The Real Face of Irish Labour?

Kevin Myers is no longer an opinion former.  When he moved from the Irish Times to the Irish Independent (which, in fact,  sells far more copies),  our chattering classes forgot all about him.  His recent analysis of the unrepentant and narrow Marxist background of many of our current Labour leaders will be ignored.   It’s startling and it’s alarming, not least in its account of the “disappearance” of a file on the Workers Party from the Irish Times archives.

Labour may be a minority in a future coalition with  Fine Gael, but it’s well able to wield an influence far beyond its actual numbers, just as the few Progressive Democrats turned their many Fianna Fail colleagues from being pragmatic politicians into mindless worshippers of  wealth.  Labour’s leaders act like street fighters, whereas Fine Gael prides itself on being genteel, so, in coalition with Labour, it won’t stand a chance.

There’s an international aspect to Labour’s secularist mindset, a mindset that the (often maligned) Greek Orthodox Church has identified on the other side of Europe.   Do we really want the characterless,  but politically correct  Europe we are being offered by self-styled and self-regarding radicals?

Rushing to Explain and Excuse Murder

Some of the comments about the recent shooting in Foot Hood, Texas,  are remarkably like those made whenever there’s a murder in Ireland, or elsewhere: the killer must be unwell, cannot have been himself/herself, etc. The victims are overlooked,  as we indulge in public agonizing about the mindset of the perpetrator:  “How will the shooter feel when he wakes up?”

David Brooks confronts this attitude head-on in today’s New York Times.  About one-third of his article, on “Rushing to Therapy”, applies only to contemporary America, but most of it could be written about Western culture in general, and Ireland in particular, including his conclusion that the reaction to the killing “denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation“.

On not listening to the Irish Laity

Eamon Casey’s relationship with Annie Murphy was his biggest mistake during his time as Bishop of Kerry.   This was so scandalous that it completely overshadows another error: the destruction of the interior of  St.Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney.  The layman who planned the renovation(and who ruined church interiors the length and breadth of Ireland) is dead, but Killarney Cathedral remains as one of the worst examples of his work.

Ireland’s strict new planning laws and local protests recently prevented a similar catastrophe in Cobh Cathedral. This  leaves one question: does anybody really seek the opinion of  worshippers? Or, more broadly, how many church leaders really listen?

Breda O’Brien gives an outstanding reflection on current happenings at Knock Shrine and analyses some of the fundamental weaknesses of Irish Catholicism.  A lot of people want warmth and involvement;  they want to be given something to do, rather than turn up and just sit there (which is the Irish tradition in worship).   Breda is correct when she says, as Pentecostals already know, that a lot of people go where the action is.

Catholic guilt and Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie’s strong  Anglican faith is usually overlooked in assessments  of the “Queen of Crime”: a faith so deep that, in her old age, Holy Communion was brought to her at home .   Her novels have a strong Christian ethic, with an insistence on the complete injustice of homocide.  She shows a quiet sensitivity to Catholics in England, with their smaller churches, their opposition to divorce and their (then) abstention from meat on Fridays.

John Curran, an Irish Christie expert, has just published a witty and perceptive assessment of her work:  Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, but he strikes one false note:  analysing the plot of Taken at the Flood (1948),  he writes  “Rosaleen’s religion…is also an important plot device. Her Roman Catholicism, and its attendant guilt…”

Seeing Catholics as feeling especially “guilty” is both clichéd and wrong.   Using it here is intellectually lazy and it’s also inaccurate in the context of a fascinating detective story, because Rosaleen (one of the few pleasant characters in the book)  has a well developed Christian conscience, but it’s not especially Catholic.  Her Catholicism is important to the plot, but Agatha Christie doesn’t make the mistake of ascribing stronger feelings of guilt  to Catholics.

John Curran ought to have followed her example.

Silliness at the Royal Irish Academy

It’s hard to find a more austere, august and intellectually respectable institution than the Royal Irish Academy.   From its base in Dawson Street, the Academy has made an immeasurable contribution to Irish life.

It was in keeping with the Academy’s tradition that it should invite Professor Eamon Duffy to lecture on the role of the Church historian.  Eamon Duffy  has challenged and changed the way historians think about the English Reformation.  He makes no secret of being a committed Catholic, so his talk at the Academy reflected his beliefs.

All went well, with the only jarring note being struck by a retired Irish academic, who deplored Professor Duffy’s positive views of hierarchy in the Church, because “we have suffered so much” from hierarchy in Ireland.

The remark was crass and remarkably lacking in historical perspective.  It was a sad example of a “stuck in the Sixties”  mindset.  On the other hand, it showed why Professor Duffy has an international reputation and why his interlocutor doesn’t.

Knock: are we clergy losing control?

John Cooney thinks that the vast crowds at Knock are a sign that we, the clergy, are losing control of the faithful.   He makes some very good points, but he’s wrong in thinking that modern Irish devotion to Mary is a clerical creation – in fact, its roots are ancient and deep.  Clerical “control” vanished a long time ago.

Commentators on Knock seem to overlook the huge and regular attendance of Travellers, who, like  marginalised groups all over the world,  are attracted to popular and exuberant forms of devotion.  John Cooney, and others, are right, however, in saying that we clergy are nonplussed by the crowds a clairvoyant draws to Knock.  Bishops can be blindsided by those who seem to be holier than the norm:   Christina Gallagher’s  House of Prayer on Achill Island is an outstanding example of how to out-pace Church authorities.

Meanwhile, claims about “faltering faith” and the death of Irish Catholicism are shown, in the recent poll for the Iona Institute, to be greatly exaggerated.

In Defence of the People at Knock Shrine

Catholics don’t have to believe in Marian apparitions.   All of them, including Lourdes and Fatima, may have or may not have Church approval, but all remain matters of opinion.   We may appreciate the prayerful and healing atmosphere offered in the great shrines, but we don’t have to believe that Mary appeared there,  nor are we obliged to believe that the bones of Saint James really are in Santiago de Compostela.

It’s not surprising that many thousands (nobody can agree on the exact number) went to Knock Shrine yesterday, for the second time this autumn.   Some really expected to see an apparition of  Our Lady and some went out of curiosity.  In troubled times, people seek comfort wherever they can find it and Knock has always offered comfort.

The reaction of our newspaper columnists is as expected: ‘gullible ‘ is today’s term of choice, rather than ‘ faithful’ or ‘hopeful.’ Liam Fay, perhaps the most acidulated of all Irish columnists, sums  up the prevailing attitude.

Four years ago, in Summer 2005, Breda O’Brien wrote in Studies about the Irish media’s problems with Irish religion.   Nothing has changed. The print media treats the thousands who attend outdoor rock festivals with reverence and the thousands who go annually to the National Ploughing Championships with respect;  the thousands who go to Knock can expect only contempt.

More Anti-Catholicism in the “Irish Times”: Finnuala O’Connor’s turn

The Irish Times is always on the side of the oppressed, wherever they may be, but it’s never comfortable when discussing Northern Irish Catholics, because, well,  to be honest, they are Nationalists and are … er… Catholics!  In every story, it must find them somehow at fault or, at least, sharing the blame.

Finnuala O’Connor has written brilliantly about Northern Ireland, but even she has to show her credentials as a critical former Catholic -  it’s almost a job requirement.  Today, she’s discussing the annual problem of Remembrance Sunday in the North,  not least because British politicians now start wearing their poppies in mid-October.  Nelson McCausland is a DUP member and government minister,  who won’t hesitate to wear a poppy and who doesn’t, on principle,  attend Catholic services.

Then, Finnuala O’Connor writes:  “With the publication of the Dublin and Cloyne reports, after the flood of revelations in recent years about priestly paedophilia and church cover-up, any number of Catholics may come to share McCausland’s wariness about Catholic churches.”

Is this sentence merely intellectually flabby or is it grossly defamatory?  Is Finnuala O’Connor really saying that all Catholic churches are potential dens of paedophilia?   Or is she engaging in wishful thinking as she imagines a Catholic exodus?   Does she think other Northern Catholics are as unsophisticated in their beliefs as she appears to be?

Finnuala O’Connor would write a much better and far more original article if she investigated why Catholics in Northern Ireland were sidelined on Remembrance Sunday from its origins (just as Northern Ireland was being founded) and why their names were deliberately omitted from War Memorials.  That would be preferable to giving even the mildest endorsement to the Democratic Unionist Party.

Hans Kung, Anglicans and the Pope

Hans Kung doesn’t like Benedict XVI,  who used to be his protege and whom he regards as intellectually and socially his inferior.  It’s not surprising, therefore, that Father Kung says very harsh things about the Vatican in an article published in today’s Guardian.

Kung, however, knows Anglicanism well and makes it clear that part of Anglican troubles are self-created.  This is the only note of friendly criticism that the Anglican Communion seems to be receiving at the moment.  Father Kung sees Rome as being power-obsessed and Anglicanism as confused.   There’s always a grain of truth in any criticism, but Hans Kung (who had his head turned by early success) always overstates his case.

The unsmiling face of Irish Labour

Why is Joan Burton the only smiling face amongst the more gifted of our Labour Party leaders?   She’s warm, personable and obliging, but her colleagues seem to think that our national crisis requires permanent frowns:  Eamon Gilmore normally wears the firm expression of a Taoiseach-in-Waiting;  Ruairi Quinn usually looks grumpy;  Pat Rabbitte can only be described as choleric.  Should we trust them with our future, or make it a prior conditi0n that each of them develops a sense of humour?

On the other hand, there’s one prominent Labour person who cannot be stopped from smiling:  Ivana Bacik.    Ivana, alas,  cannot be stopped from talking, endlessly, on any subject. She fills an awful lot of airtime, so our radio chat shows love her, but they ought to be kinder to the listening public and give her, and us, a rest.

This blog owes an apology to Seamus Breathnach, who sent a comment two weeks ago, with an excellent defense of the Labour Party and a ringing denunciation of the Irish Catholic Church.  WordPress filed it under Spam and it was deleted in error.   Seamus:  I am sorry, because what you wrote deserved publication.