Ireland: A God Fearing Nation Finally Grows Some Balls
Declan Harvey is proud that the Irish are finally standing up to the Catholic Church and asserting themselves. It's about time, he says.
27 Jul 2011, 10:19
Cardinal Sean Brady: Under fire
It's difficult to overstate the influence the clergy had in Ireland. We allowed their tentacles to infiltrate and corrupt the education and health systems. Their laws became our laws. And the more guilt they could pile on the better, it seemed.
And even though I'm often amazed by how instinctively open-minded the Irish are by nature, judging by our behaviour over the last 90 years you would be forgiven for disagreeing. Open-mindedness, you see, is not the natural friend of the pious. So that fine characteristic lay suppressed, unused and unexploited. As a result the Irish have for generations been letting themselves down.
Pity the gay, the single mother, the protestant, the flirt, the separated female, the sexually adventurous (to name but a few) living in Ireland during the 40s, 60s or even 80s.
Recently I heard veteran Irish chat host Gay Byrne describe how audience members in the late seventies and early eighties stormed out of his TV studio because divorce and contraception were being discussed. Just discussed! Elsewhere priests were treated like deities in their own right. We surrendered our minds and morals to an organisation that harboured and protected the foulest sexual abusers and oversaw the management of orphanages and 'laundries' whose inmates were physically, psychologically and emotionally tortured for decades.
Arguably some good came from the church but equal good has appeared in places the church has never reached so as a result I can't help feeling the Emerald Isle would shine brighter had the Vatican never got its grubby mits on us!
But the winds of change have become a blowing gale in Ireland and it's experiencing nothing short of a reformation - an intellectual revolution led by a generation of well educated, well travelled twenty and thirty-somethings.
It's been slowly building over the past 15 years: divorce was introduced and much more recently gay partnerships; church attendance has been plummeting; protests have stopped outside Ann Summers' stores as sex is no longer sinful or confined to the missionary position; faiths now inter-marry without a second thought. In fact it's come so far that I imagine one must feel a little self-conscious wearing a dog collar. The evangelists will tell you the Irish have turned away from God and are dancing with Lucifer himself - but then they would say that. I see it more as a country finally standing up for itself.
And never was it more apparent than when the new Irish Prime Minister took to his feet in parliament last week.
Enda Kenny was reacting to the Cloynes Report, the latest in a long line of investigations into sexual abuse by priests and the jaw-dropping attempts by bishops to conceal it. What stunned the country so deeply is that the activities under scrutiny were not decades old but happened only three or four years ago.
For the first time in the state's history a senior member of government brought the fight to the Vatican. Impassioned and emboldened Mr Kenny reminded the Pope that Ireland is a democratic republic whose laws supersede Canon Law. He called the conduct of church authorities dysfunctional, disconnected and elitist. He's also proposed new legislation that will make it illegal for anyone to withhold knowledge of sexual abuse - even if the information is heard during confession.
The country gasped in delight. Rarely has an elected representative taken the temperature of his people so accurately. Words to this effect would have been unimaginable ten years ago. But the Irish today lead the world in education; the now deceased Celtic Tiger brought prosperity and catapulted Ireland into the 21st century. A bright young workforce had money to spend and brought home big ideas from their international travels. The Taoiseach described the reaction as "astounding".
And it seems they'll not be satisfied with where Mr Kenny left off. Ahead of next year’s Eucharistic Congress being held in Ireland there is rumour His Holiness will be told he's not welcome until significant and meaningful moves are made to remedy the corruption in his organisation. Pay attention Britain, pay attention world!
The Irish embassy in the Vatican is also being closed as part of cost cutting measures, but the timing is extraordinary, no? And the Holy See's ambassador to Dublin has also been recalled this week for emergency meetings in Rome.
Finally whilst in Donegal last weekend I read a gentleman called Senator David Norris is odds on to be elected the next President of Ireland. A highly respected intellectual and commentator David Norris is openly gay. What?! A gay president of Ireland?!! It's an unbelievable testament to how far the Irish have come. Not only would President Norris be Europe’s first openly(!) homosexual head of state he has made the headlines many time in Ireland for attacking the popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI and their aversion to “the truth”.
And what's even more extraordinary is it's barely costing anyone a thought - the Irish hardly know they're doing it. It's instinctive.
Although my faith has no fixed abode I'm immensely proud of a population that has finally started to act like Christians.
Comments (7)
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An interesting article, but it leaves out a number of things.
1. Without its Catholic identity Ireland would still be part of the UK.
2. The vast majority of Catholic priests and nuns led exemplary lives, and did indeed offer service and help to others. I can't say though, that I am so sanguine about the impact of the bishops.
3. A lot of the very rough treatment of orphans, single mothers, boarding-school kids etc. also went on in Britain in perfectly secular schools. We had out own homes for single mothers, beatings by sadistic teachers at both public and state schools, as well as a huge amount of sexual abuse. I am not making any excuses for the Catholic church here.
4. (Minor point). It's "canon law", not "cannon law".
27/07/2011 11:35"Open-mindedness, you see, is not the natural friend of the pious".
Oh, really? This sounds like someone being closed-minded to the possibility that those who profess faith in a creator God and hence seek to learn more about that world can actually exist (I am one, so I'm fairly confident these types exist).
Open-mindedness, you see, is not the natural friend of the non-pious, either.
27/07/2011 12:07James is spot on. "Open-mindedness, you see, is not the natural friend of the pious" is such a quasi-pithy, but in reality bland, sweeping and meaningless phrase. If he had said "religion tends towards social conservatism"...there he might have had a point. But to suggest that people who lead religious lives are unable to think for themselves...meh.
Not a bad article overall, though, to be fair.
27/07/2011 13:15Amazing if the Pope would not be welcome in Ireland, especially after the fawning reception he had in the UK. Fascinating article.
27/07/2011 14:29Those of us who've spent any time in the Catholic Church know that it's not just in Ireland that priests were treated like deities. And it's not just in Ireland that the Catholic Church hid and protected those of its priests who repaid that hero-worship by using and abusing the children who were brought to them. In England too there are abuse victims still unsuccessfully trying to get the church to acknowledge what its priests did, and the church hierarchy have lied, and lied, and lied.
27/07/2011 15:22You think this is an issue for the Catholic Church alone; try all organisations where children are to be found - public and private including Church run (thats all Churches) and you will find these miscreants. The Catholic Church failed misreably in its response but they are not alone. Society generally including Governments that now rail against the Church have a lot to answer for including the Irish Government. We all looked the other way whether it was state run orphanages, schools, scouts, youth groups. What we are witnessing is a community failing that is bigger than the Catholic Church; if you think otherwise you have no idea of the problem.
27/07/2011 15:23Interesting perspective, but you (and others) seem to create a false dichotomy between the church and the Irish people.
These priests, nuns, etc were not Vaticanise, they were the oldest sons and unmarried daughters of the Irish people. One could argue about cultural imperialism etc, but I believe in responsibility and individual agency, something this article ignores.
As a son of Irish immigrants, with catholic education and upbringing, I don't recognise the church you describe. I'm not saying these things didn't/don't happen but you have missed magnificantly any context whatsoever.
Like I said, interesting.
27/07/2011 18:11