BEATEN FOR BEING LEFT HANDED.

Hi Pat, I was born in the sixties, I am left handed and was forced to write right handed in a catholic run school in the republic of Ireland.

Could I ask for your views and insights into this practice, was it a church policy, state policy or were both church and state complicit.

I reached an agreement with the religious order concerned through mediation and that is fine.

However I have written several times to church and state asking for acknowledgement and apology for failing in their duty of care to protect me from such abuse,

I am not seeking compensation from either. I have received unsatisfactory replies from the state, I believe Archbishop Eamon Martin has not been at all helpful or indeed very truthful, and Bishop Brendan Kelly hasn’t had the courtesy to even acknowledge my existence.

To be very honest with you, I am writing to you in the hope that you may have knowledge of this practice which could potentially shame both church and at the time, the Fianna Fail governed state into apologising to me and I believe thousands like me for the past failings of their predecessors.

THE. BIBLE AND LEFT HANDEDNESS

“Jesus sits at God’s right side. God’s left hand, however, is the hand of judgement. The Archangel Gabriel is sometimes called “God’s left hand”, sits at God’s left side, and is one of six angels of death. Those who fall from favor with God are sent to left, as described in Matthew 25: 32–33, in which sheep represent the righteous and goats represent the fallen: “And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left.” In 19th-century Europe, homosexuals were referred to as “left-handed”. In Protestant-majority parts of the United Kingdom, Catholics were called “left-footers”, and vice versa in Catholic-majority parts of Ireland and Irish America. Black magic is sometimes referred to as the “left-hand path”, which is strongly associated with Satanism.”

THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Being a leftie has a genetic component, is linked to better verbal skills and is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study published in the journal Brain.

STUDY REFERRED TO

Ninety per cent of the human population has been right-handed since the Paleolithic, yet the brain signature and genetic basis of handedness remain poorly characterized.

Here, we correlated brain imaging phenotypes from ∼9000 UK Biobank participants with handedness, and with loci found significantly associated with handedness after we performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in ∼400 000 of these participants.

Our imaging–handedness analysis revealed an increase in functional connectivity between left and right language networks in left-handers. GWAS of handedness uncovered four significant loci (rs199512, rs45608532, rs13017199, and rs3094128), three of which are in—or expression quantitative trait loci of—genes encoding proteins involved in brain development and patterning. These included microtubule-related MAP2 and MAPT, as well as WNT3 and MICB, all implicated in the pathogenesis of diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. In particular, with rs199512, we identified a common genetic influence on handedness, psychiatric phenotypes, Parkinson’s disease, and the integrity of white matter tracts connecting the same language-related regions identified in the handedness–imaging analysis. This study has identified in the general population genome-wide significant loci for human handedness in, and expression quantitative trait loci of, genes associated with brain development, microtubules and patterning. We suggest that these genetic variants contribute to neurodevelopmental lateralization of brain organization, which in turn influences both the handedness phenotype and the predisposition to develop certain neurological and psychiatric diseases.

PAT SAYS

My sister was beaten by the Holy Faith nuns in Glasnevin for being left-handed.

It marked her life forever.

Why is it that religion and Roman Catholicism are anti every progressive thing?

Do they want to keep in alavery to them?

I think so.

FOR THOSE WHO SPOTTED ME IN DUBLIN LAST NIGHT 😉