sammiealice's blog post - watched the end of a movie this morning

it was called the magdaline sisters and it was the story of about 4 girls in a magdaline laundries. i had heard about them in the past, joni mitchell (who could have seduced me with her voice when i was younger and i would have slept with her just to listen to her voice) sang about them in the late 1990'a but i don't think that i really understood how horrible they were. and how they were the out growth of a truely good movement (i learned that after reading more about the on the internet). they finally closed the last of these facilities in 1998.

while started for noble purposes in the 1800's, the facilities slowly became places of abuse and cruelty and what amounted to slavery for women into the middle and later portions of the 1900th century. and much of it was run by the Catholic Church's order of nuns.

it just was difficult to believe that these kinds of problems atrocities existed 50 years after world war 2 and all of the brutality that was witnessed. it just so show that history is truely written by the winners.

anyway, what really struck me is how "civilized and educated we are" but we bury our heads in the sand about what is out of sight. we ask how other cultures can do be so abusive, violent, have so little respect for women and life and be don't even look at our own history and how recently we stopped instituionally abusing in our own socity.

it was a painful movies to watch, it was painful to learn more about the institution and, as a catholic, it was painful to see how much the catholic church played a role in this.

but, if we don't look in the face of what we were, and learn from it, we can not hope to advance as human being. but if we look at what we were, and keep looking back, we will diminsh as human beings.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to all.