Neither a bookkeeper nor at Auschwitz but......

I was a novice in the Dominican novitiate in Pope’s Quay in Cork in 1967.

There were 21 young men living in the priory. Add to that another four young priests, who were attending University College Cork. In all, there could have been close to 40 men living in the priory. 

Attached to the priory was a busy church, which was held in high esteem in the city.

These last days I have been thinking of the ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’, Oskar Gröning, who died earlier this year. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment but never served any of his sentence.

His job at Auschwitz was to itemise money and valuables taken from new arrivals, who were then killed or subjected to slave labour. He asked to be moved to the front but was refused permission until 1944 when he served as a fighting soldier.

After the war when he heard people denying the Holocaust he was one of very few Germans to say what had happened and admit what he had done.

Pope’s Quay was far away from Auschwitz and I was not a bookkeeper at either place.

But when we were novices we performed plays at the nearby Peacock Lane and Good Shepherd Convent. They were both Magdalene Laundries.

Indeed, the girls and women at both establishments laundered our clothes.

I was 18/19/20 and never asked a question. Why didn’t I?

Did the established men in the community ask any questions? Did nobody think it was all strange and wrong? These same men spoke to us of the importance of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

How did the management class know so much about God, the vows and all the other 'stuff' and knew so little about the crass injustice being done to girls and women right beside them? And the same 'stuff' is trotted out today.

It happened on my watch and I said nothing.

Which means I can never dare stay silent again. The nonsense goes on, under a different format.

Every day the Irish Catholic Church is attacked. But who put the leaders/the managers of this church on their pedestals? Clearly, the people, the Irish people.