I know I am taking everyone O/T, but my father was brutalized at home as well by his off the boat from Ireland family who believed clergy was to be respected and revered regardless of their behavior. The parish priest, to their minds, was one step under God.
These were hard drinking mean people. When my dad was 13 he rescued his mother from yet another brutal beating at the hands of HIS father by holding a butcher knife to his father's throat. But my grand mother was just as bad. My uncle ran away at 15 and joined the Navy.
In any case, coming home with black eyes etc from school was likely to invoke a second round of abuse from his family....
I'm not here to defend the Church. I believe I have condemned the hierarchy and formal bureaucracy in the strongest possible terms above.
But just to give this conversation some context, I think it should be noted that during the periods of much of the physical (as opposed to sexual) abuse, public schools also allowed corporate punishment and some students were beaten severely with some frequency.
Heck, although I wasn't much of a troublemaker in school, I can remember when public school principals quite famously kept paddles in their offices and weren't afraid to use them! (Yes, I realize I have now dated myself.)
ETA: my own parents occasionally exacted punishments that would now result in calls to Child Protective Services. Yet I remember distinctly thinking how lucky I was they weren't as violent as the parents of some of my friends! (I'm talking about the 50s and 60s here.)
