Nuns and the healthcare system

Sir, – Dr Eddie Molloy surely misses the point in his letter of May 20th. He seems to single out the nuns who happened to be nurses as being courageous – but it must be asked why he thought not to mention the many lay nurses with whom he must have worked as being any more ( or indeed any less) courageous than the nuns.

After all, it was the lay nurses who formed the bulk of the healthcare workforce both in Ireland and overseas and yet were restricted in both their nursing practice and also their professional promotion by those who strove for whatever reasons – laudable or otherwise – to impose their own ethics on others by establishing a religious stranglehold on healthcare.

Whether this was a means to an end or an end to a means will of course continue to be debated.

This was not necessarily restricted to hospitals under the control of the Catholic Church. I remember in the 1970s visiting patients in the excellently run Victoria Hospital in Cork, where to reach the rank of ward sister and above you had to be a Protestant.

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The care of the sick is of itself a noble and courageous task wherever in the world it is carried out and irrespective of the creed or rank of the provider, and it seems to me to be quite invidious to label some of those who undertake such work as worthier than others. – Yours, etc,

MIKE LAWLOR,

London.

Sir, – Unfortunately the debate about the role of religious orders of sisters in Irish past and contemporary society has turned into a “you’re either with us or against us” confrontation.

It cannot be denied that orders of sisters have been involved in the unjust and awful treatment of marginalised women and their children.

The transfer of the National Maternity Hospital to the St Vincent’s hospital site has further embroiled another women’s religious order in further social and political controversy.

The main reason that these women religious became involved in so many pressing social issues was that the State abdicated its constitutional duty to uphold and protect the rights of citizens who were living on the margins of our society and these religious orders allowed themselves to become organs of the State. Ironically these women orders were founded by women of exceptional courage who promoted radical social change, especially for the most marginalised in society. It is to these origins that so many of these women religious are now seeking to return.

Hopefully these reformed women religious orders have learned from the past to separate themselves from being enmeshed with status quo State bodies and become radical and prophetical voices for social justice in our contemporary society. – Yours, etc,

BRENDAN BUTLER,

Malahide,

Co Dublin.