The novel The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne opens with such a scene. It’s a novel, i.e, fiction (lest someone miss that point). In a village in 1950s Ireland, a pregnant teenage girl is viciously and publicly denounced by the parish priest during Sunday Mass. He drags her to the altar by her hair, thrashes her verbally, and sends her home immediately to pack her stuff and leave town, never to return. Her parents do not speak up and she leaves the village forever. Slight spoiler Turns out the father of the baby is her uncle, but that has no consequences in the story.The novel is the story of that baby and his coming of age into the present day. It’s a good novel, well-written, beautiful language. You will laugh and you will cry.
Last night, we discussed it at my book club. One of the women, a devout Catholic, said that the scene I’ve described was a literary device, and something like that could never have happened. Her evidence is that **she’s **never seen anyone singled out publicly from the pulpit and humiliated in front of the whole congregation in her 50+ year of going to Mass in the USA.
All of the rest of us found the scene entirely plausible in a tight-knit village in 1950 Ireland where the priest was seen as father figure, leader, and ultimate authority.* God’s mediator, as it were. Frankly, I could see it happening in 1950 and earlier in just about any small town in a wholly Catholic community (or wholly of another religion/denomination) pretty much anywhere in the world. Even the USA.
It **was **a literary device in that it was an excellent way to begin the novel, as you were immediately pulled emotionally into the drama, but I also believe such things could have happened and probably did happen.
What say y’all?
*The author reveals that this priest fathered two children by two different women in two different counties outside his home county. THAT is certainly plausible, and our Catholic colleague conceded that.
There was a long tradition of unwed pregnant women leaving home and living in another town with relatives until the baby was born. A suitable story could be fabricated to avoid any scandal.
There was also boarding houses for unwed mothers.
That only started to change since the 1960’s.
I had a neighbor in the mid 90’s with a young teen daughter. She disappeared one day. Eight months later I saw the neighbors carrying in the baby and taking care of it. The daughter no longer lived there. I saw her visit a few times.
Yup. Ireland had a longstanding tradition of treating young, unwed mothers incredibly poorly, and there was exactly the social stigma you would expect for a society whose culture was closely intertwined with a conservative church.
Do I believe that most priests would do that? No (though a lot more of them would do the equivalent, but quietly and out of the public eye). Do I believe that there are some, in some parishes, who would? Sure.
Did you look at the two posts and the link above yours? The church would not be inclined to waste such a useful income resource as to allow them to go off on their own. Sin and shame are useful in many ways.
The question is not, “would most priests do it?” Of course most priests wouldn’t. I don’t even think many would. Our book club member said no priest would ever do it. And her evidence is that she’s never seen it done. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Yup, and most of her experience would have been with one parish, which might have had as many as three or four different pastors during her time there, plus occasionally visiting other parishes (where it might have happened, just not on a day when she was there). Not nearly enough of a data set to say “it never happens”.
Said book club leader is, according to the OP, from the US, not from Ireland
As a devout Catholic, and someone who likely loves her faith, the idea that a Catholic priest could or would act in that way may well be causing enough cognitive dissonence for her that she simply can’t accept that it would be possible
In Ireland, in the 1950s? Hell, yes. (Source, Irish family and friends)
In the US, in the late 80s I knew a Catholic girl who just disappeared for almost a year. Her family sent her somewhere, and then she came back. It was Not Spoken About. Yes, she had gotten pregnant and they handled it like good Catholics of their time and class. It persisted in the US until fairly late (and may still in some parishes).
She’s a military brat (as am I) and has seen lots of priests in operation. And she’s old enough (50-ish) to remember when “unwed mothers” were shunned and ostracized. What she says could never happen is the public, violent shaming. Maybe not in her lifetime, but prior to that, sure.
And, as several have already noted here – yes, there was shunning and ostracization of unwed young mothers in the U.S. in that era. But, from what I’ve read and seen, what was done to them in Ireland in the time period of that novel was at a completely different level of inhumane behavior, and the Catholic Church was deeply involved in that behavior.
If you haven’t already done so, but you want to learn more, read the Vox link that muldoonthief shared. Read about the Magdalene laundries and the “mother and baby homes” in Ireland. Watch the film Philomena (based on a true story).
I have to say that for a mature woman to sit there and, in all seriousness, declare multiple times that this could never ever happen and that the author made it up as a literary device… well, it left me speechless. I think an option (D) would be in order: “stuck in pathetically naive denial.”
An old parish priest in a rural parish? Sure, I can believe it. Hell, I can believe it happening in the U.S.
A visibly pregnant unmarried woman would have gotten scowls and be ignored at the very least, if she showed up in most Catholic churches in the early 1950s. Maybe after John XXIII became Pope there might have been a little more “Minnesota nice.”
I have a book, To Sleep with the Angels. It’s about the terrible Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Elementary School fire. It killed something like 89 children, mostly third and fourth graders. Three nuns also died.
The book quotes a survivor claiming that some nuns told them God “only took the good ones to be with Him in Heaven.”
Imagine someone telling little kids who went through this that the only reason they’re alive is because they weren’t good enough for God.
I have no trouble believing the OP’s book’s story at all.
I think it could happen, but overall it sounds dramatised to me. For the priest to stop in the middle of mass, walk out into the congregation and start a one-on-one with someone, that’s not my experience of how mass works. Denounce ‘sin’ from the pulpit, sure. Abuse in private, sure. Humiliate, ostracize, send her away, absolutely. I think those themes are being wrapped up and presented in a single scene for convenience and impact.
I’m not a military brat. But I am a Catholic, and I am old enough (older than the poster in question) to remember when umarried pregnant women were hustled out of the public eye one way or another.
The shaming certainly could have happened. I would question the likelihood of the priest in the novel violently dragging a woman to the altar. I really would. That seems unlikely.
