A Catholic-School Veteran Tells All

I fit into the category you speak of.... Catholic School for 9 years. Yes, we all have stories to tell.
a kid getting whacked over the nuckles with a rubber tipped pointer for not folding his hands on the desk. The pointer broke, and HE had to pay for it!!
Making kids kneel in a tray of uncooked Navy Beans, with pants rolled up above the knee, and say the rosary for misbehaving.
Girls who wore a little make up being taken to the girls room and faces washed with a scrubbing brush.
Being slapped on the face, otherwise hit and abused for minor infractions.
I was an altar boy. My first mass was one in the Convent at 6:45AM. My partner and I forgot to do a couple things because we were so nervous. We were taken into the Mother Superior's office and scolded and threatened never to make a mistake again. We didn't!!!
Our Navy Blue uniform pants not being exactly the same color as those bought from their supplier, and being told never to wear them to school again. My parents had to buy new from the school.
Being cracked on the nuckles with a ruler when our cursive penmanship wasn't just perfect, and having to do the whole thing over again.
Being told never to associate with the "Publics" (the kids who were Catholic, but went to public school, because they were for some reason "bad people".
Not kneeling straight as an arrow during the Sunday Mass that the students had to attend with their Nun teacher.
aaahhh... yes, we all have our stories.... lovely memories of the fear that was instilled into Catholic kids early in life.
I could also talk about the priests and Monsignor who molested kids on the intramural basket ball team, and the altar boys, but this would get far too long.

I remember very well the scourgae pof the nuns. My story goes like this. In second grade nearing the end of the school day I was raising my hand at a time when Sister Do not Intererrupt was talking. I had a severe pain in my gut and wanted to get up to go to the bathroom. For more than an hour Sister DNI ignored my raised hand. When the school bell rang, I walked to my mom's car (she was a nurse) and told her I was sick. Sure enough, I landed up in the hospital with appendicitis. During my hospital stay, all of the nuns from school visited me. The guilt must have been horrendous. After that, I never had to worry about raising my hand in class.

I remember very well the scourgae pof the nuns. My story goes like this. In second grade nearing the end of the school day I was raising my hand at a time when Sister Do not Intererrupt was talking. I had a severe pain in my gut and wanted to get up to go to the bathroom. For more than an hour Sister DNI ignored my raised hand. When the school bell rang, I walked to my mom's car (she was a nurse) and told her I was sick. Sure enough, I landed up in the hospital with appendicitis. During my hospital stay, all of the nuns from school visited me. The guilt must have been horrendous. After that, I never had to worry about raising my hand in class.

You only touch on the abuse I saw and experienced back then in the period I call "medieval Catholicism." There was a personality type, both nun and priest, who escaped into the safety of the Church life knowing they would not fit into the world, and a small percentage but dangerous percentage had the righteousness and the desire to inflict pain and sexual abuse.

That the Church hierarchy has since flaunted our legal system, not divulged openly that they supported these child molesters and abusers by remaining quiet, shifting them around from school to school, and when confronted openly lied to the public about their duplicity from day one, renders their leadership obscenely corrupt.

The public needs to know, and Catholics need to demand, these criminals be put in jail -- from cardinals and archbishops to parish priests and scholastics in training. Cardinal Mahoney is just one example of hundreds of these predators who flaunt God's law and civil law, and should spend the rest of their lives behind bars for their crimes against the "flock."

What this article touches on ("whining" to our stalwart irishman) is simply the outer layer of perversion that thrived for so many religious deviants at the core. They destroyed lives and families under the trust of being cosidered the Church's special "representatives of God on earth."

I went to Catholic school after the author and was stunned to find out that many of the boys I went to grammer school with in hte 1970s were also hit. I odn't know of any girls who were hit or smacked or had their knuckles rapped. A stern word and the disapproval of a teacher was really all we needed. Today I see a similar double standard in how my son versus my daughters were treated in Catholic School (and not by nuns any more). Why do we yell at and humiliate boys> WHy do we let girls get away with bullying and even violence? GOd made both genders after all....i

I am a Catholic, but have gone to public schools only. However, in all my years of public school education, I have seen a great deal of physical punishment doled out on fellow students. A slap in the face is no fun, but try a large paddle being applied several times to a child's rear end with a back swing that would make Venus Williams proud. The boys were the ones who had to endure this. Some teachers would take the kids outside the classroom to inflict this punishment while others would just do it in front of the horrified class.
Back in the first grade, our protestant teacher would tell us Bible stories and would make us all say the 'Our Father' (this was obviously before the Supreme Court decision). Later on in the day, if anyone made her angry, we would feel her wrath in several ways. Her favorite method was to pick the first grader up by the arms and violently shake the child and scream in the kid's face about what a rotten person he/she was. This dear public education was in Charlotte, NC, and I would trade every second of it for the education you received at the hands of your face slapping, knuckle rapping nuns.

You only touch on the abuse I saw and experienced back then in the period I call "medieval Catholicism." There was a personality type, both nun and priest, who escaped there knowing they would not fit into the world, and they had righteousness and the desire to inflict pain and sexual abuse.

That the Church hierarchy has since flaunted our legal system, not divulged openly that they supported these child molesters by remaining quiet, shifting them around from school to school, and when confronted openly lied to the public about their duplicity from day one, renders their leadership corrupt and obscene.

The public needs to know, and Catholics need to demand, these criminals need to be put in jail, from cardinals, archbishops, and parish priests on down. Cardinal Mahoney is just one example of hundreds of these predators who flaunt God's and civil law, and should spend the rest of their lives behind bars for their crimes against their "flock."

What this article touches on is simply the outer layer of perversion that thrived for so many religious deviants at the core.

David -
Stop your whining. Your generation is filled whining - enough - get over it.

I was a Catholic School attendee from 1968 to 1980. It is an interesting dilemma to consider...martial punishment or no? There are kids today who could really use some time in that institution known as Catholic School. That said, in my day and school system, Catholic School was a place of last resort for a lot of kids who were tossed from Public School for discipline issues. We were a kind of miltary-prep school for the bad kids. I saw a lot of prison candidates come and go, but they were never harshly disciplined and not around for long. The ones who really experienced the spoils of the rod were the regular parishioner offspring who were there for the long haul. They were the ones who were pulled by the side-burns, slapped in the face, trained with the 'board of education' (yes, a real board across the fanny), and who stood by the radiator in their underwear in 1st grade for wetting accidents. Yep, I have seen it all. Like most of life's experiences, it shapes some for the better and some for the worse. I can still remember vividly those post-Menopausal lesbian type nuns that hated the boys because they were...ugh...boys. You were always their target. The interesting part is that they routinely picked on the more quiet ones, as though they were easier targets. Ah yes, great memories.

I find it REALLY amusing the Catholic defenders who never are able to see the other side of their wonderful stories. Every story has two sides, they just choose to only see the one. I had many good times in Catholic School. Why is it that I only remember vividly those acts of cruelty? Maybe because they are the most emblazoned in my brain. Maybe because the effect of the cruelty outweighs the good. Maybe because the writer has a point...and the only point the rest of you have is the one at the top of your head. Wake up.

My experience is like Epiphany. Plenty of knuckle cracks with rulers, plenty of knocks on the head and plenty of dodging or not, erasers. But as will Epiphany, I attended public school during those years.

I attended Catholic schools in the New York area from 5th grade to graduation form HS. I was never slapped. Whacked on the bottom with a leather strap, roughed up by Marist brothers, and thumped in the sternum by a Dominican sister with a knuckle of fossilized bone. BUT I was never slapped.
But somehow I am very thankful for the foundation and insight into life that these teachers provided me with. I am a richer human being because of it.
Thanks for the story. It has some important truths about our treatment of children.

well, all this banter and frusterated discourse has been enough for me.

i will leave with this last comment:

we should never have a need to strike a child anywhere, anytime, for anything. if your an adult you should be able to figure out other means of punishment, PERIOD. and that goes double for "nuns" and religious leaders... when did jesus slap a ruler down on the knuckles of childeren?

I was also on the receiving end of the rod by a couple of child abusers who called themselves teachers. But mine was a decidedly secular experience. I went to public school.

A young boy who lived accross the hall from me was beaten by his father (who was a cop )with a belt for being five minutes late.A friend was beaten by her mother for knocking something over.Parents and some nuns did believe in corporal punishment and it was acceptable.Catholic schools were the same as the rest of society back then .The stress of very large classes had something to do with nuns loosing their temper.Today teachers have assistants .Lets stop pretending Catholic sisters were totally out of the ordinary.The so called "kid stuff" is what causes a class to become out of control and how many parents and teachers today can't relate to wanting to smack the kid who causes the disruption?Poor David Noonan still doent understand..

Great to see an article once again for a "hit job" on the Catholic Church. It must have been only a couple of weeks since the last one in the major media. But as for the author's whining....what about the rest of the nuns you menionted (the majority) that did not use corporal punishment on you? Have you written about them and thanked them in your article for their selfless service to you? I bet not...because that would not make it in Newsweek.

I remember nuns that did use the ruler on myself and my friends with our parent's full permission for our misbehavior. I also know how these nuns would work with us through lunch, after school and on weekends so we could learn our reading and math. I even know of one example where the nuns that taught us found out a family's children were going to school with no breakfest. They would have the 3 children in for breakfest each morning before school, they even hid it from the rest of us to protect them from possible teasing. It was only years later did we find out.