A
Axion
Guest
One thing that made me suspicious of all the fuss about Magdalen Assylums was the lack of eyewitness testimonies. The Asylums are supposed only to have closed ten years ago, but almost no living witnesses appear anywhere to give real life accounts. All the accusations tend to be general.
This is one of the few real accounts I found on the web. It went unsolicited to a web site from someone who had seen the film. It presents a slightly different view.
I just viewed the Magdalene Sisters yesterday. I came from an Irish American, Catholic background. In the forties my stepmother deciding that I was “too much for her,” and had the courts remand me to the Good Shepherd Sisters in Brooklyn. It was very strict there and regimented. After a while it seemed to me to “become home.” We were never struck or humiiliated while naked by the nuns as in the movie. However, there are other ways of mortifying a person.
Wanting to be a “good girl” I obeyed all the rules becoming a “consecrate” with the intention of entering the penitent sisters there. Since no one wanted to claim me on the outside, I stayed with the sisters for about seven years, graduating from High School there and then deciding to enter the convent as a Magdalen, a cloister where the sisters wear the brown habit and are subject to the Carmelite Rule. This convent was attached to the Good Shepherd convent in the shape of a cross, with the large chapel at the center. I became a “penitent” sister a month after high school graduation wearing a blue gown instead of white and a crown of thorns instead of the crown of flowers that “a chaste bride of Christ” would wear.
I stayed for two years after I had taken the white veil as a novice but then realized at the age of twenty one that I did not feel the vocation to stay, so I left the convent with great emotional difficulty and headed for Manhattan where I found work with a large insurance company.Living with a kind uncle proved unworkable since his wife felt I was invading their peaceful existance by being there. I found a room in the home of a cousin’s friends. At the USO where I volunteered to make coffee and sandwiches, I met a young soldier from a rural northern state and in short order married him.
It was a marriage of forty two years and eight children, often difficult and full of hunger,lack of heat, physical abuse, cruel in-laws and his straying. Along with that came his alcoholism that I finally succumbed to as well. My gift to my children was the great “love and kindness” I felt for and gave them, since that was what I had not been given. I thought that made up for the horrible chaos in the home. In retrospect, it did not!At any rate, the sad part of all this is that I felt worthless and having the “Irish Catholic guilt syndrome”, felt as if my woes were deserved. After twenty two years of the drinking in the home I threw the bottle in the sink and after three years he followed suit. The next twenty years till he died were relatively peaceful, with the children mostly grown and Himself calming down. The marriage ended in his death through which I stayed for the final five weeks of his illness in the hospital at his side and was glad to do so, God Rest him. Three years after his death and finally making a new life for myself, I met a wonderful, kind and gentle man at my church. It has been almost eleven years now since our marriage, but it has been the most rewarding years of my life. The conflicts in the Catholic Church make it hard for me to recognize it as the all powerful Roman Catholic bastion it was years ago, but my husband and I stay faithful to our religion. I have at last sailed into a safe and loving harbor and feel that my dear husband now has saved me from dying without ever being loved. Perhaps it saved my life, going to the nuns, since I felt desperate for affection getting none from my dad or stepmother and I could have ended up in even worse straits than I did. But it took me years in therapy to get over the idea that I had deserved all the bad treatment I received and the lack of self esteem that ran from the time I was eight when my mother died till I was in my mid sixties. It still makes me sad when I see mothers and fathers caring for, loving and instructing their children to build the positive impressions of their children’s egos, but as I say, at least now I feel loved and appreciated in my sunset years. I do not feel sorry for my experiences since I regard myself as a survivor and had I not experienced all the bad things, I would not now appreciate the life I now enjoy. God Bless you all who read this story.
rosiethird2
03.27.2004
getunderground.com/underground/columns/article.cfm?Article_ID=1326
This is one of the few real accounts I found on the web. It went unsolicited to a web site from someone who had seen the film. It presents a slightly different view.
I just viewed the Magdalene Sisters yesterday. I came from an Irish American, Catholic background. In the forties my stepmother deciding that I was “too much for her,” and had the courts remand me to the Good Shepherd Sisters in Brooklyn. It was very strict there and regimented. After a while it seemed to me to “become home.” We were never struck or humiiliated while naked by the nuns as in the movie. However, there are other ways of mortifying a person.
Wanting to be a “good girl” I obeyed all the rules becoming a “consecrate” with the intention of entering the penitent sisters there. Since no one wanted to claim me on the outside, I stayed with the sisters for about seven years, graduating from High School there and then deciding to enter the convent as a Magdalen, a cloister where the sisters wear the brown habit and are subject to the Carmelite Rule. This convent was attached to the Good Shepherd convent in the shape of a cross, with the large chapel at the center. I became a “penitent” sister a month after high school graduation wearing a blue gown instead of white and a crown of thorns instead of the crown of flowers that “a chaste bride of Christ” would wear.
I stayed for two years after I had taken the white veil as a novice but then realized at the age of twenty one that I did not feel the vocation to stay, so I left the convent with great emotional difficulty and headed for Manhattan where I found work with a large insurance company.Living with a kind uncle proved unworkable since his wife felt I was invading their peaceful existance by being there. I found a room in the home of a cousin’s friends. At the USO where I volunteered to make coffee and sandwiches, I met a young soldier from a rural northern state and in short order married him.
It was a marriage of forty two years and eight children, often difficult and full of hunger,lack of heat, physical abuse, cruel in-laws and his straying. Along with that came his alcoholism that I finally succumbed to as well. My gift to my children was the great “love and kindness” I felt for and gave them, since that was what I had not been given. I thought that made up for the horrible chaos in the home. In retrospect, it did not!At any rate, the sad part of all this is that I felt worthless and having the “Irish Catholic guilt syndrome”, felt as if my woes were deserved. After twenty two years of the drinking in the home I threw the bottle in the sink and after three years he followed suit. The next twenty years till he died were relatively peaceful, with the children mostly grown and Himself calming down. The marriage ended in his death through which I stayed for the final five weeks of his illness in the hospital at his side and was glad to do so, God Rest him. Three years after his death and finally making a new life for myself, I met a wonderful, kind and gentle man at my church. It has been almost eleven years now since our marriage, but it has been the most rewarding years of my life. The conflicts in the Catholic Church make it hard for me to recognize it as the all powerful Roman Catholic bastion it was years ago, but my husband and I stay faithful to our religion. I have at last sailed into a safe and loving harbor and feel that my dear husband now has saved me from dying without ever being loved. Perhaps it saved my life, going to the nuns, since I felt desperate for affection getting none from my dad or stepmother and I could have ended up in even worse straits than I did. But it took me years in therapy to get over the idea that I had deserved all the bad treatment I received and the lack of self esteem that ran from the time I was eight when my mother died till I was in my mid sixties. It still makes me sad when I see mothers and fathers caring for, loving and instructing their children to build the positive impressions of their children’s egos, but as I say, at least now I feel loved and appreciated in my sunset years. I do not feel sorry for my experiences since I regard myself as a survivor and had I not experienced all the bad things, I would not now appreciate the life I now enjoy. God Bless you all who read this story.
rosiethird2
03.27.2004
getunderground.com/underground/columns/article.cfm?Article_ID=1326