"Bodies of "hundreds" of children buried

in mass grave" the headline read. It was a story about a find in St Mary's Cemetery in Lanark, Scotland.
People pounced and immediately started to say what dreadful people the nuns who had been responsible for the children must have been.
Were they really dreadful people? A little thought might have caused people to at least hesitate before writing something on social media.
Smyllum Park Orphanage apparently opened in 1864 and closed in 1981. During that time 11,600 children passed through the orphanage. Most of the deaths occurred  up to about 1930 - look at the health and social conditions from 1864 to 1930. Look at the conditions the children came from.
I don't doubt that some abuse occurred during that time. And yes, nuns are human. I know some. They aren't saints. The nuns I know are good people and the abuse of a child would cause them deep distress but those of them who have taught would no doubt have smacked a child forty or fifty years ago. That is the way things were done then - and not just by nuns. If that sort of behaviour is abusive then I was severely abused because "discipline" from one of my teachers left me with bruises. (I was, sin of sins, writing left handed.) I don't condone it but, to read some of the comments, you would think all nuns were involved, that none of them were kind or caring, and that nobody else ever abused a child.
Children were sent to those places for any variety of reasons and abuse was one of them. They were also orphaned or their parents simply could not afford to care for them. 
Illness went through orphanages like wildfire. The children often arrived in a very poor state of health. Diseases like measles, rubella and whooping cough - and more - would spread rapidly. When undernourished children who were already prone to things like  bronchitis caught influenza there was little hope for many of them. Most of the deaths recorded are for things like TB, pneumonia and pleurisy but all those other things were also an ever present danger.
Nuns didn't, as some have tried to suggest, deliberately try and deny children help. They were fighting poverty as well as disease. The orphanages were often overcrowded and food, clothing, warmth and more were in short supply. They didn't have time to give children the love they so desperately needed either.
 The Catholic church has come under a great deal of scrutiny in recent years and under a great deal of criticism because of that scrutiny. Much of it is deserved but there is also much which is not.
I am not a Catholic but it concerns me that there has  been so little good said about people who tried to do good - or, at very least, what they honestly believed to be right.
There was a Catholic orphanage near the home of my paternal grandparents. My grandfather, a devout Presbyterian and Elder of the church for many years, would buy and deliver cases of fruit to the orphanage. Unlike many other people he was aware that there was not enough money to feed the children properly. He knew that the fruit he delivered was only about enough for one piece each. He would visit clients in the hills behind - where the fruit was grown - and come back with a box each time. 
I know he didn't think of it as any form of social service or in any way a gift to the Catholic church. All he saw were children who needed food.
And that food meant something. Years later I gave a talk to a group of women, some of whom had been at the orphanage and one woman told me suddenly (in the middle of my talk) "I know who you are! Your grandfather was responsible for the first orange I ever ate." She must surely have eaten many oranges since then but that first orange stayed in her memory even though she would never have met my grandfather.
I wonder what would happen if there were the same orphanages now? Would the children get fruit? They probably would. If it was supplied by people like my grandfather - who would simply leave it at the door, ring the bell and then walk rapidly off before he could even be thanked - then I wonder what people would make of him. I suspect it wouldn't be kind. People would question why he was doing it.
I think one of the problems too is that people have questioned why the nuns were doing what they were doing. Our friend P.... has said that she was "excited" the day she entered her order - even though she never expected to go home again. The Senior Cat finds that impossible to comprehend and I find it very, very difficult. It makes me wonder though whether some of those who are so ready to criticise just simply don't understand. Do they really believe that the deaths of the children meant nothing at all to the nuns who were caring for them? I don't believe they didn't care.