but married a Catholic Czech-American woman and, thus, my dad and his sibs were raised Catholic. I understand that on his deathbed my grandpa “converted” as a gift to his wife so that he could be buried in the Catholic cemetery with her. I came in later life to understand that the little Czech village they lived in had been divided between Catholics and Freethinkers. The latter built an opera house for freethinkers to gather in. It still stands and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Zapadni_Cesko-Bratrska_Jednota_hall%2C_Haugen%2C_Wisconsin.jpg
“…divided between Catholics and Freethinkers.”
That’s bracing! Many people today are unaware of the prominence of free-thinkers in some past eras.
Yes.
When I finally figured this out I understood why this little village had two cemeteries exactly next to each other, that I thought was one with two entrances. Now I get why one entrance has the Catholic hoo-ha iconography on it and the other has a sign, in Czech “Bohemian National Cemetery” over the entrance and an interesting sign to the side. It reads: “What you are we once were. What we are you will become.” How cool is that?
There was once a fence dividing the two (now gone). If I remember correctly, the monuments tend to be facing opposite directions.
I also came to understand something in a small autobiography my uncle (Dad’s twin) wrote… He described how as a child he was not supposed to play with some of the other kids, but he did anyway. As a older teen he and one of the forbidden friends hitchhiked to North Dakota. I was at that cemetery one day when an old man wandered by, waiting for a funeral at the Catholic Church in the village to get out. The old guy was from the old freethinker part of the community and was waiting for his dead Catholic friend to be brought to the burial pit that awaited him. Turns out it was the fellow who hitchhiked with my uncle Tom. The fellow’s first name was… and I kid you not… Darwin.
Wonderful tale!
I think that rather spooky epitaph is probably quite old. I’ve seen pictures of tombstones with it, usually phrased more or less like this: As you are now, so once was I; as I am now you once shall be.
Unfortunately, it’s often followed by, “Prepare to meet thy God.”
So, the Catholic ex-kid was named Darwin? 😀
I worded ambiguously! No my (Catholic) uncle was Tom. His Freethinker friend wad Darwin.
I know that Tom eventually ended up an agnostic/atheist. I don’t really know what Darwin’s views were beyond the fact that he hadn’t gone to the funeral service at the church and was awaiting his friend at the graveside.
That makes more sense. 🙂
Susan Jacoby wrote a book on the subject not long ago. “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism”.
Come to think of it, when I’m finished with Paul Dirac, I think I’ll order it from the library.
That book is excellent. It led me to figure out the story I told above.
Agree, and excellent book. I don’t think Jacoby gets nearly the attention she deserves.
Incredible story, Diana!
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How do we know this is a true story? It is a pity the author is not more specific about names, dates and locations.
I wonder this, too. I believe I read this story before a few years back. But I could be wrong in my memory.
The author does say he’d tried writing it before, so you may also be right.