Nuns ‘vilified’ but afraid to challenge unjust portrayal, say Irish priests

Emily Watson played a villainous nun in Small Things Like These, released in November.

Fr Tony Flannery said films and media were “zeroing in on one aspect of the truth, and presenting it as if it was the last word, the full truth, the total story”.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) in Ireland said Religious Sisters are afraid to make their voices heard and challenge the portrayals of them in the media and films knowing the “abuse that would be showered on them from many quarters”.  

In a statement this week, the priests’ group said they were speaking out in protest at the way nuns are being portrayed. “We are not suggesting any cover up of abuse, but we look for balance, fairness and perspective in the presentation of the stories.”

Sisters who are still alive are mainly elderly women, the ACP said. “We know them and the hurt they experience by this portrayal. The reality is that most have lived quiet, hard-working lives with a minimum of financial reward. In the current atmosphere they are afraid to make their voices heard.”

One of the co-founders of the ACP, Fr Tony Flannery, told The Tablet that the priests had been thinking about the issue for a long time.

“I suppose hoping that someone in an official position in the Irish Church would say something about it. In the face of silence from those quarters, and the fact that nuns are now too old and too fearful to go public, we decided to speak out,” the Redemptorist said.

Referring to the recent film Small Things like These, starring Cillian Murphy, released in November and based on the novel of the same name by Claire Keegan, Fr Flannery said it may have been “a trigger” for the statement.

However, he added that it was only one of many portrayals of nuns in film and media going back over thirty years “that we felt were unfair and unbalanced, based on fictional stories, fiction that was certainly based on fact but zeroing in on one aspect of the truth, and presenting it as if it was the last word, the full truth, the total story. There were many examples of that.”

Referring to actor Cillian Murphy’s description of the 1980s as the “dark ages”, Fr Flannery said he remembered nuns in the 1980s: “They were young, full of life, excited by the changes of Vatican ll, and way more liberal and open-minded than the priests. Now they are terrified to speak out – I don’t blame them in the present climate in this country.”

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He also recalled that when he was editing Responding to the Ryan Report (Columba Press 2009) he spoke to many nuns who were hurt and angry by their portrayal in the report, but none of them was willing to write an article for the book. 

“One of these women had, with her older colleagues, actively participated in implementing, as far as physical structures allowed, the Kennedy Report,” a report on Ireland’s reformatory and industrial schools, published in 1970, which marked the beginning of major changes in the Irish childcare system.

“She was the mother figure who dressed some of the residents on their wedding morning. In 2009, she saw herself, and others like her, being portrayed as an uncaring, harsh bully.”

 

In their statement, the ACP said that for the past two centuries in Ireland nuns educated people in their schools, and cared for people in hospitals, at a time when the state was either unwilling or unable to provide such services. 

“Yes, they operated industrial schools, orphanages and mother and baby homes and the values under which such institutions operated clearly failed in many circumstances to reflect those of the Gospel.”

The ACP said it was important that people who have suffered institutional abuse should be given whatever help is necessary for their possible recovery from the trauma of their experience.

But they also highlighted that many people were lifted out of poverty and lived successful lives because of the education provided by the religious women. “Many people also lived longer and healthier lives as a result of the care they administered.” 

Stressing that “hindsight alters perspective”, the ACP said that many Religious “regret that their orders ever took on the state’s job of running orphanages or got involved in providing services to the single pregnant women whom no one wanted to help and many of whose families saw them as objects of shame and profound embarrassment”. 

They said the cultural context of the times is rarely, if ever, mentioned. 

“Society judges the past harshly while media outlets seek to outdo each other in condemnation. Religious sisters are vilified: a harsh hard-faced nun, dressed in traditional habit, has become the standard media image of all nuns. It is false and unjust.”