People ask "what is wrong with the Church running social institutions", and the answer is the lack of proper accountability. In the worst case you end up with a mass grave of babies.
The complaint in the linked article is about burial practices. That's a psychological, cultural, or theological complaint, right?
Also, even if the burial practices were unconscionable, why write off all religious institutions with those kinds of anecdotes and ignore the mountains of atrocities committed by state-run institutions?
No, it's not about burial practices. It's about birth-to-burial without registration, and without any investigation of the context. Mass infanticide by negligence.
What happened was that young unmarried women in Ireland were forcibly institutionalised, separated from their children, told the children would be put up for adoption, and not told when the children died due to the neglect of the institution.
Where the children survived, the church tended to hinder contact between adoptees and birth mothers even when it was wanted by both sides.
And this is inseperable from the religious context of punishing the "sinning" women. A problem which is still ongoing in the fight for abortion access in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
I'd upvote but for the call for the last two sentences. It sounds like "if only we could abort these kids, they would have never been treated this way."
Ultimately it comes down to forcing teenage girls to carry pregnancies to term (resulting in a range of potential complications including death) versus the availability of abortion.
Also the incredible cynicism of having a ""pro life"" organization that only cares about unborn lives.
"Savita, pregnant at 17 weeks with her first baby, went to the hospital with her husband Praveen on 21 October 2012 complaining about back pain. Her water broke early on the morning of 22 October and Savita asked if anything could be done to save the baby. She was told that the miscarriage was inevitable. On 23 October, having understood the baby would not survive, she asked for a termination, and was told it was not legally possible in Ireland while there is a foetal heartbeat. Midwife manager Ann Maria Burke attempted to calm an upset Savita and explained that the termination cannot be carried out because Ireland is "a Catholic country", a statement she later said was not meant in a hurtful way and a statement that she was sorry for making if it sounded bad afterward. In preparation for a termination on 24 October, Savita delivered a stillborn girl. At 1:09am, on Sunday 28 October, Savita died.[3][4][5][6][7][8]"
How is it relevant? It was in a university hospital in a country with a secular government that legally allows terminating pregnancies to save the life of the mother. There wasn't a Church-run social institution unless I missed something.
The subtext is that many of these children died from lack of proper care. That's what I have heard, so don't quote me on that. Some simple searches should unearth a lot more information.
The Church in Ireland still runs a lot of schools (at least nominally; they're generally mostly or entirely _paid_ for by the state and have to adhere to the national curriculum and so on). Not other social services these days, though, and certainly not social housing.
The Church in Germany (churches actually, the Protestant alliance is about as large as the Catholic church) goes beyond that by not only having their schools, hospitals and so on de facto paid for by the state (always in part, sometimes 100%) but also getting to impose their own laws on their employees instead of having to adhere to the secular labour laws.
Had an abortion? Came out as gay? Got a divorce? If you work for a "Catholic" hospital that can easily result in the termination of your employment even if your salary comes 100% from the state and this discrimination would be illegal if the hospital were secular.
It's a widespread misconception (even within Germany) that Germany is a secular nation or has a separation of church and state. That no single religious group is formally given exclusive privileges or that we're not under the direct rule of any religious leader doesn't change that fact.
This was legal in Ireland until very recently with Church-run schools (for teaching staff only). Though with some restrictions; notably, a gay woman who was a teacher was passed over for promotion to principal because she was gay; when investigated, the school's defense was that she was gay. They lost; the view was taken that while they could have refused to employ her for that reason they couldn't otherwise discriminate against her.
Fortunately, the law was changed in 2015; church-run schools can no longer discriminate on 'ethos' in employment. Incidentally, this wasn't just the Catholic Church; any religious organisation who ran a school got to discriminate until then.
People ask "what is wrong with the Church running social institutions", and the answer is the lack of proper accountability. In the worst case you end up with a mass grave of babies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-...