A Suitable Place to Remember? Derelict Magdalen Laundries as Possible Sites of Conscience in Contemporary Ireland

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110655
Author(s):  
Laura McAtackney
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
Past Injustices

It is less than a decade since the Irish government published the McAleese Report, which accepted the state’s role in facilitating abuse in Catholic Church-run Magdalen Laundries. At the time the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny tearfully apologizing for the state’s involvement, alongside promising redress for survivors. Although much has been achieved since that time, one aspect that has not been resolved is how we remember and memorialize that past. Of the 10 Magdalen Laundries that operated in postindependence Ireland, seven have been demolished or substantially redeveloped and three are currently in various degrees of dereliction. This article considers the potential for extant Magdalen Laundries to become sites of conscience. It will explore this potential through the lens of temporality, materiality, and spatiality and will ultimately argue for the need to explore scalar power relations if Magdalen Laundries are to truly reflect past injustices as well as become meaningful places in the contemporary.

Residential Institutions Redress Board of the Irish Government 2002–2018

2021 ◽  
pp. 002581722098090
Author(s):  
John Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Expert Assessment ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
Residential Institutions ◽  
Irish Republic ◽  
Set Up

In 1999, the Irish Government commissioned a report into the abuse of children who were in the care of facilities managed and run under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church in the Irish Republic in the 1940s and 1950s. It reported in 2009. A Redress Board was set up to investigate and compensate claimants who were abused physically and mentally as children when living in these facilities. The Board sat for 16 years. In total, 16,650 applications were processed with awards worth €970 million. Of these, 1069 applications were withdrawn, refused or had a nil award. This report on work of the Commission and the Board derives from the histories given and the expert assessment of 19 claimants for compensation. Their ages ranged between 47 and 72 years at the time of the expert’s assessment.

scholarly journals The pope’s man in London: Anglo-Vatican relations, the nuncio question and Irish concerns, 1938-82

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-84
Author(s):  
Daithí Ó Corráin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Public Life ◽  
British Government ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Holy See ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
National Life ◽  
Diplomatic Relationship

Although a British mission to the Holy See was established in 1914, the diplomatic relationship was not on a basis of reciprocity. From 1938 the pope was represented in London not by a nuncio (the Vatican equivalent of an ambassador) but by an apostolic delegate whose mission was to the hierarchy alone and not the British government. The evolution of the nuncio question sheds light on the nature of Anglo-Vatican relations, the place of Catholicism in British public life, inter-church rapprochement and British foreign policy considerations. This article assesses the divergent positions of the Foreign and Home Offices. The former was sympathetic to a change of status, whereas the latter was cautious due to the opposition of the archbishop of Canterbury and concerns about anti-Catholicism. The nuncio question was also of great interest to the Irish government. It feared that a nuncio in London would exert jurisdiction over Northern Ireland and undermine the all-island unity of the Irish Catholic Church. The Northern Ireland Troubles and the support displayed by the apostolic delegate for British policy hastened the restoration of full ambassadorial relations between London and the Holy See in 1982, ending a diplomatic breach that had existed for more than four centuries. It paved the way for Pope John Paul II’s historic pastoral visit to Britain which helped to consolidate the position of Roman Catholicism in British national life.

Liberal visions and actual power in grassroots civil society: local churches and women's empowerment in rural Malawi

2002 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter VonDoepp
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Community Study ◽  
Local Churches ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Authority Structures

Research from a community study in rural Malawi speaks directly to contemporary debates about civil society. Investigating the role of local churches in empowering citizens, the study found that the local Catholic church was more effectively fostering a nascent sense of political efficacy among women than were local Presbyterian churches. Explaining this finding, the article presents two issues that expose problems in the liberal understanding of civil society, and underscore important themes raised in the critical discourse. First, the study reveals that organisations characterised by decentralised authority structures and internal democracy may fail to contribute to the empowerment of marginalised citizens. Such organisations are prone to reproduce and exacerbate local inequalities and conflicts within their structures. Second, corroborating critical views, the study highlights the importance of recognising how power relations affect the character and operation of civil society organisations. The adjusting of power relations within organisations may be a prerequisite to their serving an empowering role with marginalised citizens.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin C. Bloomer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
South India ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Covert Activity ◽  
The Many ◽  
Familial Roles

This chapter begins with the ordination of Dhanam’s son and pans out to compare all three women. Aananthan is ordained in Mātāpuram, with the bishop of Meerut (Agra) presiding. The ritual offers a bottom-up view of the interdependent power relations within hegemonic orders such as the Roman Catholic Church in village India, and the Church’s relation to Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical Hindu authority. Marian possession is investigated as covert activity and agency. Meanwhile, Nancy’s marriage has tempered her possession activity and lends credence to interpretations that her possession allowed her to manipulate gender and familial roles. Rosalind’s following has grown and her family and community believe that Jecintho has consecrated the Eucharist. The many Marys of South India are compared to the Mary of the orthodox Roman Catholic Church. Final conclusions are presented, and the reader is taken to an intimate Mass in Dhanam’s natal village, presided over by her son.

In Search of Hybridity: Inculturation, Interculturation and Transculturation in Contemporary Religious Art in Britain

Exchange ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Jutta Vinzent
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Subordinate Role ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractThis essay explores contemporary religious art in Britain through the lens of Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. While he leaves it rather ‘ambivalent’, this essay suggests that in visual representations, various forms of hybridity can be distinguished: inculturation, interculturation and transculturation. These three types, hijacked from religious dialogue discourses, show a variety of power relations in representation and context; while incultural elements are based on a dominant versus subordinate role, intercultural ones form a dialogue; both expand iconographic vocabularies. Transcultural symbols refer to those which are existing parts of a variety of iconographies; these thus ‘merge’ visually different cultural heritages; their interpretation is, in the true sense of Bhabha, hybrid. The essay concludes by referring to the limits of transcultural symbols, which accept losses, blurs and shifts. The entire analysis is based on Hindu and Christian iconographies exploited by Caroline Mackenzie in her four wooden panels located for the Catholic Church in St. Helen in Caerphilly (Wales), commissioned in 1999.

Accent Policy and Accent Modification Enterprises as Potential Indicators of Intercultural Power Relations: A Call for an Updated Research Agenda

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brynne D. Ovalle ◽  
Rahul Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Cultural Organization ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This article has two purposes: (a) to examine the relationship between intercultural power relations and the widespread practice of accent discrimination and (b) to underscore the ramifications of accent discrimination both for the individual and for global society as a whole. First, authors review social theory regarding language and group identity construction, and then go on to integrate more current studies linking accent bias to sociocultural variables. Authors discuss three examples of intercultural accent discrimination in order to illustrate how this link manifests itself in the broader context of international relations (i.e., how accent discrimination is generated in situations of unequal power) and, using a review of current research, assess the consequences of accent discrimination for the individual. Finally, the article highlights the impact that linguistic discrimination is having on linguistic diversity globally, partially using data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and partially by offering a potential context for interpreting the emergence of practices that seek to reduce or modify speaker accents.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document