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Chapter 6 — Christian Brothers

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Impact of religious life on institutional care

108

A consultant psychiatrist who regularly visited Artane in the 1960s told the Committee: On average my general impression, well; with the greatest respect to everybody, it was a daunting institution. The abiding impression I had was that during the school hours my biding impression was the silence. The silence. So you had all these children, young boys, and virtually not a sound.

109

In his evidence to the Committee, he said, ‘it was one of an intimidatory type of silence’.

110

Numerous complainants spoke of the insistence on silence in the daily tasks of eating and preparing for bed. Silence was a rule strictly adhered to in everyday life. Whistles were used in some cases to signal to the children when they were to move from one activity to the next.

111

There were several warnings in the Visitation Reports referring to the neglect of the rule of silence in the school.

112

The adherence by the Christian Brothers to their vows, and the monitoring of such adherence by senior Brothers, led to the application of these principles to the day-to-day care of the children. The virtues of obedience, chastity and hard work had to be inculcated in the children for the good of their souls, and for the good of society as a whole.

113

Obedience and discipline were part of the life of the institutions. The daily timetable provided the framework for a closely controlled and well-orchestrated routine. The whole system was regimented, but Artane with its large numbers was particularly so.

114

The regimentation and discipline were needed not just to keep order: it was, the Christian Brothers believed, a necessary lesson to be learned by boys who had never been properly controlled by their parents.

115

There were, however, doubts within the Congregation about the efficacy of the industrial school regime as the best way to prepare children to become upright and decent citizens in a Christian society. These reservations were sometimes expressed in Visitation Reports but were not acted upon by the authorities.

116

This concern, that the needs of the boys were not being met by the school, clashed with the philosophy of the Congregation and the way of life they advocated for themselves. The boys needed to be prepared for the day ‘when they pass through Artane gates into the wide world’, but the Brothers needed to keep their minds on the spiritual way of life and withdraw from that wide world.

117

The importance of all the vows taken by the Brothers was emphasised in a circular letter dated 3rd October 1958 from the Superior General to each Christian Brothers’ Community. The Superior General wrote: It is evident that in many of the houses of our Province the rule of silence is not being well observed. The observance of silence has always been regarded as essential to the Religious Life ... Silence is necessary for the practice of recollection without which there can be no spirit of prayer or true holiness of life... The cause of these defections [from the Brothers] is to be found in the loss of the religious spirit due to such secularizing influences as too great intercourse with externs, frequenting places of public resort and undue preoccupation with the news of the day. Our rule warns us against the danger to vocation of holding too great intercourse with externs. The sentiments and outlook of people who live in the world are, of necessity, very different from those of religious. A Brother who frequents the company of seculars either by visiting them in their homes or by holding long and unnecessary conversations with teachers, parents, or domestics will be in danger of imbibing the spirit of the world and losing his esteem for his vocation ... Too great preoccupation with the newspaper or with radio programmes can also be a cause of the loss of the religious spirit by diverting attention from the affairs of the soul and diminishing interest in the spiritual life.

118

These are values for a spiritual life of religious meditation, but they do not form a basis for training young boys to enter the outside world.

119

To counteract the attraction of the outside world the Brothers lived a life of religious and secular study. It was not surprising that they applied the same way of life to the boys in their care. Through moral teaching, religious observance and hard work in the school and in the workshops, they sought to change and reform the children. Young boys from poor families were confronted with this regime, and found it arduous. It not merely clashed with the culture from which they came, but it placed them in an all-male world that did not meet the emotional and developmental needs of children and adolescents.

120

The strict regime, the routine that took away all initiative and placed all its emphasis on following orders, led to the boys becoming institutionalised. Many left to join the army, or drifted into other institutionalised occupations, and far too many ended up in institutions like prisons or in psychiatric care.

121

A recurrent complaint made by Brothers in their evidence to the Committee and found in the documentation was the unequal division of work.

122

In his evidence at the public hearing into Letterfrack during Phase I, Br Gibson stated: You see the Brothers who were teaching in the school, who were mainly the young Brothers, they were with the boys almost 24 hours a day; in other words, from 6:00 to 10:00 at night. They would have had very little free time during that period. They slept then in small bedrooms at the end of one of the dormitories. Often those rooms were very simple. There wasn’t heating for a lot of the time. That was their place of living and then they went up to the house for a short period of recreation at night-time, but effectively speaking they were on the job seven days a week.


Footnotes
  1. The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, commonly known as the Pope.
  2. B. Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland. The Christian Brothers and the Development of Nationalism, 1838–1921 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), p 22.
  3. There are currently 122 schools in the Christian Brother network in Ireland, according to the Marino Institute of Education website.
  4. Constitutions (1923).
  5. The general assembly of representatives from the Congregation of the Christian Brothers.
  6. Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System Report, 1936 (the Cussen Report) (Dublin: Stationery Office).
  7. A Visitor was a Congregational Inspector who reported back to the leadership of the Congregation. See Supervision/Visitations below.
  8. An association where the main object is the well-being and improvement of a different group of persons, such as men, women and children, or more specially, priests, youths, church helpers, prisoners, immigrants, nurses, married people, couples, etc.
  9. Cn 653.
  10. You shall not commit adultery.
  11. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife.
  12. Congregation of the Christian Brothers 1962, Chapter VIII ‘Chastity’, p 23 section 81.
  13. Const 8 of the 1923 Constitutions.
  14. Const 97 of the 1923 Constitutions.
  15. Congregation of the Christian Brothers 1962, Chapter XIII ‘Mortifications & Humilitations’, p 30 section 128.
  16. The Cussen Report 1936 – Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System, para 74.
  17. This is a pseudonym.
  18. There were three programmes broadcast by RTE in 1999 in the ‘States of Fear’ series: ‘Industrial Schools and Reformatories from the 1940s-1980s’, ‘The Legacy of Industrial Schools’, and ‘Sick and Disabled Children in Institutions’.
  19. Suffer the Little Children, by Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan, 1999, New Island.
  20. O’Brien Institute.
  21. This is a pseudonym.
  22. P394 Circular Letters 1821–1930
  23. Department of Education Annual Report 1925/1926.
  24. Report of the Department of Education for the School Years 1925–26–27 and the Financial and Administrative Year 1926–1927, p 83.
  25. Report of the Department of Education for the School Year 1924–1925 and the Financial and Administrative Years 1924–25–26, p 84.
  26. Rules and Regulations for the Certified Industrial Schools in Saorstát Éireann Approved by the Minister of Education under the 54th Section of the Act, 8 Edw VII., Ch 67, clauses 12 and 13 (see DES chapter).
  27. Rules and Regulations for the Certified Industrial Schools in Saorstát Éireann Approved by the Minister of Education under the Children Act, 1908.
  28. The Department submit this wording ‘education provision’ in other words the internal national school.
  29. Section 24 of The Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 provided:
  30. the rule of law under which teachers are immune from criminal liability in respect of physical chastisement of pupils is hereby abolished.
  31. With the removal of this immunity, teachers are now subject to section 2(1) of the 1997 Act which provides that:
  32. a person shall be guilty of the offence of assault, who without lawful excuse, intentionally or recklessly, directly or indirectly applies force to and causes an impact on the body of another.Teachers who physically chastise pupils may now be guilty of an offence and liable to 12 months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of £1,500.
  33. This is a pseudonym.