Chapter 6 — Sisters of Mercy

The fact that Sr Bianca was asked to deliver the lecture is evidence that she was highly regarded as a childcare expert, and the lecture expressed an enlightened and progressive view of childcare in the 1950s. Sr Bianca knew how a good institution should be run, and her lecture provides a standard against which Goldenbridge and other Sisters of Mercy industrial schools may be judged. Moreover, these progressive views demonstrated the principles that could have been inculcated in generations of carers, if training had been provided, with potentially dramatic consequences for children in care.

Impact of vows on institutional care

In May 2006, the Sisters of Mercy submitted a document entitled ‘The Influence of Religious Values and/or Religious Life of the Sisters of Mercy on the Management of Industrial Schools and on Aspects of the Care of the Children’. In this document, the Sisters explored the ways in which their religious vows affected the care they gave to children in their institutions, and it arose out of testimony at the oral hearings, particularly relating to the way in which individual Sisters interacted with the hierarchy in the Congregation and with the children in care.

The Congregation accepted that these religious values and ways of life ‘must have influenced the way in which the schools were run’.

Sisters of Mercy take the three vows common to most religious communities – of poverty, chastity and obedience – and they also take a fourth: to serve the poor, sick, and uneducated. In addition to these formal obligations, other aspects of religious life that were highly valued included prayer, routine, simplicity, silence and work. The Congregation gave examples of how these religious values might have had a negative impact on the way industrial schools were run: The strict routine of prayer followed by Sisters meant that during regular identifiable periods, the children were exclusively in the care of lay staff and it also had the consequence of a regime of strict religious observance being imposed on the children. The importance of routine also manifested itself in everyday activities with Sisters following a strict daily routine. ‘The daily routine of adherence to times for prayer, meals, work or recreation was sacrosanct’. Sisters would have expected the children to follow the same routine, with early rising, Mass, chores, special times for meals and recreation and the Congregation accepted that this ‘could have been experienced as harsh and demanding’. The emphasis on silence as a means of focusing attention on ‘God and the things of God’ had a significant impact on the manner in which individual Sisters interacted with each other and with the children. This could have had the effect of reducing the communication of information about children between Sisters, or Sisters and staff, to a ‘strictly “need to know” basis’. Work played a large role in religious observance: Working hard was viewed as generous, obedient and self-giving. The underpinning theology of the time held that grace would supply for what nature failed to offer. It was not expected or customary that a Sister would complain in any way about the task to which she had been assigned. To do so would be seen as not merely a sign of personal failing, but of inability to cope with the challenges of religious life.

The Congregation stated: The negative aspect was, perhaps, that leisure activities were circumscribed and everyone was caught up in a system where rest, unstructured relaxation and variety were seen as luxuries rather than necessities.

It also said that ‘A life of simplicity and sometimes frugality was valued as an outward expression of the vow of Poverty’. All Sisters pooled their salaries, and they were ‘directed in the main towards the works of mercy engaged in by the Sisters’.

Many Sisters spoke in evidence about the expectation that they would not show affection to the children in care. The Congregation said: The question of the reluctance to show any physical affection for the children found its roots in a positive understanding of caring for all children equally and of not favouring one child over the other.

This desire to treat all equally might have led to children seeing the Sisters as aloof or uncaring, but it would be: ... a grave distortion to see the absence of the overt expression of physical affection for the children as some kind of innate personal failing on the part of each Sister, related in some obscure way, to her choice of a life of celibacy rather than a choice of marriage and motherhood.

Many Sisters spoke about the impact of the vow of obedience.

Chapter VII of the 1926 edition of the Rule and Constitutions dealt with the vow of obedience. It provided: 28. The Sisters are always to bear in mind, that by the Vow of Obedience they have forever renounced their own will, and resigned it to the direction of their Superiors. They are to obey the Mother Superior, as holding her authority from God, rather through love than from servile fear. They shall love and respect her as their mother. Without her permission they shall not perform public penances. 29. They are to execute, without hesitation, all the directions of the Mother Superior; whether in matters of great or little moment, agreeable or disagreeable. They shall never murmur, but with humility and spiritual joy carry the sweet yoke of Jesus Christ. They shall not absent themselves from the Common Exercises without her leave, except in a case of pressing urgency and if they cannot then have access to her, they shall make known to her the reason of their absence at the earliest opportunity. They shall obey the call of the bell as the voice of God.

Sr Margaret Casey discussed the operation of the vow of Obedience during the Phase III hearing into Newtownforbes: I suppose back in those years the Sister would have been assigned to a job under obedience and that obviously would have impacted on the Institution and her role in it, because sometimes then it meant, and this would have been borne out in the Industrial School, that they could have ended up in a particular Ministry as, say, some of the Resident Managers, that they were there for quite a long time, 30 years and more. But it would have been true, as well, that out of the obedience that it wouldn’t have been the accepted or the norm for somebody to complain to the person in authority about how the place was being run, because to do so would have been seen not merely as a kind of personal failing but it would also have shown that in some way that their inability to cope with the challenges of religious life.

One Sister expressed her dissatisfaction with the hierarchical nature of Newtownforbes. She said that the junior Sisters had no say in the Community. ‘It was ruled, it was governed from the top, just a select few, that’s all’, and the junior Sisters were required to follow ‘blindly and dumbly’. She was unhappy with this situation because the people who were governing the Industrial School, the Mother Superior, the Mother Assistant, the Bursar and the Novice Mistress, had little to do with the Industrial School. ‘They were the elite. You had the elite and you had the everyday folk’. This management structure inhibited her ability to speak out about the deficiencies she saw around her.

The Cussen Report

When the Cussen Report was published in 1936, the Sisters of Mercy had responsibility for 26 industrial schools, 22 of them for girls, three for junior boys, and one was a mixed school for junior boys and girls. The leading position held by the Congregation in the Irish industrial school system is illustrated by comparison with the Christian Brothers, who had six industrial schools, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and the Sisters of Charity who each had five schools, the Presentation Sisters who had two schools, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge and the Sisters of St Louis who had one each.

Despite their importance in the industrial school system, the Sisters of Mercy were not consulted by the Cussen Commission in the course of its work. Unlike the Christian Brothers or the Oblate Fathers, they were not issued a special invitation by the Commission to give evidence; and the absence of any member of the Congregation from the list of witnesses at Appendix A of the Report implies that they did not respond to the advertisement of the Commission requesting assistance in its work.

It is not known why such a large and influential body in this area did not make a submission to the Cussen Commission. Although there was no overall authority for the Congregation at that time, the Sisters of Mercy had in Carysfort a teacher training college that was attended by Sisters of Mercy from all over Ireland. The Sisters of Mercy could, accordingly, have made a contribution to the work of the Commission.