I definitely prefer E to W. I somehow made it back from France with no discernible jet lag, but the redeyes from the west coast always kill me. I even went to see 50/50 on the way home from the airport, AIFG.

However, when we are talking about several thousand babies, nevermind 300,000 babies, I think that is an institutional failing and not one that can simply be attributed to a handful of nurses, doctors, priests and nuns.

It is absolutely an institutional failing. Though "failing" suggests a sin of omission, or oversight rather than commission. And I believe the Spanish Catholic Church knew exactly what it was doing, and protected and promoted this trafficking. It's not like they'd ever have any reason to question their monopoly on the right-behavior.

I'm going to have to slot this after the institutional practice of protecting and shuffling around pedophile priests from parish to parish, and maybe after the Magdalene Sisters which still gets me crazy angry.

Though I have to say, sexually abusing children, stealing babies and enslaving wayward girls is quite a trifecta of evil.

Really, Catholic Church? Institutional baby trafficking?

Too much WTF to really comprehend.

I don't think the "a few bad apples" defense is going to work for this.

And I believe the Spanish Catholic Church knew exactly what it was doing, and protected and promoted this trafficking.

It appears to intersect with the victory of the fascists--there's a thing where the winners take babies away from the losers, as if being on the losing side of a civil war means you don't deserve to have children. Happened under Pinochet, too. Disgusting.

The thing that gets me is that this went all the way into the '80s! the 1980s! You'd think this kind of thing would be in the 1880s or during WWII, but no.

But it is true, after protecting pedophile priests, why shouldn't there be other scandals lurking?

Maybe things will change if bishops start going to jail.

They need to be excommunicated and in prison. Period.

as if being on the losing side of a civil war means you don't deserve to have children.

Well it's a two-fer. It both punishes the losers in the most intimate way possible, and ensures that the children are raised into the right way of thinking.

::shudder::

Scary, what people can do to other people. I mean, I'm one of those pollyannas who thinks people are basically good, but really "good" can be transformed into evil all to easily.

The thing that gets me is that this went all the way into the '80s!

So did the Catholic run Magdalene Asylums in Ireland. Girls who had children out of wedlock, or were promiscuous, or even simply seen as promiscuous were sent there and forced to work in laundries for no wages. It wasn't a prison term - they weren't allowed to leave. They could spend their entire lives there for fucking around as a teenager. Subjected to physical abuse and forced labor with no chance of exit.

The state was completely complicit in that institution with the Catholic Church, as judges sent girls there for petty crimes, and the state had contracts with the laundries.

2009 Report on the abusive atmosphere in Catholic reformatories (including Magadalenes) as recounted in the NY Times.

In a litany that sounds as if it comes from the records of a P.O.W. camp, the report chronicles some of the forms of physical abuse suffered in the boys’ schools:

“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”

Girls were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time, the report said, in “dormitories, schools, motor vehicles, bathrooms, staff bedrooms, churches, sacristies, fields, parlors, the residences of clergy, holiday locations and while with godparents and employers.”

The Vatican had no response.