Nobody expects objectivity from The Irish Times when it comes to the abortion issue, or indeed anything that might involve any reference to the Catholic Church, but this embarrassing schoolgirl love letter to the Taoiseach, from Miriam Lord, is especially cringe-inducing.
The political nerds went scurrying for their history books when the Taoiseach uttered a phrase destined for the history books of the future.
“I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a Taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic Taoiseach,” he told the Dáil, invoking the shades of devout leaders past who pledged allegiance to faith first and country second.
On an otherwise uneventful Wednesday morning in Leinster House, Kenny, without any fuss, laid down a milestone in Irish political history.
Furthermore, a Taoiseach stood in the Dáil chamber and called out the despicable behaviour of a small section of Irish society that deems it acceptable to threaten and intimidate elected representatives who do not cleave to their world view.
I wonder what form of threatening and intimidation Miriam Lord is talking about? Threatening to use the vote to punish politicians who cast their vote against the right to life? Isn't that just democracy?
In his speech, the Taoiseach referred to the supposed intimidation tactics that are in use:
“I am now being branded by personnel around the country as being a murderer; that I’m going to have on my soul the death of 20 million babies. I am getting medals, scapulars, plastic foetuses, letters written in blood, telephone calls all over the system, and it’s not confined to me . . .”
One has to wonder why the Taoiseach feels the abortion issue should be the only one in which powerful feelings are not expressed and heated rhetoric used. I often see Socialist Workers Party posters that complain about a "war on the poor". Is that equivalent to accusing Mr. Kenny of being a war criminal?
When the Savita Halapannavar tragedy occurred, there were many demonstrations which blamed Irish abortion laws for the death of the unfortunate woman. Just look at this article from the Guardian, and the accompanying picture of a woman holding a placard which reads: "Her blood is on your hands". What's the difference? (By the way, I saw no such placards at Pro-Life rallies.)
I'm interested, too, in the litany of harassment of which Mr. Kenny complains. "I'm getting medals, scapulars, plastic foetuses, letters written in blood..." Is sending somebody a medal or a scapular an objectionable act? Is making a telephone call to an elected representative an act of intolerable aggression? If Mr. Kenny had to fill out his list with such feeble examples, my suspicion is that this supposed campaign of intimidation is greatly exaggerated.
Showing posts with label Irish politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish politics. Show all posts
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Home Rule is Rome Rule?
Republic of Ireland, 1980s: Garret Fitzgerald launches a so-called "constitutional crusade" to liberalise the Republic's laws on divorce and contraception, partly to make the prospect of a united Ireland more attractive to Protestant Unionists.
Belfast, July 2012: Belfast City Council becomes the first local authority in Ireland to support same-sex marriage. Ulster Unionists walk out before the vote, while all 21 Sinn Féin and SDLP councillors-- parties traditionally considered "Catholic" as well as nationalist-- supported the motion.
Isn't it time the term "Catholic" was dropped entirely from discussions of the ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland?
Belfast, July 2012: Belfast City Council becomes the first local authority in Ireland to support same-sex marriage. Ulster Unionists walk out before the vote, while all 21 Sinn Féin and SDLP councillors-- parties traditionally considered "Catholic" as well as nationalist-- supported the motion.
Isn't it time the term "Catholic" was dropped entirely from discussions of the ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland?
Friday, July 20, 2012
"Progress" Trumps Democracy Every Time
There are, remarkably, two fine examples in the opinion pages of today's Irish Times of the contempt with which the progressive mindset views freedom of conscience.
In a letter to the editor, Jessica Copley of Knocklyon writes:
"Sir, – Patrick G Burke suggests (July 18th) that “There appears to be a drive to legalise same-sex marriage without the democratic consultation of a constitutional referendum.” It should be pointed out that democracy is predicated on the right of all citizens to equality before the law. Giving the majority an opportunity to decide on whether a minority should be afforded equal rights is not democracy. It is tyranny. Yours, etc."
Of course, you are then left with the question of who in fact decides what constitutes equal rights, or what contitutes a minority in the relevant sense. These decisions, in the opinion of Ms. Copley and many others, should be taken out of the peoples' hands. Who will make them for us?
(The letter printed immediately underneath this letter is by your humble servant. Embarrassingly, I used the term "Pre-Columbine America" instead of "Pre-Columbian America". I wrote to the Irish Times to correct myself soon after sending it, but they must not have noticed the correction.)
In a pro-abortion opinion piece on the opposite page, two female Labour councillors write:
"FINE GAEL has long-established form in delaying progressive social change while in government by failing to impose a whip on key issues. We are potentially faced with a repeat performance in relation to legislation arising out of the X Case."
In other words, freedom of conscience is a good thing as long as it doesn't clash with progressive dogma.
Later on in the article, they try to argue that this is not a matter of conscience, simply a matter of applying the constitution. They even, laughably, argue that withdrawing the whip from a vote on legislating for the X Case legislation is itself anti-democratic. Of course, the Irish people have never voted for abortion to be introduced in ireland under any circumstances.
Progressives seem to believe that democracy is all very well, but that the big moral issues should be kept out of the electorates' dirty hands-- just as secularists (often the same people) believe that freedom of religion is all very well, as long as it's kept indoors and doesn't frighten the horses.
In a letter to the editor, Jessica Copley of Knocklyon writes:
"Sir, – Patrick G Burke suggests (July 18th) that “There appears to be a drive to legalise same-sex marriage without the democratic consultation of a constitutional referendum.” It should be pointed out that democracy is predicated on the right of all citizens to equality before the law. Giving the majority an opportunity to decide on whether a minority should be afforded equal rights is not democracy. It is tyranny. Yours, etc."
Of course, you are then left with the question of who in fact decides what constitutes equal rights, or what contitutes a minority in the relevant sense. These decisions, in the opinion of Ms. Copley and many others, should be taken out of the peoples' hands. Who will make them for us?
(The letter printed immediately underneath this letter is by your humble servant. Embarrassingly, I used the term "Pre-Columbine America" instead of "Pre-Columbian America". I wrote to the Irish Times to correct myself soon after sending it, but they must not have noticed the correction.)
In a pro-abortion opinion piece on the opposite page, two female Labour councillors write:
"FINE GAEL has long-established form in delaying progressive social change while in government by failing to impose a whip on key issues. We are potentially faced with a repeat performance in relation to legislation arising out of the X Case."
In other words, freedom of conscience is a good thing as long as it doesn't clash with progressive dogma.
Later on in the article, they try to argue that this is not a matter of conscience, simply a matter of applying the constitution. They even, laughably, argue that withdrawing the whip from a vote on legislating for the X Case legislation is itself anti-democratic. Of course, the Irish people have never voted for abortion to be introduced in ireland under any circumstances.
Progressives seem to believe that democracy is all very well, but that the big moral issues should be kept out of the electorates' dirty hands-- just as secularists (often the same people) believe that freedom of religion is all very well, as long as it's kept indoors and doesn't frighten the horses.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
A Not-Very-Critical Review of The End of Irish Catholicism? by Vincent Twomey
The End of Irish Catholicism?
D. Vincent Twomey SVD
Veritas Publications, 2003
The first thing that occurs to me about The End of Irish Catholicism? is that the question in the title is never really answered. The book is more diagnostic than prophetic in nature.
Perhaps this is inevitable. I, for one, have no predictions to make about the future of Irish Catholicism. Of course, as long as there are any practicing Catholics on this island, there will still be an Irish Catholicism of some sort-- and, with such a huge majority having declared themselves Catholic on the recent census, it's hard to see the faith of our fathers going the way of the Irish Elk any time soon.
But will Catholicism survive as a social and cultural force on this island?
It only takes a look around most Sunday or weekday Mass congregations to feel very bleak about this. All too often there are empty pews, and the smattering of worshippers are mostly in their sixties or seventies or beyond. Our priests, too, are mostly well into their twilight years. A decade or two more, and what will become of those congregations? Will church after church have to be sold off? Will Catholics get used to making long treks to the nearest Mass? When journalists in that future Ireland talk about "the church"-- if they talk about any church, that is-- will it still be assumed that they mean the Catholic church?
But it's not all doom and gloom-- in fact, the state of the Church in Ireland seems quite contradictory in many ways. Though many congregations are scanty-- and it has to be remembered that I am writing from a Dublin perspective, and the situation in rural areas is very different-- at other times, churches are packed. St. Teresa's Church in Clarendon Street is often full for Mass, even on weekdays, and there is always a queue for confessions. The Archbishop of Dublin drew a crowd when he came to UCD to celebrate Ash Wednesday Mass this year. The Veritas Catholic shop in Abbey Street seems to do a booming trade. Younger Catholics tend to be more orthodox, and the decline in vocations seems to have levelled off.
The End of Irish Catholicism? attempts to describe how we got where we are now, and to suggest possible measures towards revival.
At the beginning of the book, Dr. Twomey addresses a topic of particular interest to me-- the link between patriotism and religion, nation and faith. He says, "growing up in the Ireland of the 1940s and 1950s, I was certainly aware that part of our self-identity as Irish Catholics was to see ourselves as Christian Jews, God's chosen people, materially weak but spiritually strong, spread diaspora-like throughout the world, ever loyal to the faith of our fathers." He then describes this notion of chosen-ness as being "of dubious theological value", and points out that "the New Israel is not any particular race but is made up of Jews and gentiles, that is, people from all races and nations now united in one faith..."
However, a Christian is not obliged to renounce national feeling, and Dr. Twomey quotes Solzhenitsyn: "Nations are [part of] the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special aspect of divine intention." And the author is himself rather critical of the modern Irish attitude to nationhood: "The very concept of nation, not to mention nationality, seems to have vanished from public discourse, not least due to the 'Troubles' in the North-- we now refer rather disparagingly to 'this island'. In addition, national identity is difficult to reconcile with the vague cosmopolitanism of our new mid-Atlantic identity."
One thing I really like about this book is that Dr. Twomey resists the temptation to caricature the Irish Catholicism of the twentieth century. It has become rather fashionable to do this-- to find the seeds of our current spiritual "recession" in the devotional "Celtic Tiger" of previous generations. I think this is too simple. It is true that the faith of our fathers (and mothers)-- or, more accurately, of our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers-- was often quite naive and ritualistic, focused on popular devotions such as First Fridays and sacramentals like the Miraculous Medal. We often hear that the faith of the Irish had become so complacent and unthinking that it crumbed at the first tides of secularism.
I don't really go along with these criticisms. I think every generation has to answer for itself. Perhaps lots of people went to Mass in the forties, fifties and sixties because it was the done thing. But I am sure that thousands, tens of thousands, went out of genuine religious fervour. Nor is a devotion to sacramentals, pilgrimage and popular devotions a bad thing.
A more plausible explanation for Ireland's crisis of faith comes with Dr. Twomey's description of the post-Vatican II atmosphere. Suddenly, everything seemed to be up in the air. "Things were permitted, like attending services in a Protestant church, which up to then had been strictly forbidden under all kinds of dire penalties...few have pondered the effect it must have had on the majority of priests, many of whom, up to relatively recently, controlled all the strings. The ground had been taken from under them."
An intriguing theory that Dr. Twomey puts forward is that Irish Catholicism had rather more in common with English puritanism than we like to think. Ireland, in comparison with Catholic countries on the continent, had little concept of sacral time and space, of religious festivity, of the cult of saints and martyrs. Dr.Twomey instead posits that traditional Irish Catholicism focused on an intensely moralistic, anti-sensual, anti-sexual piety that he describes as "angelism". This is also a familiar argument from John Waters.
I'm not sure what to make of this, either. Irish Christianity has always had an ascetic, rather sombre flavour to it. In this it is much like Russian Christianity. This seems to me a matter more of tone than of doctrine. Ireland never seemed to fit into the spirit of Belloc's couplet:
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine
There's always laughter and good red wine.
Edward Feser, the Thomistic philosopher, has pointed out that attempting to distill a spirit of Catholic culture is contrary to the very catholicity and universality of our Church-- that Catholicism embraces and consecrates all that is good in every culture. Ireland has its unique gifts and temptations, just as continental forms of Catholicism have their own.
Dr. Twomey calls for a rediscovery of Catholic festivity and community celebration. I wonder about this. My own guess is that religious joy overflows into festivity, and not the other way around. I don't think people come for the parties and stay for the prayer, but vice versa. Of course, Dr. Twomey is not making such a claim himself, but I suspect that this mentality exists elsewhere.
One powerful argument that Dr. Twomey makes is for the recovery of contemplative life: "In Ireland over the past two centuries, most religious orders were engaged in some form of apostolic work, or, as they are called today, active ministeries, such as teaching, nursing, or missionary activites abroad. There was always a core of strict contemplatives, men and women, and indeed most active orders (especially of women) had, before the Council, evolved into semi-contemplative orders with strict enclosure. The initial implementation of the decrees of the Council by the active congregations resulted in the gradual removal of the contemplative dimension almost entirely....good and necessary though these social concerns are, one may well ask: should they be the main focus of our attention for those consecrated by vows to the religious life? Or should men and women religious perhaps be more concerned with testifying to 'mankind's yearning for its heavenly home', as the Council put it?"
I think this is right on the money. As Tennyson wrote, "more things are wrought in prayer than this world dreams of", and the story of Mary and Martha should be a permanent reminder to Christians that we are forever tempted to value bustle and activity over the "direct line" to our Creator. It seems to me that nothing is more radically counter-cultural and (in the best sense) subversive than prayer. Making it a priority is, in itself, an act of renewal, an affirmation of Christian identity.
Besides this, I believe that our culture thirsts for prayer more than for social workers. We can see this in the endless flood of prayer requests that the Poor Clares receive. I see it, also, whenever I visit the UCD church, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. This small (but handsome) church rarely seems to attract more than a handful of worshippers outside Mass times, and is often to be found empty. But the book of prayer intentions by the door seems to be written in almost every day, and usually several times a day. Turning these poignant pages, I always feel I am seeing a different Ireland to the one we see on television and in the media-- an Ireland of sleepless nights and silent rooms and unquenchable spiritual yearning.
Dr. Twomey's book was written in 2003, and I wonder if the author himself would now consider the proposals in his chapter "Beyond Church vs. State" to be at all plausible. "Perhaps, also, the time has come...to consider working towards a concordat between the Catholic Church and the Republic of Ireland that would define more clearly, and anchor in international law, the relationship (and so the authentic separation) between Church and State". The tide now seems to be running in the opposite direction. Dr. Twomey deplores a comment by a recent Minister for Justice "that he would accord the Church's canon law the same status as the rules governing a golf club". Even that seems benign now.
Rather than seeking greater institutional relations between Church and State-- even relations that emphasise Church/State separation-- it seems wiser, at this point in time, for the Church to regard the hand of Caesar with suspicion. The Church authorities in Ireland surely made the right decision in not seeking any public funding for the International Eucharistic Congress this year-- as evinced when one texter to a recent radio show, in the wake of the latest anti-Church frenzy in the media, wondered whether the taxpayer was paying for this event and suggested that, if so, such funding should be removed.
Dr. Twomey complains of a fatalistic attitude amongst Catholic and, especially, religious orders in Ireland, as though secularisation was some inevitable law of history. This is certainly a strong tempation. We live in a culture in which deterministic thinking has almost become a second nature to us (even while we are encouraged, by the fashion and entertaintment and advertising industries, to assert our individual freedom ever more aggressively-- and ever more superficially).
When it comes to the future of Catholicism in Ireland, and our attitude towards it, the two great temptations remain-- as always-- presumption and despair. We hear the note of despair when Catholics of the liberal stamp suggest that the Church has to reformulate its doctrine according to the spirit of the age. But perhaps we hear it also in the most stubbornly traditionalist Catholics, who seem to see the Church as nothing but a sign of contradiction, and a bulwark against every manifestation of modernism.
As for the note of presumption, I think we hear that whenever any sign of "green shoots" are hailed as a new Spring-time of the Church. Not only is this presumptious, it is foolish. We can only cry "revival" so often before we lose all credibility, like the ageing Marxist who always believes the Revolution is just around the corner. We should give thanks for every welcome development, while firmly resisting the temptation to make too much of it.
Our Lord has told us not to be afraid, that he will be with us even to the end of the age, that he who perseveres to the end shall be saved, that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against his Church. That is all we can know, and it's enough. What the future holds for our own era and nation, we cannot know.
In a final appendix, Dr. Twomey welcomes the phenomenon of a greater lay interest in theology, and calls for greater academic study of the subject in Ireland. Here I must simply defer to his authority, while admitting a personal scepticism. I once lodged, very briefly, with a gay philosophy PhD student who taught (I can't remember if it was theology or philosophy) in a well-known institute of Irish theology. His living room walls were bedecked with rather erotic drawings of nude men. The philosophers he tended to cite were Heidegger and Nietzsche and other figures who are hardly within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. When I think of lay theological studies in Ireland today, I think of him. Perhaps that is unfair.
My own guess is that, if all Irish Catholics knew their Catechism, that would be an extraordinary advance in faith formation. It seems to me-- especially flicking through the pages of The Irish Catholic-- that Irish Catholicism will certainly not perish for the want of seminars, courses, book launches and magazines.
But doubtless I am wrong to be so cynical. As Dr. Twomey says, "Once people begin to think about their faith, they will in time search for, and find, the truth." Or as Chesterton put it, if every human being lived to be a thousand years old, everybody would end up either a Roman Catholic or a stark nihilist. The problem with dissidents who call for a "debate" in the Church is that they don't realise the debate has been going on for centuries, and has in fact already reached conclusions on most of the topics they consider to be unaddressed.
The End of Irish Catholicism? gives suggestions rather than answers, and it's hard to see how it could give easy answers to such vexing questions. I wonder how Dr. Twomey would have written the book today, and if he would have substantially altered any of the arguments and proposals he makes.
When it comes to Irish Catholicism today, I think even the most bullish secularist would have to admit-- to quote the title of a perennial favourite on Donncha O'Dulaing's radio show Failte Isteach-- "There's Life in the Old Dog Yet".
D. Vincent Twomey SVD
Veritas Publications, 2003
The first thing that occurs to me about The End of Irish Catholicism? is that the question in the title is never really answered. The book is more diagnostic than prophetic in nature.
Perhaps this is inevitable. I, for one, have no predictions to make about the future of Irish Catholicism. Of course, as long as there are any practicing Catholics on this island, there will still be an Irish Catholicism of some sort-- and, with such a huge majority having declared themselves Catholic on the recent census, it's hard to see the faith of our fathers going the way of the Irish Elk any time soon.
But will Catholicism survive as a social and cultural force on this island?
It only takes a look around most Sunday or weekday Mass congregations to feel very bleak about this. All too often there are empty pews, and the smattering of worshippers are mostly in their sixties or seventies or beyond. Our priests, too, are mostly well into their twilight years. A decade or two more, and what will become of those congregations? Will church after church have to be sold off? Will Catholics get used to making long treks to the nearest Mass? When journalists in that future Ireland talk about "the church"-- if they talk about any church, that is-- will it still be assumed that they mean the Catholic church?
But it's not all doom and gloom-- in fact, the state of the Church in Ireland seems quite contradictory in many ways. Though many congregations are scanty-- and it has to be remembered that I am writing from a Dublin perspective, and the situation in rural areas is very different-- at other times, churches are packed. St. Teresa's Church in Clarendon Street is often full for Mass, even on weekdays, and there is always a queue for confessions. The Archbishop of Dublin drew a crowd when he came to UCD to celebrate Ash Wednesday Mass this year. The Veritas Catholic shop in Abbey Street seems to do a booming trade. Younger Catholics tend to be more orthodox, and the decline in vocations seems to have levelled off.
The End of Irish Catholicism? attempts to describe how we got where we are now, and to suggest possible measures towards revival.
At the beginning of the book, Dr. Twomey addresses a topic of particular interest to me-- the link between patriotism and religion, nation and faith. He says, "growing up in the Ireland of the 1940s and 1950s, I was certainly aware that part of our self-identity as Irish Catholics was to see ourselves as Christian Jews, God's chosen people, materially weak but spiritually strong, spread diaspora-like throughout the world, ever loyal to the faith of our fathers." He then describes this notion of chosen-ness as being "of dubious theological value", and points out that "the New Israel is not any particular race but is made up of Jews and gentiles, that is, people from all races and nations now united in one faith..."
However, a Christian is not obliged to renounce national feeling, and Dr. Twomey quotes Solzhenitsyn: "Nations are [part of] the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special aspect of divine intention." And the author is himself rather critical of the modern Irish attitude to nationhood: "The very concept of nation, not to mention nationality, seems to have vanished from public discourse, not least due to the 'Troubles' in the North-- we now refer rather disparagingly to 'this island'. In addition, national identity is difficult to reconcile with the vague cosmopolitanism of our new mid-Atlantic identity."
One thing I really like about this book is that Dr. Twomey resists the temptation to caricature the Irish Catholicism of the twentieth century. It has become rather fashionable to do this-- to find the seeds of our current spiritual "recession" in the devotional "Celtic Tiger" of previous generations. I think this is too simple. It is true that the faith of our fathers (and mothers)-- or, more accurately, of our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers-- was often quite naive and ritualistic, focused on popular devotions such as First Fridays and sacramentals like the Miraculous Medal. We often hear that the faith of the Irish had become so complacent and unthinking that it crumbed at the first tides of secularism.
I don't really go along with these criticisms. I think every generation has to answer for itself. Perhaps lots of people went to Mass in the forties, fifties and sixties because it was the done thing. But I am sure that thousands, tens of thousands, went out of genuine religious fervour. Nor is a devotion to sacramentals, pilgrimage and popular devotions a bad thing.
A more plausible explanation for Ireland's crisis of faith comes with Dr. Twomey's description of the post-Vatican II atmosphere. Suddenly, everything seemed to be up in the air. "Things were permitted, like attending services in a Protestant church, which up to then had been strictly forbidden under all kinds of dire penalties...few have pondered the effect it must have had on the majority of priests, many of whom, up to relatively recently, controlled all the strings. The ground had been taken from under them."
An intriguing theory that Dr. Twomey puts forward is that Irish Catholicism had rather more in common with English puritanism than we like to think. Ireland, in comparison with Catholic countries on the continent, had little concept of sacral time and space, of religious festivity, of the cult of saints and martyrs. Dr.Twomey instead posits that traditional Irish Catholicism focused on an intensely moralistic, anti-sensual, anti-sexual piety that he describes as "angelism". This is also a familiar argument from John Waters.
I'm not sure what to make of this, either. Irish Christianity has always had an ascetic, rather sombre flavour to it. In this it is much like Russian Christianity. This seems to me a matter more of tone than of doctrine. Ireland never seemed to fit into the spirit of Belloc's couplet:
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine
There's always laughter and good red wine.
Edward Feser, the Thomistic philosopher, has pointed out that attempting to distill a spirit of Catholic culture is contrary to the very catholicity and universality of our Church-- that Catholicism embraces and consecrates all that is good in every culture. Ireland has its unique gifts and temptations, just as continental forms of Catholicism have their own.
Dr. Twomey calls for a rediscovery of Catholic festivity and community celebration. I wonder about this. My own guess is that religious joy overflows into festivity, and not the other way around. I don't think people come for the parties and stay for the prayer, but vice versa. Of course, Dr. Twomey is not making such a claim himself, but I suspect that this mentality exists elsewhere.
One powerful argument that Dr. Twomey makes is for the recovery of contemplative life: "In Ireland over the past two centuries, most religious orders were engaged in some form of apostolic work, or, as they are called today, active ministeries, such as teaching, nursing, or missionary activites abroad. There was always a core of strict contemplatives, men and women, and indeed most active orders (especially of women) had, before the Council, evolved into semi-contemplative orders with strict enclosure. The initial implementation of the decrees of the Council by the active congregations resulted in the gradual removal of the contemplative dimension almost entirely....good and necessary though these social concerns are, one may well ask: should they be the main focus of our attention for those consecrated by vows to the religious life? Or should men and women religious perhaps be more concerned with testifying to 'mankind's yearning for its heavenly home', as the Council put it?"
I think this is right on the money. As Tennyson wrote, "more things are wrought in prayer than this world dreams of", and the story of Mary and Martha should be a permanent reminder to Christians that we are forever tempted to value bustle and activity over the "direct line" to our Creator. It seems to me that nothing is more radically counter-cultural and (in the best sense) subversive than prayer. Making it a priority is, in itself, an act of renewal, an affirmation of Christian identity.
Besides this, I believe that our culture thirsts for prayer more than for social workers. We can see this in the endless flood of prayer requests that the Poor Clares receive. I see it, also, whenever I visit the UCD church, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. This small (but handsome) church rarely seems to attract more than a handful of worshippers outside Mass times, and is often to be found empty. But the book of prayer intentions by the door seems to be written in almost every day, and usually several times a day. Turning these poignant pages, I always feel I am seeing a different Ireland to the one we see on television and in the media-- an Ireland of sleepless nights and silent rooms and unquenchable spiritual yearning.
Dr. Twomey's book was written in 2003, and I wonder if the author himself would now consider the proposals in his chapter "Beyond Church vs. State" to be at all plausible. "Perhaps, also, the time has come...to consider working towards a concordat between the Catholic Church and the Republic of Ireland that would define more clearly, and anchor in international law, the relationship (and so the authentic separation) between Church and State". The tide now seems to be running in the opposite direction. Dr. Twomey deplores a comment by a recent Minister for Justice "that he would accord the Church's canon law the same status as the rules governing a golf club". Even that seems benign now.
Rather than seeking greater institutional relations between Church and State-- even relations that emphasise Church/State separation-- it seems wiser, at this point in time, for the Church to regard the hand of Caesar with suspicion. The Church authorities in Ireland surely made the right decision in not seeking any public funding for the International Eucharistic Congress this year-- as evinced when one texter to a recent radio show, in the wake of the latest anti-Church frenzy in the media, wondered whether the taxpayer was paying for this event and suggested that, if so, such funding should be removed.
Dr. Twomey complains of a fatalistic attitude amongst Catholic and, especially, religious orders in Ireland, as though secularisation was some inevitable law of history. This is certainly a strong tempation. We live in a culture in which deterministic thinking has almost become a second nature to us (even while we are encouraged, by the fashion and entertaintment and advertising industries, to assert our individual freedom ever more aggressively-- and ever more superficially).
When it comes to the future of Catholicism in Ireland, and our attitude towards it, the two great temptations remain-- as always-- presumption and despair. We hear the note of despair when Catholics of the liberal stamp suggest that the Church has to reformulate its doctrine according to the spirit of the age. But perhaps we hear it also in the most stubbornly traditionalist Catholics, who seem to see the Church as nothing but a sign of contradiction, and a bulwark against every manifestation of modernism.
As for the note of presumption, I think we hear that whenever any sign of "green shoots" are hailed as a new Spring-time of the Church. Not only is this presumptious, it is foolish. We can only cry "revival" so often before we lose all credibility, like the ageing Marxist who always believes the Revolution is just around the corner. We should give thanks for every welcome development, while firmly resisting the temptation to make too much of it.
Our Lord has told us not to be afraid, that he will be with us even to the end of the age, that he who perseveres to the end shall be saved, that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against his Church. That is all we can know, and it's enough. What the future holds for our own era and nation, we cannot know.
In a final appendix, Dr. Twomey welcomes the phenomenon of a greater lay interest in theology, and calls for greater academic study of the subject in Ireland. Here I must simply defer to his authority, while admitting a personal scepticism. I once lodged, very briefly, with a gay philosophy PhD student who taught (I can't remember if it was theology or philosophy) in a well-known institute of Irish theology. His living room walls were bedecked with rather erotic drawings of nude men. The philosophers he tended to cite were Heidegger and Nietzsche and other figures who are hardly within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. When I think of lay theological studies in Ireland today, I think of him. Perhaps that is unfair.
My own guess is that, if all Irish Catholics knew their Catechism, that would be an extraordinary advance in faith formation. It seems to me-- especially flicking through the pages of The Irish Catholic-- that Irish Catholicism will certainly not perish for the want of seminars, courses, book launches and magazines.
But doubtless I am wrong to be so cynical. As Dr. Twomey says, "Once people begin to think about their faith, they will in time search for, and find, the truth." Or as Chesterton put it, if every human being lived to be a thousand years old, everybody would end up either a Roman Catholic or a stark nihilist. The problem with dissidents who call for a "debate" in the Church is that they don't realise the debate has been going on for centuries, and has in fact already reached conclusions on most of the topics they consider to be unaddressed.
The End of Irish Catholicism? gives suggestions rather than answers, and it's hard to see how it could give easy answers to such vexing questions. I wonder how Dr. Twomey would have written the book today, and if he would have substantially altered any of the arguments and proposals he makes.
When it comes to Irish Catholicism today, I think even the most bullish secularist would have to admit-- to quote the title of a perennial favourite on Donncha O'Dulaing's radio show Failte Isteach-- "There's Life in the Old Dog Yet".
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Eamon Gilmore's Children
I recently picked up a copy of The Left Tribune, the Labour Youth freesheet. (I work in UCD, and a heap of them were left lying in one of the hallways.) I read through the entire issue. I did this because I don't want to be a ghettoised conservative Catholic, never opening my mind to other streams of opinion.
I remember I was enough of a socialist in my youth to feel a sense of jubilation-- mild jubilation, mind you, but jubilation-- when the Spring Tide brought a record number of Labour TD's into the Dáil in 1992. In my college years, I was even more of a socialist (in my own uninformed and inactive way), but I was already getting sick of the liberal, progressive and identity politics that seemed to be tangled up with the red flag. I remember approving very much of this old trade union slogan, when I came across it in a book:
Eight hours work, eight hours play,
Eight hours lie-a-bed, and eight bob a day.
That was enough socialism for me, and never mind all the political correctness.
Even now, as a two-fisted traditionalist conservative-- though I fear I might alienate some of my readers in admitting this-- I feel a lot more affection for socialists than I do for libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. If conservatism is the worship of the free market, then I would rather not be conservative. Thankfully, it's not, and we don't have to choose between a naive belief in the infallibility of private enterprise and an equally naive belief in government intervention as the answer to every problem.
However, in the Ireland of 2012, it seems that there is no left outside the liberal left, as the April '12 issue of The Left Tribune shows.
The very first photograph (if you don't count an ad) in the twenty page journal-- a photograph that accompanies an article headed "How is Labour Shaping Society?"-- shows a demonstrator whose placard reads "Did we Vote on your Marriage?". The text of the article includes the sentence "Some progress has been made. Particularly welcomed by most Labour supporters was Minister Ruairi Quinn's push to end the patronage of schools by the Catholic Church...this element of progress will hopefully produe strong social dividends to come." Later on, the article laments Labour's failure to introduce same-sex marriage.
The first article of the publication is headed "What Will Labour's Legacy Be for Single-Parent Families?". The article deals almost entirely with welfare entitlements. A post-script mentions that Census 2011 shows that there are 215,300 families "headed by lone parents with children, 87 per cent with mothers". But the article nowhere asks why there are so many fatherless and motherless families, and how this can be reversed. It seems government intervention only involves picking up the pieces.
The third article, by a UCC student, is a call for abortion to be introduced in Ireland. It describes the ambiguous legal position after the Supreme Court's X-Case ruling, and says: "In a debate so steeped in moral and religious bias, it may be the difficult to have an articulate debate on the issue of reproductive rights." (Religious bias is bad enough, but imagine dragging moral bias into an issue like abortion!) "Taking the lonely trip 'on the boat' to England is not the ideal situation either psychologically or financially for a woman who is already dealing with a traumatic situation, and yet it is a lonely trip that is made by about 10 or more Irish women every day. Worse still is the growing trend of women and young girls buying unregulated abortifacients online or seeking other DIY solutions. Women should be supported by both the state and the medical system in such a case, even if it is unpalatable for some."
As with most abortion-related discourse on the liberal left, the writer simply assumes the agreement of the reader. The moral case for abortion is not argued at all-- the only justification invoked are court rulings. Talk about legalism!
A whole-page article opposite sets out its stall pretty plainly: "Life-Saving Abortions Aren't the Only Abortions we Should be Legalising." In chillingly calm terms, the young woman writes: "Discourse on abortion should stop focusing on saving women's lives and start focusing on the most common reason for seeking an abortion-- a woman simply does not want to go through with the pregnancy." Well, at least the pretence is dropped-- finally, after decades of subterfuge.
Later on in the article there is a surprising admission: "If we accept that a foetus is not a life, then the X-case doesn't go far enough. If we think that it is a life, then rape, incest, or the threat of maternal suicide are no reasons to end it." But once again, the question goes a-begging. It seems that all members of Labour Youth are on the same metaphysical page when it comes to the definition of human life.
Which should have been borne in mind by the writer of the article on page nine: "A Mature and Republican Approach to Diplomatic Relations with the Vatican". The writer blusters: "Recently in Cork, local Fianna Fáil councillor O'Flynn claimed that the closure [of Ireland's embassy to the Vatican] was to satisfy the godlessness of the Labour Party, to which he was throughly and comprehensively rebuked by our own Cllr Michael O'Connell. It would almost be amusing if it weren't such an insult, considering the numerous people of all faiths within the party, and the values we hold that can be considered Christian among others".
There seems to be a contradiction in this publication's attitude to Catholicism. On the one hand, it assumes a support for abortion and gay-marriage that is impossible for a faithful Catholic to share. On the other, it asserts that the Labour Party contains members of "all faiths"-- including Catholicism.
If you cannot be a social democrat-- or a radical or a progressive or whatever other term the members of Labour Youth might use to describe themselves-- without supporting anti-traditional marriage or the murder of the unborn child, surely Catholics have the right to insist on core values, too? Are the liberal left the only believers who are permitted to hold dogmas?
This writer, however, does make some effort to moderate his anti-Catholic stance: "the Catholic Chuch has been an institution fundamentally linked to what it means to be Irish since the failure of the secular-pluralist rebels of 1798. Irish nationalism, a driving force even today, was increasingly linked to Catholicism by both nationalists themselves and the British once the Anglican church was disestablished here. It has been argued that the Church usurped the role of the monarchy once such a vacuum was created after the Treaty. [I wonder why a republican thinks that the abolition of monarchy would create a vaccuum?] Hospitals, schools, care of the poor, these roles were fulfilled by the Church where there were no other groups or societies to do so. For that reasons, the radicals arguing that we must spend far more money than we need to in order to have an embassy can be understood, if not agreed with."
On the debit side of the ledger, the writer then makes the inevitable (and fair) point that the power of the Church in Irish society facilitated the clerical abuse scandals, and follows it with the usual round of hysterical anti-Catholic allegations: "Coupled with the nature of the Vatican as a state, an extremely rich enclave in Italy that was effectively created by Mussolini, and the damage done by the church with regard to the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the other sort of radical advocating ending diplomatic relations with the Vatican can also be understood, and again, if not agreed with."
The Mussolini slur is cheap and hilarious. As for the mention of the AIDS epidemic, I'm always bewildered by the attitude of Church-bashers on this topic. The Church forbids the use of condoms, it is true. She also forbids sex outside marriage. If African Catholics are so much in thrall to the Vatican on the one, surely they would also comply with the other, which would hardly give much impetus to a sexually-transmitted epidemic.
The writer of the article seems to be the only person in Ireland who believes that the Vatican embassy was closed for economic reasons-- ah, the sweet naivety of youth!
He admits that "the fact of the matter is that most Irish people continue to claim Catholicism as their religious viewpoint, no matter how serious they are about it." Amusingly, he adds: "Futhermore, many of our new Irish from Easter Europe are Catholics as well. It would be extremely disrespectful to them to snub the leader of their church in such a way while other, more productive options are available." Multiculturalism trumps anti-Catholicism-- at least for the moment.
The writer concludes that "the approach of our government has been quite correct on this issue, and indeed, is the only mature one in sight". A little earlier, he had written: "We already have a building in Rome for diplomatic activity in the form of the Italian embassy. Indulging the Vatican's absurd position on joint embassies at large expense is not reasonable in any sense of the word." Except, perhaps, if the Vatican is the one (relatively) safe place on Earth that the Church has to stand upon, surrounded as it is by a whole cordon of countries that have tried to trample on Catholic rights within living memory. Is it so ridiculously that the Holy See feels the need to assert its independence and sovereignty, even symbolically?
Even this article doesn't exhaust this twenty-page newspaper's anti-Catholic swipes. A review of James Plunkett's Strumpet City doesn't miss the opportunity to mention that "the hypocrisy and culpability of the Church is highlighted in the compelling storyline facing the ambitious but naive Father O'Connor and the deeply troubled Father Giffley, whose ham fisted attempts to make a change are but an endeavour to make up for a life spent in self-loathing and alcoholism".
There is also an article on the proposed constitutional convention-- which seems to take the line that our constitution should be tinkered with just because it is seventy years old. (If it's not broke...break it, I guess.) It supports the removal of "socially conservative anachronisms" (such as any mention of blasphemy, traditional marriage, and the special role of women in the home) but then complains that "while all of these proposals are welcome, they are not exactly revolutionary." (Why should they be?)
What is interesting is that the newsletter's articles on more bread-and-butter topics, such as the Fiscal Treaty and the proposals to re-introduce student fees, are written in a much more open-minded and factual manner. In fact, the article on student fees supports their re-introduction (with grants for poorer students) and there is an article supporting the Fiscal Treaty, as well as one opposing it. I wonder if any consideration was given to pro- and con- articles about abortion or same-sex marriage?
To ask the question (as they say) is to answer it. The core values of the left in our age are not social democratic but liberal and secularist. The real enemy, it seems, is not the multinational company, or poverty, or exploitation. The real enemy is the baby in the womb and the old man in the Vatican.
I remember I was enough of a socialist in my youth to feel a sense of jubilation-- mild jubilation, mind you, but jubilation-- when the Spring Tide brought a record number of Labour TD's into the Dáil in 1992. In my college years, I was even more of a socialist (in my own uninformed and inactive way), but I was already getting sick of the liberal, progressive and identity politics that seemed to be tangled up with the red flag. I remember approving very much of this old trade union slogan, when I came across it in a book:
Eight hours work, eight hours play,
Eight hours lie-a-bed, and eight bob a day.
That was enough socialism for me, and never mind all the political correctness.
Even now, as a two-fisted traditionalist conservative-- though I fear I might alienate some of my readers in admitting this-- I feel a lot more affection for socialists than I do for libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. If conservatism is the worship of the free market, then I would rather not be conservative. Thankfully, it's not, and we don't have to choose between a naive belief in the infallibility of private enterprise and an equally naive belief in government intervention as the answer to every problem.
However, in the Ireland of 2012, it seems that there is no left outside the liberal left, as the April '12 issue of The Left Tribune shows.
The very first photograph (if you don't count an ad) in the twenty page journal-- a photograph that accompanies an article headed "How is Labour Shaping Society?"-- shows a demonstrator whose placard reads "Did we Vote on your Marriage?". The text of the article includes the sentence "Some progress has been made. Particularly welcomed by most Labour supporters was Minister Ruairi Quinn's push to end the patronage of schools by the Catholic Church...this element of progress will hopefully produe strong social dividends to come." Later on, the article laments Labour's failure to introduce same-sex marriage.
The first article of the publication is headed "What Will Labour's Legacy Be for Single-Parent Families?". The article deals almost entirely with welfare entitlements. A post-script mentions that Census 2011 shows that there are 215,300 families "headed by lone parents with children, 87 per cent with mothers". But the article nowhere asks why there are so many fatherless and motherless families, and how this can be reversed. It seems government intervention only involves picking up the pieces.
The third article, by a UCC student, is a call for abortion to be introduced in Ireland. It describes the ambiguous legal position after the Supreme Court's X-Case ruling, and says: "In a debate so steeped in moral and religious bias, it may be the difficult to have an articulate debate on the issue of reproductive rights." (Religious bias is bad enough, but imagine dragging moral bias into an issue like abortion!) "Taking the lonely trip 'on the boat' to England is not the ideal situation either psychologically or financially for a woman who is already dealing with a traumatic situation, and yet it is a lonely trip that is made by about 10 or more Irish women every day. Worse still is the growing trend of women and young girls buying unregulated abortifacients online or seeking other DIY solutions. Women should be supported by both the state and the medical system in such a case, even if it is unpalatable for some."
As with most abortion-related discourse on the liberal left, the writer simply assumes the agreement of the reader. The moral case for abortion is not argued at all-- the only justification invoked are court rulings. Talk about legalism!
A whole-page article opposite sets out its stall pretty plainly: "Life-Saving Abortions Aren't the Only Abortions we Should be Legalising." In chillingly calm terms, the young woman writes: "Discourse on abortion should stop focusing on saving women's lives and start focusing on the most common reason for seeking an abortion-- a woman simply does not want to go through with the pregnancy." Well, at least the pretence is dropped-- finally, after decades of subterfuge.
Later on in the article there is a surprising admission: "If we accept that a foetus is not a life, then the X-case doesn't go far enough. If we think that it is a life, then rape, incest, or the threat of maternal suicide are no reasons to end it." But once again, the question goes a-begging. It seems that all members of Labour Youth are on the same metaphysical page when it comes to the definition of human life.
Which should have been borne in mind by the writer of the article on page nine: "A Mature and Republican Approach to Diplomatic Relations with the Vatican". The writer blusters: "Recently in Cork, local Fianna Fáil councillor O'Flynn claimed that the closure [of Ireland's embassy to the Vatican] was to satisfy the godlessness of the Labour Party, to which he was throughly and comprehensively rebuked by our own Cllr Michael O'Connell. It would almost be amusing if it weren't such an insult, considering the numerous people of all faiths within the party, and the values we hold that can be considered Christian among others".
There seems to be a contradiction in this publication's attitude to Catholicism. On the one hand, it assumes a support for abortion and gay-marriage that is impossible for a faithful Catholic to share. On the other, it asserts that the Labour Party contains members of "all faiths"-- including Catholicism.
If you cannot be a social democrat-- or a radical or a progressive or whatever other term the members of Labour Youth might use to describe themselves-- without supporting anti-traditional marriage or the murder of the unborn child, surely Catholics have the right to insist on core values, too? Are the liberal left the only believers who are permitted to hold dogmas?
This writer, however, does make some effort to moderate his anti-Catholic stance: "the Catholic Chuch has been an institution fundamentally linked to what it means to be Irish since the failure of the secular-pluralist rebels of 1798. Irish nationalism, a driving force even today, was increasingly linked to Catholicism by both nationalists themselves and the British once the Anglican church was disestablished here. It has been argued that the Church usurped the role of the monarchy once such a vacuum was created after the Treaty. [I wonder why a republican thinks that the abolition of monarchy would create a vaccuum?] Hospitals, schools, care of the poor, these roles were fulfilled by the Church where there were no other groups or societies to do so. For that reasons, the radicals arguing that we must spend far more money than we need to in order to have an embassy can be understood, if not agreed with."
On the debit side of the ledger, the writer then makes the inevitable (and fair) point that the power of the Church in Irish society facilitated the clerical abuse scandals, and follows it with the usual round of hysterical anti-Catholic allegations: "Coupled with the nature of the Vatican as a state, an extremely rich enclave in Italy that was effectively created by Mussolini, and the damage done by the church with regard to the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the other sort of radical advocating ending diplomatic relations with the Vatican can also be understood, and again, if not agreed with."
The Mussolini slur is cheap and hilarious. As for the mention of the AIDS epidemic, I'm always bewildered by the attitude of Church-bashers on this topic. The Church forbids the use of condoms, it is true. She also forbids sex outside marriage. If African Catholics are so much in thrall to the Vatican on the one, surely they would also comply with the other, which would hardly give much impetus to a sexually-transmitted epidemic.
The writer of the article seems to be the only person in Ireland who believes that the Vatican embassy was closed for economic reasons-- ah, the sweet naivety of youth!
He admits that "the fact of the matter is that most Irish people continue to claim Catholicism as their religious viewpoint, no matter how serious they are about it." Amusingly, he adds: "Futhermore, many of our new Irish from Easter Europe are Catholics as well. It would be extremely disrespectful to them to snub the leader of their church in such a way while other, more productive options are available." Multiculturalism trumps anti-Catholicism-- at least for the moment.
The writer concludes that "the approach of our government has been quite correct on this issue, and indeed, is the only mature one in sight". A little earlier, he had written: "We already have a building in Rome for diplomatic activity in the form of the Italian embassy. Indulging the Vatican's absurd position on joint embassies at large expense is not reasonable in any sense of the word." Except, perhaps, if the Vatican is the one (relatively) safe place on Earth that the Church has to stand upon, surrounded as it is by a whole cordon of countries that have tried to trample on Catholic rights within living memory. Is it so ridiculously that the Holy See feels the need to assert its independence and sovereignty, even symbolically?
Even this article doesn't exhaust this twenty-page newspaper's anti-Catholic swipes. A review of James Plunkett's Strumpet City doesn't miss the opportunity to mention that "the hypocrisy and culpability of the Church is highlighted in the compelling storyline facing the ambitious but naive Father O'Connor and the deeply troubled Father Giffley, whose ham fisted attempts to make a change are but an endeavour to make up for a life spent in self-loathing and alcoholism".
There is also an article on the proposed constitutional convention-- which seems to take the line that our constitution should be tinkered with just because it is seventy years old. (If it's not broke...break it, I guess.) It supports the removal of "socially conservative anachronisms" (such as any mention of blasphemy, traditional marriage, and the special role of women in the home) but then complains that "while all of these proposals are welcome, they are not exactly revolutionary." (Why should they be?)
What is interesting is that the newsletter's articles on more bread-and-butter topics, such as the Fiscal Treaty and the proposals to re-introduce student fees, are written in a much more open-minded and factual manner. In fact, the article on student fees supports their re-introduction (with grants for poorer students) and there is an article supporting the Fiscal Treaty, as well as one opposing it. I wonder if any consideration was given to pro- and con- articles about abortion or same-sex marriage?
To ask the question (as they say) is to answer it. The core values of the left in our age are not social democratic but liberal and secularist. The real enemy, it seems, is not the multinational company, or poverty, or exploitation. The real enemy is the baby in the womb and the old man in the Vatican.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
If This isn't Hypocrisy, What Is?
The Catholic primate of Ireland is held to account for an investigation into sex abuse that occurred more than thirty years ago and in which he played a relatively minor role. He points out that it was not his responsibility to report the sex abuse discovered to the parents of the abused children or to the authorities, that responsibility resting with his superiors.
Government ministers, senior politicians, journalists, and an easily-led public clamour for his resignation-- including Eamon Gilmore, the Tanaiste and leader of the Labour Party.
An RTE current affairs programme, all the way back in dim and distant 2011, falsely accuses a Catholic priest of sexually abusing a girl and fathering her child. Today, the Labour Party member and Minister for Communications, Pat Rabbitte, said that he had not sought any resignations from the board of RTÉ-- the people who should assume ultimate responsibility for the actions of the national broadcaster.
Church-bashing? Anti-Catholicism? What, here, in liberal and pluralist and tolerant Ireland?
It will almost certainly get worse, as the militant secular wing of the Labour party gain in strength and confidence-- not to mention their sympathizers in other political parties, and in other walks of Irish life.
Government ministers, senior politicians, journalists, and an easily-led public clamour for his resignation-- including Eamon Gilmore, the Tanaiste and leader of the Labour Party.
An RTE current affairs programme, all the way back in dim and distant 2011, falsely accuses a Catholic priest of sexually abusing a girl and fathering her child. Today, the Labour Party member and Minister for Communications, Pat Rabbitte, said that he had not sought any resignations from the board of RTÉ-- the people who should assume ultimate responsibility for the actions of the national broadcaster.
Church-bashing? Anti-Catholicism? What, here, in liberal and pluralist and tolerant Ireland?
It will almost certainly get worse, as the militant secular wing of the Labour party gain in strength and confidence-- not to mention their sympathizers in other political parties, and in other walks of Irish life.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Is Ivana Bacik more God-obsessed than Saint Francis?
I can't claim to have followed her exploits religiously (so to speak), but the Labour Senator who describes herself as "the only card-carrying atheist" in the Oireachtais generally seems to pop up in campaigns that have some religious (or rather anti-religious) relevance to them.
Whether it's abortion, Dermot Ahern's blasphemous libel bill (for which religious people seemed to show little or no enthusiasm), the closure of the Vatican embassy (she tweeted triumphantly when a motion to re-open it was defeated at the Labour party conference), or her private member's bill reported in today's Irish Times, there seems to be a common theme (so far as I can see) to all Senator Bacik's political interests:
THE GOVERNMENT is expected to agree today to back legislation giving humanists the same status as organised religions and civil registrars in conducting marriage ceremonies....
The legislation was introduced in the Seanad as a Private Members’ Bill by Trinity College Senator Ivana Bacik and is due to pass final stages in the Upper House tomorrow.
I think everybody knows, deep down, that all marriage-- civil or otherwise-- is either a pastiche or a parody of a religious ceremony. And in our Western society, Christian marriage is the gold standard of marriage, acknowledged or unacknowledged. I don't mean any disrespect to other religious traditions when I say that, or to suggest that two humanists can't be faithful and loving and committed. But Christian marriage is the paradigm.
But what I find interesting in this story is the role of Senator Bacik. Surely this level of preoccupation with all things that touch on religion, in a card-carrying atheist, is the very definition of "reactionary?" And doesn't she seem more and more representative of the Irish Labour Party, who once upon a time (or so the story goes) were described as "the political wing of the St. Vincent de Paul"?
Judging by her performance in non-Seanad elections, the Irish people don't seem to share her priorities-- just yet. But given a few years' more propaganda by the greater part of the Irish media (who seem to have much more of an appetite for Senator Bacik than the electorate), who knows?
Whether it's abortion, Dermot Ahern's blasphemous libel bill (for which religious people seemed to show little or no enthusiasm), the closure of the Vatican embassy (she tweeted triumphantly when a motion to re-open it was defeated at the Labour party conference), or her private member's bill reported in today's Irish Times, there seems to be a common theme (so far as I can see) to all Senator Bacik's political interests:
THE GOVERNMENT is expected to agree today to back legislation giving humanists the same status as organised religions and civil registrars in conducting marriage ceremonies....
The legislation was introduced in the Seanad as a Private Members’ Bill by Trinity College Senator Ivana Bacik and is due to pass final stages in the Upper House tomorrow.
I think everybody knows, deep down, that all marriage-- civil or otherwise-- is either a pastiche or a parody of a religious ceremony. And in our Western society, Christian marriage is the gold standard of marriage, acknowledged or unacknowledged. I don't mean any disrespect to other religious traditions when I say that, or to suggest that two humanists can't be faithful and loving and committed. But Christian marriage is the paradigm.
But what I find interesting in this story is the role of Senator Bacik. Surely this level of preoccupation with all things that touch on religion, in a card-carrying atheist, is the very definition of "reactionary?" And doesn't she seem more and more representative of the Irish Labour Party, who once upon a time (or so the story goes) were described as "the political wing of the St. Vincent de Paul"?
Judging by her performance in non-Seanad elections, the Irish people don't seem to share her priorities-- just yet. But given a few years' more propaganda by the greater part of the Irish media (who seem to have much more of an appetite for Senator Bacik than the electorate), who knows?
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Review of The Rocky Road to Dublin
Film review-- The Rocky Road to Dublin (documentary by Peter Lennon, 1967)
The camera never lies. This truth is borne out by Peter Lennon's storied documentary, The Rocky Road to Dublin, which sets out to be an indictment of late-sixties Ireland, but now seems like a monument to a more innocent and cultured era.
The question Lennon poses at the beginning of the film-- "What do you do with your revolution once you've got it?"-- has now taken on an extra, ironic layer of meaning. Of course, Lennon was referring to the Irish Revolution that began in 1916 and ended in Irish independence in the twenties, or perhaps even in the declaration of an Irish Republic in 1948.
But since The Rocky Road to Dublin was made, there has been a second revolution in Ireland-- a social and cultural revolution-- and it is this revolution that is essentially being urged in every frame of the documentary. So of course the question now applies to that revolution, too. What has it achieved? Is Irish society today an obvious improvement on the Irish society recorded in Lennon's documentary?
Every viewer must answer that question himself, or herself. But for me the answer is an emphatic "no".
Lennon printed the film in black and white, even though it was shot in colour, because he felt it "was more in keeping with the tone of the film", according to Wikipedia. This is consistent with Lennon's whole approach, which is (it must be said) rather manipulative and selective throughout-- although it must also be conceded that he lets his subjects speak for themselves, and these interviews are the most revealing and interesting part of the documentary.
Lennon, who was at the time a journalist for the Guardian (no surprise there), sets out to portray the Irish society of his time as grey, conformist, anti-intellectual, and in thrall to a dictatorial Catholic Church.
The film begins with a heavily-bespectacled boy standing up in a classroom and reciting: "Because of Adam's sin we are born without orig-- we are born without santifying grace, our intellect is darkened, our will is weakened and our passions incline us to evil, and we suffering-- we are subject to suffering and death."
The documentary is setting out its stall straight away. These poor kids being forced to trot out all this nonsense about mythical figures and mumbo-jumbo! But anyone who had a Catholic education in the eighties or nineties will feel a certain envy, I think. My religious education in school, to a great extent, consisted of pop psychology, and of watching "inspiring" feature films in religion class. When I did receive solid catechesis, mostly from an adorable old nun who treated us to Rollo chocolates, I found it fascinating. How is knowledge ever a bad thing? Even for a non-believer, isn't it good to know something about the teaching of the Church, if only for its historical and cultural importance? And it is obvious that catechesis doesn't take away from the rest of education, for all Ruadhri Quinn's claims, since Catholic schools have always tended to outperform non-denominational schools.
The film moves on to its credit sequence, over the titular song, "The Rocky Road to Dublin" by the Dubliners. (The Dubliners, in fact, supply the whole soundtrack.) The camera tracks through scenes of a beach, a country road, two priests on bicycles, and the skyline of Dublin. Everything looks cleaner and prettier than it does now-- no traffic-clogged roads, no fast food joints, no jeans or tracksuits, and next to no litter anywhere.
Peter Lennon narrates: "This is a personal attempt to reconstruct for the camera the plight of an island community which survived more than seven hundred years of English occupation, and then nearly sank under the weight of its own heroes and clergy. More than half a century ago at Easter 1916, the Irish made yet another attempt in a centuries-long history of insurrection to break free of England. A rebellion led by poets and socialists, it was one of the first attemps by a small nation to throw off a colonial power by force. It was also the ambition of these idealists to awaken a lethargic and indifferent Irish population to an ideal of freedom."
This, it has to be said, is the version of Irish history that has been established in the popular mind. But how true is it? It is, of course, true to say that the 1916 Rising was led by "poets and socialists", insofar as the Marxist James Connolly was one of its leading lights, and his Citizen's Army fought alongside the Irish Volunteers. But they were a minority, and it seems fair to say that most of those who fought in 1916-- like Patrick Pearse, his brother Willie, Joseph Plunkett, Con Colbert and Eamonn De Valera-- were committed Catholics. In fact, even James Connolly received the last rites prior to his execution, when such an act could have had no propaganda benefit for him.
It has often been said that the majority of those who fought in 1916 were educated by the Christian Brothers, whose ideals of faith and nation-- "for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland", as their motto ran-- motivated the insurrectionists. In fact, Kevin O'Higgins, who was a member of the first Dáil and a leading figure in the Irish Revolution, famously said: "we were the most conservative-minded revolutionaries who ever put through a successful revolution."
Of course, this itself is a slight distortion, since there were undoubtedly radical elements involved in the struggle for independence, but it seems truer than the history propounded by Peter Lennon in this documentary-- and by Ken Loach in his artistically excellent but historically misleading film, The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
The first interviewee is Sean O'Faolain, the short story writer whose radical journal, The Bell, anticipated the second Irish revolution-- that is, the social revolution. Funnily enough, even he appears in the documentary as a rather quaint, genteel and archaic figure, sitting in a garden smoking a pipe, wearing a grey suit and a sober tie. "The kind of society that actually grew up", he says, "is a society of what I call urbanised peasants-- a society which was without moral courage, which was constantly observing a self-interested silence, never speaking in moments of crisis, and in constant alliance with a completely obscurantist, regressive, repressive and uncultivated Church." (No mincing of words there). "A society of blatant inequalities and in which the whole spirit of '16 has been lost."
O'Faolain, along with other critics of post-revolutionary Ireland, cites republicanism as the ideal of 1916 and the War of Independence. But was it really? Was the political philosophy of republicanism, to those who fought for independence, more important than the actual vision of the Ireland that would emerge-- one that usually concentrated on the Irish language, Irish folklore and traditions, and indeed Christianity? Pearse, the guiding spirit of the Rising, called for an Ireland that was "not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well". Modernists who cite the Proclamation of the Irish Republic usually cite the phrase, "cherishing all the children of the nation equally". But they tend to ignore the fact that the very first phrase of the Proclamation is "in the name of God."
For such a celebrated documentary, I can't help thinking The Rocky Road to Dublin is rather clumsily put together. One sequence features the Royal Dublin Horseshow, for no obvious reason (though Lennon rather implausibly tries to link it to the decline of the British Ascendancy in Ireland). Conor Cruise O'Brien, the intellectual and politician, is interviewed and gives a long account of Ireland's foreign policy-- which seems rather irrelevant to the overall theme of the documentary. Later on, there is a protracted scene of a man "playing the spoons" in an Irish pub. (Where would you see that now?) It's fascinating to watch, but again seems out of place.
There is a short wordless scene in which we see the then-new housing estate of Ballymun, where I grew up and where I am sitting right now, as I type these words. The grey towers and flats that it shows are now mostly pulled down-- one block of flats is actually being slowly demolished at present-- and good riddance to them, I say (with a faint twinge of nostalgia). But the tracts of green space that the camera shows in this documentary is all built over now, and the vandalism and litter that is almost omnipresent in Ballymun is also absent from the footage.
Lennon shoots a long sequence in a pub, which he does his very best to make gloomy and melancholy, with many shots of vacant and pensive faces-- and where couldn't you find such faces? But for all his efforts, I think most pub-goers of today will feel envious of the drinkers in the film, who have communal sing-alongs of Irish ballads rather than big-screen TVs and pop music drowning out conversation.
We move on to a section which shows a hurling match (and which does not neglect to zoom in on two Catholic priests enjoying it from the stands, doubtless in a sinister fashion). Lennon focuses on certain controversial rules of the Gaelic Athletic Association (the governing body of hurling and gaelic football, which are at the moment more spectacularly popular than ever). At the time of the documentary, the organisation had rules against its members playing "foreign" games such as soccer and rugby, and also had a law against members of the British security forces taking part. Both rules have now been removed, the second one in recent years, the first one not long after Lennon's documentary. But of course the rule against foreign games had a very practical motive-- it was a kind of athletic protectionism, to create a space for native games to flourish. And it worked.
The Assistant Secretary of the GAA, who is interviewed but not named, explains: "It is necessary, of course, to understand that this rule is retained democratically; the Association has a democratic system which is even more democratic than the normal parliamentary system. This rule could be changed at any time that a majority of the members of the Association wish to have it changed." We should at least give Lennon credit for including that explanation, which rather weakens the case he is trying to make.
There are some comic aspects to the documentary. The captions are so large, square, declarative and blunt that they remind one of Monty Python's "How to Recognise Different Trees" skit. And during one sequence on industrialisation, a Japanese gentleman in heavily-rimmed glasses (there are lots of heavily-rimmed glasses on display) explains that he is teaching Judo to the workers in the Guinness factory.
Another scene shows a group of Trinity students, gaunt and cigarette-smoking and dressed in polo-necks, overcoats, and shirtsleeves discussing censorship and the failings of the Irish press. Of course they are laying into the Church, the press, and the conservatism of RTE, rather stridently and excitedly. But where will we find such earnest, intellectually serious, publicly-spirited students today? Where are the sort of students we read about in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or even At Swim Two Birds or Anthony Cronin's Dead as Doornails? Do today's university students sit around in pubs arguing about politics and philosophy and emancipation? I've worked in a university library for over ten years now. I find the students to be polite, friendly and entirely endearing. But the conversations that I overhear, and the posters that I see around campus, leave me under no illusions that they are the heirs of Stephen Daedalus and the young Anthony Cronin. Could it be that something in grey, conformist, Catholic Ireland was propitious to that kind of student earnestness?
Lennon does not fail to linger on Ireland's censorship laws, which were indeed a sitting target. A long list of the names of writers banned in Ireland rolls down the screen at one point, to the sound of funeral bells, and though I am not against censorship on principle, it is hard to defend the laws that obtained in the Irish state for so long-- although I have often thought that the Playboy of the Western World riots, censorship of books, and so forth was a sign of a public more culturally alive than otherwise. Who would riot at a play today? Who today would take the power of ideas so seriously as to call for a book to be banned?
Perhaps the most remarkable part of The Rocky Road to Dublin is the extensive footage of Father Michael Cleary, the original "Father Trendy". We see him singing a pop song in a hospital ward, giving a speech at a wedding breakfast, and sharing a cigarette with some grave-diggers. We also hear him eloquently defending the Church's requirement of priestly celibacy, despite his own avowed desire to be married and have a family. "I believe that I get the tremendous power from God-- the power to recreate His body on the altar-- you know, I give him back a gift in return. Now, to someone you love and love deeply and to whom you owe a lot, you don't just give him sixpence-worth or a shilling's worth, you give him something that hurts, something you feel. And if I didn't miss marriage and all that goes with it, it wouldn't be a sacrifice..."
Of course, the irony is that Father Michael did not make such a sacrifice-- after his death, it was revealed that his housekeeper had been his common-law wife for 26 years, and that he had fathered a child by her. This, along with a similar revelation about Bishop Eamon Casey, is often cited (truly or falsely) as one of the catalysts of the Irish Catholic Church's decline in the nineties-- although it seems small beer compared to the horrors of clerical sex abuse that emerged later.
But for all his hypocrisy, Father Cleary seems like a rather amiable character, and nothing he actually says seems objectionable. The scene that shows wedding guests singing Irish patriotic ballads-- all of which they obviously know by heart-- makes me sad that we have lost so much of this folkloric heritage.
But at least Father Cleary and the other "forces of reaction" have the courage to appear on screen. A female voice, which we are informed belongs to a young wife, informs us (over footage of a sea-shore) that priests are always "on the men's side" when it comes to matters of sex and childbirth, and criticizes Church teaching on birth control. I imagine that Lennon could have found many female interviewees who were entirely supportive of Church teaching on sex, and who would have been happy to show their faces. But they do not appear. Just a disembodied voice over footage of the sea.
Perhaps the most poignant and haunting interview in The Rocky Road to Dublin is with Professor Liam O'Brien, a member of the censorship appeal board. Lennon must have seen this guy as a gift from heaven; he is almost a caricature of a hopeless reactionary, with sunken cheeks, wrinkled face, a shock of badly-combed white hair, a sober black suit and tie, and a habit of sucking his teeth for emphasis. He complains of the "horrible noises" of contemporary music and the "strum strum stum" of guitars. He denounces "pop orchestras", complains that the idea of sin has been abolished, and declares that "the Church is preparing for the fight, for the future fight against the future thought of mankind, and I am full of faith that...shall I say...that the gates of Hell shall not prevail."
So Lennon was probably rubbing his hands with glee as he edited this particular footage. But in fact it is actually the bewildered-looking, rather wild-eyed Professor O'Brien who makes the most insightful contribution to the whole documentary.
In the closing moments of the film, after denouncing "pop orchestras" and other aspects of modern culture, he says: "To give it its due, it is a break away from what was, into what is and what will be, and I suppose it will all acquire a character, acquire a tradition, it will acquire a...a mellowness which is not there yet. I think that's what's wrong with it really, that we are at a beginning of a new age, really a wonderful age in the world, but at the beginning of it, and therefore it hasn't any, so to speak, traditional character about it yet. But it's gaining it every moment, every day. And I wish it well, I wish it well. I won't see it. That's about all I can say about it."
The last shot of Professor O'Brien shows him looking rather pensively and sadly into the middle distance, as if he is doubtful of his own generous words. And isn't it clear now that they were, indeed, too generous?
Has popular culture, modern culture, consumer culture, attained the depth and maturity and mellowness that Professor O'Brien hoped for it?
Or has it become more lurid, more shallow, more dumbed-down and illiterate as the decades rolled on? Are the X-Factor and Damien Hirst and Beavis and Butthead the fruits that Sean O'Faolain had in mind when he sought liberation from an obscurantist Church?
Is the Ireland of 2012-- the Ireland in which we are becoming more and more acquainted with drug-addiction, gang warfare, prostitution, sex shops, homelessness, suicide, murder, family breakdown and tidal waves of clinical depression-- really closer to the ideals of the 1916 Rising than was the Ireland of 1967, as recorded in the Rocky Road to Dublin?
Is this the Ireland that Peter Lennon and those earnest Trinity students dreamed of?
The camera never lies. This truth is borne out by Peter Lennon's storied documentary, The Rocky Road to Dublin, which sets out to be an indictment of late-sixties Ireland, but now seems like a monument to a more innocent and cultured era.
The question Lennon poses at the beginning of the film-- "What do you do with your revolution once you've got it?"-- has now taken on an extra, ironic layer of meaning. Of course, Lennon was referring to the Irish Revolution that began in 1916 and ended in Irish independence in the twenties, or perhaps even in the declaration of an Irish Republic in 1948.
But since The Rocky Road to Dublin was made, there has been a second revolution in Ireland-- a social and cultural revolution-- and it is this revolution that is essentially being urged in every frame of the documentary. So of course the question now applies to that revolution, too. What has it achieved? Is Irish society today an obvious improvement on the Irish society recorded in Lennon's documentary?
Every viewer must answer that question himself, or herself. But for me the answer is an emphatic "no".
Lennon printed the film in black and white, even though it was shot in colour, because he felt it "was more in keeping with the tone of the film", according to Wikipedia. This is consistent with Lennon's whole approach, which is (it must be said) rather manipulative and selective throughout-- although it must also be conceded that he lets his subjects speak for themselves, and these interviews are the most revealing and interesting part of the documentary.
Lennon, who was at the time a journalist for the Guardian (no surprise there), sets out to portray the Irish society of his time as grey, conformist, anti-intellectual, and in thrall to a dictatorial Catholic Church.
The film begins with a heavily-bespectacled boy standing up in a classroom and reciting: "Because of Adam's sin we are born without orig-- we are born without santifying grace, our intellect is darkened, our will is weakened and our passions incline us to evil, and we suffering-- we are subject to suffering and death."
The documentary is setting out its stall straight away. These poor kids being forced to trot out all this nonsense about mythical figures and mumbo-jumbo! But anyone who had a Catholic education in the eighties or nineties will feel a certain envy, I think. My religious education in school, to a great extent, consisted of pop psychology, and of watching "inspiring" feature films in religion class. When I did receive solid catechesis, mostly from an adorable old nun who treated us to Rollo chocolates, I found it fascinating. How is knowledge ever a bad thing? Even for a non-believer, isn't it good to know something about the teaching of the Church, if only for its historical and cultural importance? And it is obvious that catechesis doesn't take away from the rest of education, for all Ruadhri Quinn's claims, since Catholic schools have always tended to outperform non-denominational schools.
The film moves on to its credit sequence, over the titular song, "The Rocky Road to Dublin" by the Dubliners. (The Dubliners, in fact, supply the whole soundtrack.) The camera tracks through scenes of a beach, a country road, two priests on bicycles, and the skyline of Dublin. Everything looks cleaner and prettier than it does now-- no traffic-clogged roads, no fast food joints, no jeans or tracksuits, and next to no litter anywhere.
Peter Lennon narrates: "This is a personal attempt to reconstruct for the camera the plight of an island community which survived more than seven hundred years of English occupation, and then nearly sank under the weight of its own heroes and clergy. More than half a century ago at Easter 1916, the Irish made yet another attempt in a centuries-long history of insurrection to break free of England. A rebellion led by poets and socialists, it was one of the first attemps by a small nation to throw off a colonial power by force. It was also the ambition of these idealists to awaken a lethargic and indifferent Irish population to an ideal of freedom."
This, it has to be said, is the version of Irish history that has been established in the popular mind. But how true is it? It is, of course, true to say that the 1916 Rising was led by "poets and socialists", insofar as the Marxist James Connolly was one of its leading lights, and his Citizen's Army fought alongside the Irish Volunteers. But they were a minority, and it seems fair to say that most of those who fought in 1916-- like Patrick Pearse, his brother Willie, Joseph Plunkett, Con Colbert and Eamonn De Valera-- were committed Catholics. In fact, even James Connolly received the last rites prior to his execution, when such an act could have had no propaganda benefit for him.
It has often been said that the majority of those who fought in 1916 were educated by the Christian Brothers, whose ideals of faith and nation-- "for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland", as their motto ran-- motivated the insurrectionists. In fact, Kevin O'Higgins, who was a member of the first Dáil and a leading figure in the Irish Revolution, famously said: "we were the most conservative-minded revolutionaries who ever put through a successful revolution."
Of course, this itself is a slight distortion, since there were undoubtedly radical elements involved in the struggle for independence, but it seems truer than the history propounded by Peter Lennon in this documentary-- and by Ken Loach in his artistically excellent but historically misleading film, The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
The first interviewee is Sean O'Faolain, the short story writer whose radical journal, The Bell, anticipated the second Irish revolution-- that is, the social revolution. Funnily enough, even he appears in the documentary as a rather quaint, genteel and archaic figure, sitting in a garden smoking a pipe, wearing a grey suit and a sober tie. "The kind of society that actually grew up", he says, "is a society of what I call urbanised peasants-- a society which was without moral courage, which was constantly observing a self-interested silence, never speaking in moments of crisis, and in constant alliance with a completely obscurantist, regressive, repressive and uncultivated Church." (No mincing of words there). "A society of blatant inequalities and in which the whole spirit of '16 has been lost."
O'Faolain, along with other critics of post-revolutionary Ireland, cites republicanism as the ideal of 1916 and the War of Independence. But was it really? Was the political philosophy of republicanism, to those who fought for independence, more important than the actual vision of the Ireland that would emerge-- one that usually concentrated on the Irish language, Irish folklore and traditions, and indeed Christianity? Pearse, the guiding spirit of the Rising, called for an Ireland that was "not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well". Modernists who cite the Proclamation of the Irish Republic usually cite the phrase, "cherishing all the children of the nation equally". But they tend to ignore the fact that the very first phrase of the Proclamation is "in the name of God."
For such a celebrated documentary, I can't help thinking The Rocky Road to Dublin is rather clumsily put together. One sequence features the Royal Dublin Horseshow, for no obvious reason (though Lennon rather implausibly tries to link it to the decline of the British Ascendancy in Ireland). Conor Cruise O'Brien, the intellectual and politician, is interviewed and gives a long account of Ireland's foreign policy-- which seems rather irrelevant to the overall theme of the documentary. Later on, there is a protracted scene of a man "playing the spoons" in an Irish pub. (Where would you see that now?) It's fascinating to watch, but again seems out of place.
There is a short wordless scene in which we see the then-new housing estate of Ballymun, where I grew up and where I am sitting right now, as I type these words. The grey towers and flats that it shows are now mostly pulled down-- one block of flats is actually being slowly demolished at present-- and good riddance to them, I say (with a faint twinge of nostalgia). But the tracts of green space that the camera shows in this documentary is all built over now, and the vandalism and litter that is almost omnipresent in Ballymun is also absent from the footage.
Lennon shoots a long sequence in a pub, which he does his very best to make gloomy and melancholy, with many shots of vacant and pensive faces-- and where couldn't you find such faces? But for all his efforts, I think most pub-goers of today will feel envious of the drinkers in the film, who have communal sing-alongs of Irish ballads rather than big-screen TVs and pop music drowning out conversation.
We move on to a section which shows a hurling match (and which does not neglect to zoom in on two Catholic priests enjoying it from the stands, doubtless in a sinister fashion). Lennon focuses on certain controversial rules of the Gaelic Athletic Association (the governing body of hurling and gaelic football, which are at the moment more spectacularly popular than ever). At the time of the documentary, the organisation had rules against its members playing "foreign" games such as soccer and rugby, and also had a law against members of the British security forces taking part. Both rules have now been removed, the second one in recent years, the first one not long after Lennon's documentary. But of course the rule against foreign games had a very practical motive-- it was a kind of athletic protectionism, to create a space for native games to flourish. And it worked.
The Assistant Secretary of the GAA, who is interviewed but not named, explains: "It is necessary, of course, to understand that this rule is retained democratically; the Association has a democratic system which is even more democratic than the normal parliamentary system. This rule could be changed at any time that a majority of the members of the Association wish to have it changed." We should at least give Lennon credit for including that explanation, which rather weakens the case he is trying to make.
There are some comic aspects to the documentary. The captions are so large, square, declarative and blunt that they remind one of Monty Python's "How to Recognise Different Trees" skit. And during one sequence on industrialisation, a Japanese gentleman in heavily-rimmed glasses (there are lots of heavily-rimmed glasses on display) explains that he is teaching Judo to the workers in the Guinness factory.
Another scene shows a group of Trinity students, gaunt and cigarette-smoking and dressed in polo-necks, overcoats, and shirtsleeves discussing censorship and the failings of the Irish press. Of course they are laying into the Church, the press, and the conservatism of RTE, rather stridently and excitedly. But where will we find such earnest, intellectually serious, publicly-spirited students today? Where are the sort of students we read about in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or even At Swim Two Birds or Anthony Cronin's Dead as Doornails? Do today's university students sit around in pubs arguing about politics and philosophy and emancipation? I've worked in a university library for over ten years now. I find the students to be polite, friendly and entirely endearing. But the conversations that I overhear, and the posters that I see around campus, leave me under no illusions that they are the heirs of Stephen Daedalus and the young Anthony Cronin. Could it be that something in grey, conformist, Catholic Ireland was propitious to that kind of student earnestness?
Lennon does not fail to linger on Ireland's censorship laws, which were indeed a sitting target. A long list of the names of writers banned in Ireland rolls down the screen at one point, to the sound of funeral bells, and though I am not against censorship on principle, it is hard to defend the laws that obtained in the Irish state for so long-- although I have often thought that the Playboy of the Western World riots, censorship of books, and so forth was a sign of a public more culturally alive than otherwise. Who would riot at a play today? Who today would take the power of ideas so seriously as to call for a book to be banned?
Perhaps the most remarkable part of The Rocky Road to Dublin is the extensive footage of Father Michael Cleary, the original "Father Trendy". We see him singing a pop song in a hospital ward, giving a speech at a wedding breakfast, and sharing a cigarette with some grave-diggers. We also hear him eloquently defending the Church's requirement of priestly celibacy, despite his own avowed desire to be married and have a family. "I believe that I get the tremendous power from God-- the power to recreate His body on the altar-- you know, I give him back a gift in return. Now, to someone you love and love deeply and to whom you owe a lot, you don't just give him sixpence-worth or a shilling's worth, you give him something that hurts, something you feel. And if I didn't miss marriage and all that goes with it, it wouldn't be a sacrifice..."
Of course, the irony is that Father Michael did not make such a sacrifice-- after his death, it was revealed that his housekeeper had been his common-law wife for 26 years, and that he had fathered a child by her. This, along with a similar revelation about Bishop Eamon Casey, is often cited (truly or falsely) as one of the catalysts of the Irish Catholic Church's decline in the nineties-- although it seems small beer compared to the horrors of clerical sex abuse that emerged later.
But for all his hypocrisy, Father Cleary seems like a rather amiable character, and nothing he actually says seems objectionable. The scene that shows wedding guests singing Irish patriotic ballads-- all of which they obviously know by heart-- makes me sad that we have lost so much of this folkloric heritage.
But at least Father Cleary and the other "forces of reaction" have the courage to appear on screen. A female voice, which we are informed belongs to a young wife, informs us (over footage of a sea-shore) that priests are always "on the men's side" when it comes to matters of sex and childbirth, and criticizes Church teaching on birth control. I imagine that Lennon could have found many female interviewees who were entirely supportive of Church teaching on sex, and who would have been happy to show their faces. But they do not appear. Just a disembodied voice over footage of the sea.
Perhaps the most poignant and haunting interview in The Rocky Road to Dublin is with Professor Liam O'Brien, a member of the censorship appeal board. Lennon must have seen this guy as a gift from heaven; he is almost a caricature of a hopeless reactionary, with sunken cheeks, wrinkled face, a shock of badly-combed white hair, a sober black suit and tie, and a habit of sucking his teeth for emphasis. He complains of the "horrible noises" of contemporary music and the "strum strum stum" of guitars. He denounces "pop orchestras", complains that the idea of sin has been abolished, and declares that "the Church is preparing for the fight, for the future fight against the future thought of mankind, and I am full of faith that...shall I say...that the gates of Hell shall not prevail."
So Lennon was probably rubbing his hands with glee as he edited this particular footage. But in fact it is actually the bewildered-looking, rather wild-eyed Professor O'Brien who makes the most insightful contribution to the whole documentary.
In the closing moments of the film, after denouncing "pop orchestras" and other aspects of modern culture, he says: "To give it its due, it is a break away from what was, into what is and what will be, and I suppose it will all acquire a character, acquire a tradition, it will acquire a...a mellowness which is not there yet. I think that's what's wrong with it really, that we are at a beginning of a new age, really a wonderful age in the world, but at the beginning of it, and therefore it hasn't any, so to speak, traditional character about it yet. But it's gaining it every moment, every day. And I wish it well, I wish it well. I won't see it. That's about all I can say about it."
The last shot of Professor O'Brien shows him looking rather pensively and sadly into the middle distance, as if he is doubtful of his own generous words. And isn't it clear now that they were, indeed, too generous?
Has popular culture, modern culture, consumer culture, attained the depth and maturity and mellowness that Professor O'Brien hoped for it?
Or has it become more lurid, more shallow, more dumbed-down and illiterate as the decades rolled on? Are the X-Factor and Damien Hirst and Beavis and Butthead the fruits that Sean O'Faolain had in mind when he sought liberation from an obscurantist Church?
Is the Ireland of 2012-- the Ireland in which we are becoming more and more acquainted with drug-addiction, gang warfare, prostitution, sex shops, homelessness, suicide, murder, family breakdown and tidal waves of clinical depression-- really closer to the ideals of the 1916 Rising than was the Ireland of 1967, as recorded in the Rocky Road to Dublin?
Is this the Ireland that Peter Lennon and those earnest Trinity students dreamed of?
Giovanni Trappatoni and Enda Kenny are climbing Croagh Patrick together..
...and when they reach the top, Trappatoni lifts his arms in the air and says, "Oh God, please save this miserable wretch from the punishment that his infamous actions deserve!".
"Take it easy, Trapp", says the Taoiseach. "I think you're being a bit tough on yourself there."
"I wasn't talking about me!" says Trappatoni.
(For the benefit of my non-Irish readers, Enda Kenny is Ireland's Taoiseach or prime minister. Last year he launched a blistering attack on the Vatican in a now-famous speech, and his government has closed Ireland's embassy to the Holy See. He also wants us to sign away our economic independence to the European Union in an upcoming referendum. Giovanni Trappatoni is the manager of the Irish soccer team, who this summer are competing in the European Championship Finals. He's also a pious Catholic. On Friday they joined in a charity climb up Croagh Patrick, a mountain that is one of Ireland's most popular pilgrimages. The opportunity seemed too good to resist...I hope it gives birth to some better jokes than that one!)
"Take it easy, Trapp", says the Taoiseach. "I think you're being a bit tough on yourself there."
"I wasn't talking about me!" says Trappatoni.
(For the benefit of my non-Irish readers, Enda Kenny is Ireland's Taoiseach or prime minister. Last year he launched a blistering attack on the Vatican in a now-famous speech, and his government has closed Ireland's embassy to the Holy See. He also wants us to sign away our economic independence to the European Union in an upcoming referendum. Giovanni Trappatoni is the manager of the Irish soccer team, who this summer are competing in the European Championship Finals. He's also a pious Catholic. On Friday they joined in a charity climb up Croagh Patrick, a mountain that is one of Ireland's most popular pilgrimages. The opportunity seemed too good to resist...I hope it gives birth to some better jokes than that one!)
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