After Philomena
A little under six years ago, my mum and I went to the cinema to see Philomena, a witty comedy-drama screenplay based on Philomena Lee’s half-century-long search for her son, following the Catholic Church’s involvement in forced adoptions. It’s a beautifully done film, packaged up perfectly for audience consumption. It’s respectful and sincere yet facetiously written in this categorically charming way, recognisable as this very particular brand of Irish Catholic humour that’s culturally cultivated through shared religious trauma. I remember 14-year-old me laughing and crying in all the right places inside a very wet Croydon Vue auditorium (it was raining that day) relating to all the Catholic jokes, crying at all the heart-wrenching scenes but feeling ultimately grateful about how distant I was from the events of the film. It was cathartic, provided good shelter from the rain and was poignant in the sense that, as a Catholic, I could empathise with the atrocities committed by the Church, whilst being far enough removed from the dramatised events that, following the film, I could go home and continue with the regiments of 14-year-old life.
*****
Last month, I was commuting from Leeds, where I work and study, to visit my family back home in South London. I was checking my emails and noticed forwarded correspondence from the Catholic Children’s Society. I was curious and almost humoured by the idea of a Catholic organisation contacting me, someone who had long left any religious portion of their life behind. Stationed outside Vauxhall, I opened an email detailing that in 1961, my grandmother had a baby in St Pelagia’s Highgate, a mother-and-baby home run by the very same order of nuns from Philomena, and that that baby, my aunt, was now 58 and tracing back my family.
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As soon as I arrived back at my sister’s flat, the anger set in. I didn’t know anger could be that all-consuming. I decided I was going to single-handedly dismantle the Catholic Church. I was going to fucking burn it all down like a 21st-century vigilante Henry VIII.
Of course, I’ve always known how evil the Catholic Church could be. I grew up during the period in which the Catholic abuse scandals began coming to light. Every Catholic and non-Catholic alike knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who’s been hurt by the Church. But how on earth do I come to terms with the fact that the Catholic Church, a body that I can’t even begin to hold to account, stole my aunt from my poverty-stricken immigrant grandmother, who spoke very little English, and sold her for profit? And how do you deal with the guilt that follows the realisation that you were so blind to all the other evils of the Church? That I only experienced this anger and outrage when it happened right on my doorstep?
I was brought up Roman Catholic and, like many from my generation who grew up in Catholic households, I haven’t associated myself with the Church for a number of years. However, the Church undeniably played a huge part in raising me and for years, following my end to practicing religion, I’d visit churches in times of hardship to feel comfort, I’d light a candle when somebody died, I’d marvel at the incense and gold and stained glass. In fact, exactly a week before I received the adoption letter, I’d been into Leeds City Cathedral to light a candle for my uncle who had passed the day before. Yet, I remember being inconsolable as a kid in the mornings if I forgot to pray the rosary before bed because I’d convinced myself I was going to Hell. I remember the constant twinge of guilt if I made any childlike mistake, despite being a child, because I was afraid that the Devil would come and ‘take me away’. I remember learning about how abortion was murder, about how being gay was a sin, about how women should submit to their husbands. I didn’t have fond memories of Catholicism, and my beliefs certainly didn’t align with the Church’s teachings so, when I got older, I tried to silently turn my back on it. But that’s hard to do that entirely when it’s an inexplicable part of your culture and upbringing. Undeniably, there were still parts of it that I still found incredibly comforting. Finding out that the Catholic Church had forced my grandmother to work in a Magdalene laundry whilst heavily pregnant, however, and knowing that they profited from stealing and selling her baby felt like the world had ended to me. The knowledge that something that was meant to be so beautiful, so supremely good, could inflict so much evil felt like it could kill me. I knew that I could never set foot in a church ever again.
I hadn’t had contact with my mother for a number of years but following my anger at what had happened to her mother and sister, I emailed her expressing my upset at the evil the Church had inflicted on us. She replied telling me that the Catholic Church built so-called ‘Western Civilisation’, that they provided healthcare and education, that they provided a medium for art, culture and philosophy and that I should read How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilisation by Thomas E Woods. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, responded to our case, simply saying ‘matters were very different in the 1960s’. I cannot begin to understand why no apologies were offered to the women and children who were abused at the hands of the Church, how it can be brushed off with ‘it was a different time’, how somehow Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel makes up for the abuse my family has suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church, or how those directly affected by their evil can be brainwashed to the extent that they defend the institution that inflicted it. I spoke to my dad about this and he told me that he hadn’t felt anything stepping into a church since he found out the monks in charge of his school sexually abused his classmates. I will never understand why Catholics continue to participate in an institution that has spent centuries abusing its power at our expense. My childhood was tough and I can’t help but wonder whether I would have been happier if I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of the inherited pain that stemmed from my grandmother having to keep silent about her abuse, to the extent that the church demanded donations from the victims as if it were they who were the assailant.
My grandmother died in 2001, never breathing word of the abuse she suffered at the hands of the Church. Her baby would have been 40 that year. My grandmother hadn’t seen her since she was 6 weeks old. There are very few figures online about how many mothers were forced into adoption at the hands of the Church. It’s estimated by some to sit at around half a million in this country alone. Many families won’t ever find out that a woman in their family was forced into adoption. I’m lucky that one day, I’ll perhaps get to meet my aunt. But unlike Philomena, I do not forgive the Church. I will never stop being angry at their refusal to acknowledge and apologise for the atrocities that they have committed and I will not rest until the UK government opens an inquiry into forced adoption in mother-and-baby homes.
