Will the Irish eventually despise the Catholic Church?

The policy objective of this psychological abuse was to capture the one in 100 who would be too frightened of the risk of damnation in a non-celibate life and who would become priests or teaching brothers. Those who were not so captured would be expected to go on to be fathers of several children. Then of those children, the desired 1 per cent would later be captured. The collateral damage done to the pool of humans from which the 1 per cent was extracted did not seem to matter.

I am now an old man - and yet it still hurts to remember.

My dear grand aunt Anne

I stood on the now abandoned railway platform at Perthville which is a few kilometers out of Bathurst. I visualised 18-year-old Anne Madden getting off the train in 1880. I looked across to the red brick convent with its high-pitched silvery roof. I visualised the nervous girl walking with her few personal things in a bag up to the front door. She would stay in that place until she died 55 years later.

Anne’s parents were Irish immigrants. God blessed the family which gave a child to the church. Poor sacrificial lamb, Anne. I once saw a photo of her in her nun’s habit, but the photo has long since disappeared. I have two letters from her to her brother (my maternal grandfather) which I will treasure. I never met her, and yet I connect with her. I eventually escaped the indoctrination to enjoy a life free of unnecessary and potentially debilitating fear and guilt. She never did.