With all due respect to the posters, I for one, think that Philomena told it like it was. Sometimes, I think there is/was as much corruption with some of the sisters as with some of the priesthood. And, here is why:
My mother was born in 1923. When she was 19 months old, her father died suddenly. His wife (my mother’s mother) tried to hold the family (three children) together. But, their laundry business dried up. My mother’s mother used the insurance money left her to try to salvage the business. But, it failed again. At the age of six, my mother entered an orphanage operated by the Sisters of Charity. In my mother’s words, the sisters were “anything but charitable”. She was abused in that orphanage. One of her brothers was sent to live with an alcoholic priest. Said brother was also abused. The remaining brother remained with his mother.
At the age of seven, my mother was forced to decide if she wanted to live with her mother or her two maiden aunts. She chose to live with her two maiden aunts. I’m sure it must have severely grieved my mother’s mother, to say nothing of how my mother must have felt.
The brother who was the only one to remain with his mother, went to his grave, never forgiving the way things were handled because of the tragic death of his father.
The other brother died in his late thirties or early forties. I don’t know how he felt as an adult about the abuses from the priest with whom he lived.
My mother forgave the sisters. She was a devout Catholic all her life. And, she bore many crosses in her life. I have no doubt that she went straight to Heaven when she passed in 2010.
I also forgive the sisters and priest who abused my mother and her brother. I forgive the priest who was president of the Jesuit university I attended for four years. It was found, years later, that he had molested freshmen and sophomores in a certain dorm. It was well known that he frequented the dorm on Sunday evenings to “encourage men to the priesthood”. But, it is truly disheartening to me that the victims never “had their day in court”.
As I say, I forgive, and I’m sure God is a just God and has handled it. I left the Church for a few years, but, through God’s Grace, I returned twenty years ago. I just wish our Church would “man up” and admit that there are evil people in all walks of life, even members of clergy and convents.
