L'esprit de l'escalier: First Thoughts on Redefining Marriage

Earlier today, for reasons I'm not going to get into here, I needed to talk about same-sex marriage. I don't think I did a very good job of it, and rather wish I'd held my fire for a few days.

It's not been a subject I've been hugely inclined to get bothered about, which is one of the reasons I'd not responded when someone asked me on Monday when I was going to talk about the redefinition of marriage.

(The other was that I forgot: I had meant to say I'd no plans to talk about it, and then it slipped my mind.)

Intuitively, I've been rather conflicted on the topic, which is hardly surprising for someone who has a fair number of gay friends.

Instinctively...

Part of me has been opposed to it on, effectively, semantic grounds: marriage has always* meant the union of a man and a woman with the intention, in principle, of enabling the birth and rearing of children; indeed the word matrimony derives from the Latin word for 'mother' and recognises that marriage does not exist for the marrying couple, but for the sake of any children they might have.

I don't like language being changed. I realise that semantic change happens all the time, but it's normally an organic process. It shouldn't simply be the case of a State announcing that a word no longer means what it used to.

After all, the Government could announce that henceforth all housecats were to be renamed, in law, as Bengal tigers, thereby officially raising the number of Bengal tigers from little more than 3,000 worldwide to about eight million in Britain alone.  I think we'd all agree that such a change would be a charade; it would in no way alter the fact that tigers are an endangered species.

On the other hand, I tend to take a 'live and let live' attitude. I have gay friends who support the idea of the State redefining marriage for the sake of equality, and I can understand what they say about the symbolic value of such a change. If it makes gay people happy to call their state-sanctioned pair-bonds marriages, well, what harm will it do? After all, does it really make sense to say that this devalues marriage, as I've heard people claiming? I commented on this on Twitter about a week back, feeling that the horse had long bolted from Society's marital stable, and grimly observing of marriage that 'I doubt there are many things that could devalue it more than the massive divorce rate.'

And I wasn't surprised to see other Christians sharing my relative nonchalance about the subject.

And yet...

Something came up during the week, which has driven me to ponder this more seriously since Thursday morning. I've done quite a lot of reading on the subject, and spoken to a few friends -- including one of my closest confidantes, who is bisexual, politically active on LGBT issues, and living with a couple in a civil partnershop -- and have thought a lot more deeply on the matter than I'd ever done, considering angles I'd previously not even thought of.

And all my pondering's left me increasingly convinced that those objecting most loudly to the possibility of this may well be right.

That's not to say that we don't have bigger problems to deal with, just that you play the team in front of you, not the one you wish was there.

What's at issue here?

It seems to me that people recognise that, in real terms, civil partnership, as it now exists, legally bestows all the rights of marriage -- indeed, section 3(4) of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 make that very point:

'For the purposes of paragraphs (1) and (3), the fact that one of the persons (whether or not B) is a civil partner while the other is married shall not be treated as a material difference in the relevant circumstances.'

This lack of meaningful legal distinction underpinned the court decision last January to support a gay couple in a civil partnership who challenged the legal right of a couple who owned a B&B near Penzance to refuse to accommodate unmarried couples in double beds. In other words, despite how when civil partnership was introduced it was explicitly differentiated from marriage, and despite how in principle a civil partnership without any sexual component whatsoever could be established between two heterosexual friends, in British law a civil partnership is now functionally equivalent to marriage.

Indeed, it's clear that this is recognised by society at large; many people already refer to civil partnerships as 'gay marriages' and describe attending civil partnership ceremonies as 'going to weddings'. Gay marriage is already in many respects a social reality.

The push, and it's not a broadly-based one, for same-sex partnerships to be legally recognised as marriages can, therefore, have no practical purpose, as that practical purpose has already been achieved. The change is essentially about symbolism. It's about a cosmetic notion equality, whereby same-sex couples will be enabled to feel that the State formally approves of their relationships in the same way that it approves of marriages.

The Point of Marriage

Marriage, however, is not and has never been a socially-approved love-bond; indeed, throughout history it's been quite rare to think of love as essential to marriage. Desirable, sure, but not essential.  Why would the State care whether two individuals -- of whatever sexual orientation -- love each other or not? It's not the State's business to comment on our private relationships.

What marriage primarily is, and what it has always been, is a mechanism to enable the procreation and the rearing of children in a safe, stable, and balanced environment. This is, by definition, a public rather than a private relationship, and it is something that creates a public good.  It is for this reason, and essentially only for this reason, that the State recognises marriage as an institution.

Discussions about what's fair for adults miss the point. From the point of view of the State, marriage has always been viewed as an essentially child-centred institution. 

Marriage as the foundation of the family in Irish and British law...
The two states that exist in these islands have both legally recognised this fact. In the case of Ireland, this is expressly stated in article 41 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish Constitution, in which the State 'recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law,' guarantees to protect the family, 'as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State,' and 'pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded.'

Look at that. The Irish State sees marriage as something to be protected as the Family is founded on the institution of marriage, which is seen as necessary to social order and the welfare of the nation as a whole.

So what, you might think: the Irish State may see things that way, but the United Kingdom has a different view. Well I think you'd be surprised. In 1948, the United Kingdom signed up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 16 of which says:

'Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.'

This, essentially, makes the same points about marriage as are made in the Irish Constitution. The fact that the article says 'men and women' is important, as it recognises the balanced nature of marriage as a bond between people of different sexes; it would have been easy for the framers of the Declaration to have said that 'everyone of full age... has the right to marry and found a family'.

All other rights are expressed in a generic, gender-neutral way. Only the right to marriage recognises that men and women are different; this is a recognition of how sexual complementarity is essential to marriage.

Three years after the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Kingdom signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, which had been inspired by Winston Churchill and drafted under the guidance of the later Lord Chancellor Kilmuir. Following the pattern of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 12 of the Convention pointedly does not say that everyone has the right to marry:

'Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this rights.'

As the European Court of Human Rights has recognised, this should not be interpreted as saying that people have a right to marry whoever they wish; the nature of marriage as a bond between people of opposite sexes for the purpose of founding a family is implicit in the article's wording.

The Court has also stressed that the Convention must be read as a whole, rather than with individual articles torn out of context, and that when read this way 'all other substantive Articles of the Convention grant rights and freedoms to "everyone”"or state that "no one" is to be subjected to certain types of prohibited treatment. The choice of wording in Article 12 must thus be regarded as deliberate.'

It is important too to understand that Britain has an established church, and though most opponents of this fact take issue with what they see as the Church of England's inappropriate influence on how the country is governed, the fact is that -- if anything -- the traffic of power goes the other way. Among other things, Parliament authorised the 1662 Anglican liturgy, and as such, in a legal sense, it speaks through the Church of England, or at least through its traditional prayers.

There was an attempt in the 1920s to change the official prayerbook, but Parliament blocked the proposals as being too Catholic in tone; since the Parliamentary refusals to sanction changes to the prayerbook, the Church of England has largely insisted on its right to choose its own prayers regardless of Parliament. As such, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer still stands as a Parliamentary expression.

And what does this say of marriage? It defines marriage as a holy estate, in which man and woman are joined together, for three reasons, the first of which is the procreation and rearing of children, and it says that marriage is not lawful if it is contrary to God's law or the law of the land. In other words, Parliament says that for marriage to be lawful it must follow the pattern of Christian marriage as laid out in the New Testament.

As for what that is, and why this matters, I'll get into it tomorrow...

___________________________________________________________________________

* Yes, I know about polygamy, but even then, there haven't been many societies in which polygamy has been very common, and scarcely any polygamous societies practice 'group marriage'. Instead, what tends to exist are situations where an individual can be in more than one pair-bond at any given time, such that a man can have two wives, but the wives are not wives to each other. The basic principle that a marriage is a bond between one man and one woman has been the basic universal norm throughout history.

Eolaí and his Painting Tour: Week Twelve

Well, the Painting Tour is over, and like Odysseus, our weary wanderer is home. It's been nearly three months since the Brother set off on his cycle, during which time he's visited twenty-nine of Ireland's traditional counties, clocked up more than three thousand kilometres in the saddle, painted a hell of a lot of paintings, met huge numbers of wonderful people, lost a few pounds, got more familiar with the Irish weather than any man should ever do, and drank prodigious amounts of tea.

Not bad going, eh?

Last time we heard of him, he was in Antrim, having been collected by Grannymar just north of Cushendun, and with his giant bike stashed into her little car, had been taken home by her, there to be met by a king's feast of buttered tiger bread and Barry's tea. It was to be a packed couple of days.

Friday was a day for sightseeing, with Grannymar driving him hither and thither, to the Hole Stone, Lough Neagh, Antrim Castle and its gardens, Gleno Waterfall, Randalstown, and William of Orange's landing point at Carrickfergus. That she did all that driving after her recent fall amazes me; God only knows what she could have done if she'd not had a tumble. Still, as she said to me, the Brother's visit was just the distraction she needed from her cracked bones and numb face: she loved seeing the world from his perspective.

The bridge on the river Maine

Saturday saw him visiting Glenariff and Waterfoot, there to indulge in Thai yellow soup on the strand, before heading off leaving a briefly broken internet and an otherwise deeply impressed lady behind him; Grannymar's own take on the visit is well worth your perusal.

And he's off again...

He cycled south, and whizzed through Belfast as he chased the sunset into Down, his twenty-fifth county, there to settle for the night in the safety of Helen's Bay.

Chased and caught. Mission accomplished.

Sunday morning was spent painting one of the trips most beautiful paintings, a suitably blue take on the Hollywood shore, and then he got another lift, his second shortcut of the trip, this being a straightforward necessity at this stage: time was running out and the days are getting very short. Cycling even in the dusk is far from wise, as the Brother learned all too painfully fifteen years ago.

An atypically blue sky for the Brother, perhaps inspired by events in Croke Park...

Of course, there was more to Sunday than cycling and painting. The Brother naturally wanted to see the All Ireland Football Final, with Dublin in it for the first time since 1995, and beating Kerry by 1-12 to 1-11 with almost the last kick of the match.

Cycling through Armagh, his twenty-sixth county, he arrived in Newry as it was darkening, it being the last hostless night of the trip and the Brother seeking advice over somewhere to stay that wouldn't break the bank and that'd guarantee him a wifi connection. Suggestions were hurled from all sides, and in the end he found his spot and got stuck into a night of painting and more high-tech shenanigans.

Monday began with a colossal breakfast of sausages, eggs, black and white puddings, rashers, potato cake, soda farl, mushrooms, tomatoes, toast, and croissants. And, of course, tea. There's a reason why Ulster fries are the stuff of legend. Once he'd fuelled up for the day he got stuck into a commissioned painting, did some research and plotting for the way onward, and then was off again. Southwest he pedalled, across Armagh through Camlough, Silverbridge, and Crossmaglen, taking him back over the border into Monaghan, his twenty-seventh county, where it was raining. Again.

He made his way around the north and east of Lake Muckno, through Castleblaney and on through the rain to Ballybay, there to stay with John McGuirk, doyen of the new Irish right, to spend the evening eating Viennetta ice cream, watching telly, and teaching his host about politics.

Now this is what we in school used to call 'undulating countryside'.

The early hours of Tuesday were spent poring over maps again, and then it was once more time to paint. Monaghan, he said: the whole county. Deeming that impractical, he settled instead for a very wide view of McGuirk's farm, nestled as it is in drumlin country. Off he set then, confidently, having been advised by the Norwegians to expect sun.

(The Norwegians, it should be clarified, are not these merry fellows from Bergen, but are in fact an extraordinarily useful meteorological service. The Brother's reliance on these was just another example of just how high-tech this superficially old-fashioned painting tour was.)

Off he set then from Ballybay, keeping his eye out for Patrick Kavanagh's bank of youth, notoriously burgled by Monaghan's stony grey soil, he looped back to Doohamlet and followed the back roads to Lough Egish, leaving Monaghan by way of Carrickmacross and entering Meath, his twenty-eighth county, near Drumcondrath. On then, through Lobinstown and near Wilkinstown, racing against the darkness as he pushed himself on towards Navan, the heritage capital of Ireland.

Gorgeous though it is, I'd not want to be risking country roads in this light.

Wednesday was a day to surprise those who haven't been paying attention, an oddity that saw the Brother ending the day further from Dublin than he'd began it, which is perhaps a bit counter-intuitive, but is what happens when the counties are in the wrong order. As they are.

The Brother cycled into Navan proper, crossed the Boyne, and then cycled northeast along the river to Ardmulchan where he crossed over to its northern bank, cycling on through Tankardstown, Ivybrook, and Grangegeeth. Sadly, unlike Dustin the Turkey who lamented how he'd never been to Meath, the Brother merely lamented the weather, as it hammered down on him as he cycled, leaving him drenched right through to the Boyne*; he coped, but after the last couple of weeks he had to admit that he was getting rather tired of the weather.

Fwiw, this is Met Eireann he's looking at. The Brother isn't entirely faithful to the Norwegians.

And, to be fair, who'd blame him?

He pushed on through the incessant rain into Louth, his twenty-ninth county, making his way through Collon, Whiteriver, and Dunleer to his friends in Castlebellingham, with the weather suddenly deciding to brighten up towards the end, like someone who's sulked all day and then suddenly shows up with a breezy smile, as though oblivious to the fact that they've been ruining everyone else's fun. Finally, in deceptively gorgeous conditions, he reached his destination, and settled in happily at his hosts' house, there to enjoy a night in the final new county of the Painting Tour. Wine was consumed. Yesterday, the penultimate day of the painting tour, began with rashers and tea, as you'd hope, and then some more serious painting, this time of a Castlebellingham street scene.

The painting took much longer than he'd have hoped, and with the clock ticking and no scope for cycling before dark it was time for a third lift; earlier in the trip he'd have stayed another night, but the days are shorter now and the Brother needs to be in Lucan tomorrow, so ground needed covering quickly.

Ciaran Downey's grandmother's house having been carefully cropped from the view

No harm in that, anyway; he was to be staying in Meath which he'd already cycled through over the previous couple of days, so his hosts brought him via Clogherhead to Mornington, there to stay with an old blogging friend, to revel in curry and to drink perhaps a mite too much. Not just tea either. Champagne too, and other stuff as well, I rather suspect. It was a long night.

And so that brings us to today, the last day of the Painting Tour. The Eighth Day of this unique eight-day week. One last day, one last painting, and then time to saddle up and to have off for the last sixty or so kilometres of the journey, being cheered home by a huge crowd of Twitterati, virtually roaring their congratulations and support, with every tweet seeming a landmark.

45 kilometres out, and in Balbriggan he was technically in the new county of Fingal. Nobody cares about that. He was back in Dublin... Onward to Skerries, then, adding five kilometres to the journey, but what the heck, it's worth it and it's not every day you finish a journey like this. Might as well do it in style... Somewhere on the north Dublin coast, 32 kilometres away from home, and wishing the wind would drop... 14 kilometres out, in Santry, and a banana being eaten to keep the limbs moving, knowing that the last few kilometres would be in the dark but that most of them would be safely off road...

And then, with the tweets of support flowing in, and just moments after I tweeted to congratulate him on surely having bested that hill that lies waiting at the end of every trip home, he said the words we were all waiting for.

'Home. From a 3,000+ km cycle. To a smiling dog and a cup of tea. People of the internet, with the whole of my heart, thank you #paintingtour'

And with that, I thought I'd join a few others out there and pour myself a celebratory drink.

Thanks too from me to all of you who've been reading. It's been fun to write this and play a small and distant part in this whole affair. And anyone who, reading this, felt prompted to step out of the internet to offer the Brother a cup of tea or a bed for the night, well, thank you especially. I'd best head off to bed now, but as for the rest of you, the Brother's painting tomorrow at the Lucan Festival. If you can, you should go to see him.

And say hello for me.

________________________________________________________________________

* Yes, this is a joke. Not mine, mind, but a joke for all that.

Well, if Ian Paisley can work with him...

There's an awful lot of nonsense being talked about Martin McGuinness's candidacy for the Irish Presidency.

Before I get into that, though, let me be clear: I don't think I'd vote for McGuinness. Certainly, he'd not be my first prefence or my second, and if he received my vote at all, it'd be some way down the list. Probably lower than third. He might be a last resort.

What's more, I suspect a McGuinness victory could be bad for the Peace Process in the North. I can't see many Unionists being overjoyed with the population of the Republic having directly chosen to appoint a former IRA commander as head of the Irish state. I doubt this would help things.

Having said that, so many of the complaints against McGuinness are complete rot.

Hysterical Nonsense in the Irish Times

Take, for instance, yesterday's Irish Times article by Fintan O'Toole, with the article holding that the crux of the issue is as follows:

'Sinn Féin has taken uneasy resignation for complete compliance. It has decided to turn a quietly agreed reticence (don’t talk about the war) into an explicit endorsement (the war was legitimate). It has posed a question that goes far beyond McGuinness’s personal qualities. The question, to put it starkly, is whether we should have a head of State who would, in principle, be liable to arrest for war crimes under international law.'

In principle? Really? By whom? The International Criminal Court does not have retroactive jurisdiction, and cannot rule on crimes committed before 1 July 2002. What war crimes, might I ask, has the IRA committed since that date?

Now, granted, it is possible that a separate ad hoc war crimes tribunal could be set up by the UN Security Council to try crimes that took place in connection with the Troubles, but do you really think that the UK, which is a member of the Council, would allow that to happen? It'd be like putting up a big flag that says the UK is a failed state, like Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

That may be the most ridiculous column Fintan's ever written.

Such a President would not be without Precedent

This isn't the only stupid argument wheeled out against McGuinness's candidacy. Others are asking how he could be head of the armed forces of a country he'd been at war with when in the IRA, how he could preside over a country when until recently he refused even to acknowledge that country's legitimacy, how he could send bills to the Irish Supreme Court when in the past he'd refused to recognise Irish courts...

So many people who've made these arguments have whined about people not knowing their history. As ever, the pots are calling kettles black here. We've jumped these kind of hurdles before, you know. Sean T.O'Kelly and Eamon de Valera, both of whom had been in the anti-treaty side in the Civil War, served as President for a full two terms each, presiding over the state between 1945 and 1973.

It might seem like a long time ago now, and thus irrelevant, but it wasn't a long time ago then. The Civil War had only been over nine years when de Valera became head of the Irish Government, and had only been over twenty-two years when O'Kelly became head of the Irish State.

Double Standards, anyone...

One of the things that makes me uneasy about this situation is that it reeks of the most disgusting hypocrisy, and a hypocrisy we've seen before.

On 22 May 1998, the people of the Republic voted by an overwhelming majority -- 94 per cent -- to have the Good Friday Agreement brought into law. This entailed a few things which were, obviously, unpleasant.

One was an accelerated release scheme for terrorist prisoners, effectively treating them as Prisoners of War in a situation when a conflict had ended; obviously, this was going to be very painful for the thousands of families in Northern Ireland who had lost people at the hands of the IRA, UVF, etc, but we in the Republic voted for them to suck it up as the price of peace. But how indignant we got when we realised that this meant that Garda Jerry McCabe's killers would go free too...

Yeah, it was horrible, but we expected Ulster's Protestants and Catholics to put up with the release of people who'd killed their friends and family members, so how on earth did we justify our disgust at us having to pay the same price?

Another key feature of the Agreement was that seats of the Northern Ireland Executive were to be allocated on the basis of party strength, using the D'Hondt system. This basically guaranteed that people who'd hitherto only ever voted for parties dedicated to constitutional politics were going to have to accept that former terrorists and people with links to terrorist organisations would sit in government. And again, we in the Republic voted for this: that ordinary Ulster people were just going to have to put up with being ruled by former terrorists.

And yet now, when Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister is proposed as a candidate for the Irish Presidency, people go nuts. How dare he?

We expect the people of Northern Ireland to put up with this sort of stuff. We voted for the people of Northern Ireland to put up with this sort of stuff. And if there's now a whole generation of Irish teenagers who don't remember what the IRA used to do, well, is that a wholly bad thing? Or is it a sign that -- perhaps -- we're making progress?

The Hand of God and the Will of Allah

One of the standard questions I'm asked by people who are curious about how such an otherwise apparently sane and reasonably intelligent person can be a Catholic is generally along the lines of 'But there are lots of other religions that don't believe in your god -- how can you say they're all wrong?'

The answer, when you get down to it, is that I say no such thing. I don't think the situation is polarised such that Catholics are right and everyone else is wrong. I talk of degrees of truth, and aspects of the transcendent, and intimations of the numinous in the collective imagination of mankind, and in talking of all of this I think in the language of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council's declaration on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions. Deep down, though, I think I'm really just offering a developed, more Scriptural, and more sophisticated version of of a couple of things I read as a child, one penned by C.S. Lewis, and one in a Doctor Who novel.

Yes, I'm still talking about Doctor Who. Three days in now.

The Lewis passage is well known, of course, and comes from the end of The Last Battle, the final Narnia book, when Lewis describes Aslan meeting Emeth, Lewis' good Calormene, and welcoming him into Heaven.

'"Son, thou art welcome." But I said, "Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash." He answered, "Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me." Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, "Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?" The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, "It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites -- I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man does a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?" I said, "Lord, thou knowest how much I understand." But I said also (for the truth constrained me), "Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days." "Beloved," said the Glorious One, "unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."'

The other passage comes from a rather less well-known work, Doctor Who and the Crusaders, David Whittaker's novelisation of the 1965 story, 'The Crusade'. The book is rather more substantial than the TV programme, and features a memorable scene -- well, memorable for me, anyway -- where Ian Chesterton, one of the Doctor's companions, meets with Saladin.

'"I give you these passes," he told Ian, "because I admire your bravery and courage, Sir Ian. Secondly, the lady Barbara had believed she was under my protection and I would have that belief honoured. Lastly, El Akir has presumed upon my situation in this war, and his value to me in it, and I would have that rectified. His main army, of four thousand men, it is true, is placed with the body of my fighting men in front of Jerusalem, but he has a personal guard in Lydda of several hundred. One thing and one thing alone can bring success to your enterprise... the Will of Allah." He smiled at Ian wryly."But of course, you are a Christian, and my words mean nothing to you."
"On the contrary, Your Highness, if you will forgive my contradicting you, the names and the phrases differ but the purpose is the same in all races of intellect and culture. You say 'the Will of Allah' where we would say 'the Hand of God'."
"I see you have made some study of the subject, young man," murmured Saladin approvingly, "but surely the conflict still remains? The gulf between our separate faiths is too wide to be bridged by such a simple explanation."

"I have a friend, a very wise, well-travelled man who spoke to me on the  subject of religions once. In the West, three main streams dominate: Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity. In the East, the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Moslem rival Janism, Sikhism, Parsee and Shinto. But what is the sum total? That all people, everywhere, believe there is something mightier than themselves. Call it Brahma, Allah or God – only the name changes. The little Negro child will say his prayers and imagine his God to be in his colour. The French child hopes his prayers will be answered – in French. We are all children in this matter still, and will always be – until colours, languages, custom, rule and fashion find a meeting ground."

"Then why do we fight? Throw away Life, mass great continents of men and struggle for opposing beliefs?"
Neither could provide an answer so Ian took his leave as decently as he could, although Saladin was now keen for him to Hay and hear the arguments put forward by the many wise men and philosophers who filled his court. Ian’s only regret was that he had had to speak for the Doctor and knew that his friend would eternally regret not meeting the great Sultan.'

I'm not saying that religious truth doesn't matter; on the contrary, I think it may matter more than anything, not least because what we believe dictates how we live, and I doubt there's a more important question out there than 'how should we live?', itself resting upon the deeper question of 'why are we here?' 

I'm merely saying that we're all in this together, and  the challenge of secularism is to be a meeting place where we can wrestle out this question in our lives. It should be an open space, where those of all faiths and none are free to live their lives in accord with their beliefs. It should be a space where the civil authorities seek neither to serve nor to suppress any religious -- or irreligious -- grouping. It should be about the separation of Church and State, but not about the separation of religion and politics, something which I believe to be neither reasonable nor pratical, neither desirable nor just.

But that's a discussion for another day.


* The others, of course, include, 'but how could a loving God have created a world like this?', 'why do you even think Jesus existed?', 'do you really believe the world was created in six days?', 'you don't really believe the Bible, do you?', 'do you think you can't be moral unless you believe in God?' and 'seriously?'

Watching Doctor Who after the Easter Vigil

I was talking yesterday about how Stephen Moffat's run on Doctor Who hasn't shirked the messianic themes of Russell T. Davies' era, and indeed has enhanced them, openly embracing an idea of 'Doctor as Christ'. Questions of faith -- not defined simply as blind belief, but as fidelity, loyalty, and faith in action -- ran through Moffat's whole first series. The final episode, taking its name from the scientific theory first formulated by perhaps the twentieth century's greatest priest-scientist, Georges Lemaître, featured a fine sequence which played on the idea of faith as 'the conviction of things not seen'.

Little Amelia Pond, in her altered universe, believes there should be stars in the almost empty night sky, and paints and draws them regularly.

'You know this is all just a story, don't you?' says a psychiatrist to her after looking at the sky by her side, 'You know there's no such thing as stars.'

Afterwards, Amy listens in on the conversation downstairs.

'I just don't want her growing up and joining one of those star cults,' says her aunt, 'I don't trust that Richard Dawkins.'

Work that one out if you can. Is this criticism of Richard Dawkins or is it praise? Is it right of his alter-ego to believe in stars, without their being any evidence of them? Does he think that they should be there, even if all the evidence points to the contrary? We don't know. All we know is that in a universe without stars, Richard Dawkins believes they're there. 

An Easter hero, revisited

I talked of Paschal imagery in last year's curtain-raiser; well, watching 'The Impossible Astronaut' on the morning of Easter Sunday in Glasgow, having attended the most beautiful, vibrant, and thoughtful of vigil masses the previous night, I was struck by how Moffat seemed to be developing those ideas. 

The episode begins with a image of men in what looks like late seventeenth-century garb, trying to enter a room where a painting of the Doctor has been in progress. No ordinary painting, though: instead an image of the Doctor as a heavenly king, standing in the clouds and being crowned by an angel...

It's not long before the action skips forward through the centuries to the present day where Amy and Rory receive a message, a summons from the Doctor. Off they set to the Valley of the Gods, with them arriving at their destination by bus -- a local bus, bearing the name of Utah's San Juan County, where the Valley of the Gods can be found. Yes, that's right. San Juan. Saint John. As in the fourth evangelist. Keep that in mind.

Joined by the Doctor and River, they decamp to a nearby diner, where the Doctor and River pore over their diaries, and River asks the Doctor, W'here are we? Have we done Easter Island yet?'
'Yes!' he exclaims after a thoughtful pause, 'I've got Easter Island.'
'They worshipped you there... have you seen the statues?'

And then, after gracing us with the idea of the Doctor as God, at a place defined by the Resurrection, they set off for a picnic by a lake. But it's no ordinary picnic. It is, by any definition, a last supper, as the Doctor has summoned his friends to dine with him one last time before he goes to face his death.

That it should be by a lake seems reminiscent of Jesus' post-Resurrection meal with the Apostles by the Sea of Galilee...

... but far more important, surely, than the location of this meal is what its central element seems to be. Wine. Red wine, presumably poured by the Doctor given that he's got the bottle. The Paschal significance of this hardly needs spelling out.

'Human beings,' smiles the Doctor. 'I thought I'd never get done saving you.'

A mysterious figure appears from the lake and the Doctor approaches it, telling his friends not to follow: 'You all need to stay back. Whatever happens now, you do not interfere. Clear?' Parallels to Jesus' instructions to his followers at Gethsemane should be very obvious at this point.

And then, having told his friends to stay back, the Doctor goes to his death, dropping his head and dying with arms outstretched as though nailed to a cross.

He collapses onto the ground, dead, and his friends gather around him. Here the iconography becomes particularly clear, with River leaning over his body, clad in blue and white, a Marian figure in a Pieta. Amy next to her is a redhead and clad in red too; as the previous year, she is Mary Magdalene. And Rory? He must, I suppose, be the beloved disciple; hardly surprising, really, given how he's basically defined by his steadfast love and loyalty. And then up turns Canton Everett Delaware III to confirm that there's definitely been no fraud and to help them dispose of the body. This old man is clearly standing in for Joseph of Arimathea.

It's important to destroy the body, for what it's worth, because as River says, 'A Timelord's body is a miracle. Even a dead one. There are whole empires out there that'd rip this world apart for just one cell.' And why shouldn't a dead body be as miraculous as a live one? Elisha's bones could raise the dead, if we can believe the Old Testament...

Note that it's River, clad in the colours of Mary, who expresses complete fidelity to the Doctor. 'We're his friends,' she says. 'We do what the Doctor's friends always do. As we're told.' Her faith is absolute. Remember what I said yesterday about early Christians seeing the Incarnation as a recasting of the Fall? Well, just as Eve's role in the Fall was defined by her disobedience, well, so Mary's role in our salvation is defined by her obedience. 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,' she said, and thus the Word became flesh. 

Afterwards they return  to the diner, the same place they'd met before the Doctor's death. It's the Cenacle, in effect, the upper room, but -- unlike earlier -- this time it's not a place of comfort and friendship. It's a place of disbelief, of confusion, of a complete lack of understanding of what has just happened.

And then, all of sudden, he's among them, and they're looking at him in horror, as though they're looking at a ghost. 

He's okay, he assures them, he's the King of Okay, but they're still baffled, and then, in complete confusion, Rory stretches out his finger...

Doubting Thomas. It could hardly be more explicit, could it?

Watching Doctor Who before the Easter Vigil...

'The God Complex,' last night's Doctor Who episode, was interesting, and I was amused by someone tweeting in its aftermath to say:

'That was fun: people getting attacked by the god of Feuerbach, with a cameo by David Walliams as a sort of alien LibDem.'

This, of course, set me to frowning at my failure to have read any Feuerbach, as I don't really think it's good enough to read about people; you have to read what they actually said themselves. It's obvious that the current crop of celebrity atheists are pygmies riding on the shoulders of the likes of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietszche, and Freud, and it bothers me that I've read so little of those four. None of Feuerbach, as I've said, and far too little of the other three. They're serious thinkers, and require serious engagement.

This evening, Paul Cornell -- whose written some fine episodes of Doctor Who in his own right -- said that he'd got around to watching it:

'Just saw last night's Doctor Who: excellent stuff, and, maybe surprisingly for that subject, a positive portrayal of a person of faith.'

The person in question was Rita, the intelligent young doctor who responds to the Doctor's surprised question, 'You're Muslim?' with a simple 'Don't be frightened.' She comes across very well, a fine example of how faith and reason can work in harmony, rather than in crude opposition. Still, I found it kind of surprising that  he thought a positive portrayal of a person of faith to be surprising in Doctor Who. 

He'd not be alone in holding that view, though, as the Guardian's blogpost on the episode makes clear:

'In the end "The God Complex" was funny and thoughtful: Doctor Who is by nature a secular show, but this didn't hammer you over the head with an atheist agenda; until her faith got the better of her, Rita was presented as being empowered by it. It was blind faith, of course that emerged as dangerous.'

Aside from the lazy conflation of secularism with atheism -- they're very different phenomena, in that that though plenty of atheists are secularists, there are plenty of secularists who aren't atheists and there have been plenty of atheists who most certainly weren't secularists -- I found this an odd statement. Is Doctor Who really a secular show? Indeed, given how the Guardian commentator seems to see little difference between secularism and atheism, is it a normally an atheist show?

Secularist, but not Atheist...

My feeling has long been that Doctor Who might be a secular show, but it certainly isn't an atheist one -- how could it be, given that its principal character is somebody who has a habit of giving his life for those he loves, sacrificing himself to save the world, and then returning to life again?

And yes, I realise that the two most recent show-runners for Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies and Stephen Moffat, are atheists, but the reality seems to be that if you write a messianic character, then in our post-Christian culture it's hard to pull this off without Christ shining through.

And sometimes it's very obvious. Did you notice how the Doctor was betrayed with a kiss in the recent 'Let's Kill Hitler' episode? A poisoned kiss, as we were later to learn, with the TARDIS informing the Doctor that:

'Your system has been contaminated by the poison of the Judas Tree.'

Yes, slain by a kiss from the Judas Tree. Shades of Gethsemane, anyone?

Check out Mark 14:45, for starters...

An Easter Hero

The Doctor as Christ motif has been unmissable in Stephen Moffat's two series, the first of which began on Easter Saturday 2010, the second on Easter Saturday 2011. Given the Doctor's messianic character, as a sacrificed and risen saviour, that these series should have launched at Easter looks fortuitous, to say the least. Moffat, as an exceptionally skilled writer, seems to have loaded both 'The Eleventh Hour' and 'The Impossible Astronaut' with Paschal imagery.

Watch, for instance, how the pre-credits sequence to 'The Eleventh Hour' saw the Doctor having an encounter with a cross...

Look on top of the spire. Plotwise, is this necessary?

And how the after the credits we're taken to young Amelia Pond praying in her room, with her prayers seemingly being answered by the TARDIS crashing in her back garden. The first words we heard spoken by Amy -- the first words we hear in Stephen Moffat's run of Doctor Who -- are the following prayer:

'Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils, and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you, but -- honest -- it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know it's not. Because at night, there's voices. So please, please could you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman. Or -- back in a moment -- Thank you, Santa.'

For what it's worth, we'll later see that she has a large cross on a drawing in her room.

Yes, I know that she's praying to Santa rather than God, but we live in a confused world nowadays. And don't gloss over the fact that the pet she received is a fish either; it might seem a chance reference, but I really don't think it is. Even without the references to them, we'd know Amelia had dolls and pencils, as much later on we see the drawings she's done and the dolls she's made of the Doctor and herself. The fish, which we'll never see, is the most ancient symbol of Christianity -- indeed of Christ himself, and this passage let's us know that the sequence isn't merely shown at Easter; it's set at Easter, which will make the following scenes all the more significant.

She rushes out into the garden, this redheaded girl, where she meets, as someone rising from his tomb, a man who has saved the world, and died, and been restored to life. It's worth noting that Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles and first witness to the Resurrection in at least a couple of Gospels, was invariably represented in medieval art as a redhead. Lest you think it's silly to read any significance into that, keep in mind too that Eve was often also construed in medieval thought as a redhead -- because Adam was made from red clay, and she was made from Adam -- and that in early Christian thought, the entire Passion story was regarded as the story of Eden recast.

But I'll get to that in a bit.

Anyway, Amy brings the Doctor inside as he's hungry, and it turns out that the only thing he eats is the improbable combination that is fish fingers and custard. Yes. Fish. Again. But take a look at Luke's gospel, where Jesus addresses the dumbfounded apostles, still incapable of believing that he was physically present among them, by asking whether they had anything to eat, and then taking some fish from them, and eating it. It's his consumption of the fish that proves he's really there, that they're not imagining him.

Important to the story too are Annette Crosbie's character Mrs Angelo and her grandson Jeff. Two angels, so, just like in Luke 24 and Acts 1.

It's not a straight point-for-point allegory, by any means, but rather an Easter tale that plays in a polyvalent way with Paschal ideas and imagery. Other aspects of the Passion and Easter story show their faces in the episode, most notably his promise to Amy -- just before his 'ascension' -- that he'll return, the darkening of the sky during the day, and the very odd moment when, triumphant over the episode's serpentine villain he spreads his arms wide and cries 'who da man?'

Who da man? Behold the man, more like it. With arms spread like that in a moment of triumph over the Devil, he embodies the Christus Victor principle.

And yes, I said the Devil.


Two Gardens, Two Temptations...
Early Christian thought put a lot of weight on the Protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 and of Paul's description at 1 Corinthians 15:22  of Jesus as a new Adam; it saw the whole story of Christ's incarnation, and in particular his passion and death on the cross, as a recasting of the drama of Eden. Jesus was the new Adam, Mary the new Eve, Gethsemane the new Eden, and the Cross the new Tree.

Well, if Easter carries within it the imagery of Eden, it probably shouldn't surprise us that lots of the action in this episode should take place in a garden, that there'd be a couple of scenes where nudity appears as somehow simultaneously natural and shameful, and that there'd be a memorable moment where our redheaded Eve would give our Adam an apple...

I know, in the Bible it's simply a generic fruit, but still, in our culture we've always thought of the fruit as being an apple. Amy gives the Doctor an apple, but unlike Adam he doesn't eat it; instead like Christ, the second Adam, he'll eat fish.

And, of course, the diabolic villain's a serpent...

The Eden story is, of course, the story of the Fall, of how the world goes wrong; it's an idea that occurs in other myths too, perhaps most famously in the Greek myth of Pandora's box. It's curious then that Prisoner Zero will eventually taunt the Doctor by saying 'The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open.'

More tomorrow...

It's important to call people by their proper names...

Or at least the names they like being called. It's simple bad manners to do otherwise. The same principle applies to where they're from.

I'd a fleeting and annoying exchange with Louise Mensch on Twitter the other day, where she, in connection with this article, had said, 'Also, of course, Eire has its own legal code. I don't know if phone hacking is legal in Eire, or if there is a public interest defence there.'

Seemingly, there isn't, but sighing to see any politician making such a basic blunder elsewhere in what she said, I responded: 'When speaking English, Louise, it's normal to call the country Ireland,' and pointing her to article 4 of the Irish Constitution, which says:

'The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland.'

'Since I lived in Dublin,' she replied, 'I've always thought of it as Eire, plus, four letters is more tweet-friendly.'

I conceded the latter point, but thought her main claim absurd, and said so: 'Bizarre. I'm from there and have never once heard anyone in Ireland ever call it that, save when (rarely) speaking Irish.'

At which point someone else weighed in with 'No one in Ireland calls it Eire you ridiculous woman!'

I always find it baffling that English people will sometimes do this when talking of Ireland. I've never noticed them doing it for other countries -- even the most pretentious of them will rarely talk about visiting Deutschland, España, Italia, Hellas, Suomi, Sverige, Nederland, Česko, Polska, Magyarország, Helvetica, or Danmark. They invariably call those countries by the English versions of their names, save on those rare occasions when they're speaking German, Spanish, Italian, Greek or whatever.

All else aside, if Mrs Mensch is going to play this game she should do so consistently, so that instead of saying 'Since I lived in Dublin I've always thought of it as Eire,' she should say, 'Since I  lived in Baile Átha Cliath I've always thought of it as Éire'.

So, basic things to remember: 

• If you're speaking Irish, say Éire.
• If you're speaking English, you should call the country 'Ireland', because that's its name. 
• If you're speaking English and want to distinguish the country called 'Ireland' from the island of 'Ireland', you should call the country 'the Republic of Ireland', this being its description in Irish law, if not the Constitution.
• It's okay to call the country 'the Republic'; it is never okay to call it 'Southern Ireland' or 'the South', unless you want to appear politically and geographically ignorant*, as well as rude.
• It's unwise to refer to Ireland as being part of 'the British Isles', as lots of people will get annoyed at this. Given that the term is simply a corruption of an erroneous ancient term, and that it no longer reflects the political reality it had during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many people find it both obsolete and offensive. Of course, you can use it if you want to come across as insulting and reactionary, but that's up to you.

And in return, I'll refrain from wasting everyone's time by calling the UK 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' and shan't abbreviate it UKGBNI. I can't speak for anyone else, mind.

* Not least because the northernmost point of the Republic of Ireland is further north than Northern Ireland, and because there's not much more of Ireland north of Cranford Point -- Northern Ireland's southermost point -- in Northern Ireland than there is in the Republic.

Sometimes the Truth Hurts

Now this is interesting. Yesterday on Twitter I saw that somebody had retweeted this:

'Huzzah, the Catholic church sticks it to Irish mammies! Kids with two dads must be thrilled to have dodged that one.'

I wondered what that meant, but then a while later someone else posted a link sayin, 'This priest seems to have set out to rile people.'

It seems that a Wexford priest in the diocese of Ferns, Father Paddy Banville, has written an article in which he's said:

'In exposing abuse within the Catholic Church, we have opened the door to hell and stepped inside the front porch, and standing there in horror some have dared to peer further, into the hallway and reception areas of a very dark and unexplored house.

In time, I believe Ireland will discover that there is nothing particularly unique in the Catholic bishop’s bungling attempts to deal with clerical abuse...In fact, I believe that covering up is a typical response to child abuse right across the board, at least until very recently.

Few can accept my next point and, of course, it’s so politically incorrect to make the point, but there is another category of people that will match the failure of the bishops, and probably surpass it; the wives and mothers of Ireland, not exclusively wives and mothers but far too many who failed miserably to deal with the abuse of their children by other family members.

A multitude of people are implicated in this cover-up.  I believe it is a significant percentage of the population.  Nobody in this once sovereign democratic republic wants to hear this.

Let me conclude by adapting the words of the Taoiseach: there is no shortage of dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism in the Republic of Ireland 2011, where the rape and torture of children are downplayed or managed, to uphold instead the primacy of the family, the family name, its power, standing and reputation, and where multitudes living in our midst, have turned a blind eye: not my business!

We don’t know it yet, or perhaps we don’t want to know it, but in terms of child abuse the Catholic Church is holding up a mirror to Irish society.

This time Enda Kenny has got to go all the way and all the way is much further than the Vatican!'

I don't think I'd have worded it in as inflammatory a way as this; I'd have been uneasy with the use of the term 'cover-up', and I don't think I'd have singled out wives and mothers, although given the matriarchal nature of the Irish household until quite recently I can see Banville's point. Such niceties aside, though, he's basically right. What's he's trying to show, in forceful language that is, nonetheless, in line with the facts as we have them, is that the problem of abuse in Ireland is far deeper and far more extensive than the most vociferous antagonists of the Church would have us believe.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Anybody who's been reading this blog will be familiar with such blunt facts of abuse in Ireland as revealed in the 2002 SAVI study as that 27 per cent of Irish adults had been sexually abused in their childhood, that barely one abuse survivor in 200 saw their abuser convicted in court, and that for every adult survivor of sexual abuse by a priest there were 59 other victims of childhood sexual abuse. The most prominent abuse survivors in Ireland -- the ones who appear in the media with depressing regularity -- are profoundly atypical.

The SAVI Study showed that 58.3 per cent of abuse survivors had been abused by people within what might be deemed the family circle: immediate and extended family, neighbours, friends, and babysitters. Nowadays, it seems the figure is far higher. The Irish Times ran an article in February 2009 which reported one Mick Moran, a Garda Detective Sergeant working with Interpol to fight internet paedophiles, as saying that 85 per cent of child sexual abuse takes place in the family home or in the family circle, and a few months later reported the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland as revealing that 97 per cent of those who had been sexually abused as children and who had sought the help of Irish rape crisis centres in 2008 had been abused by somebody within the family circle.

These are abominable figures and the incessant media focus on the Church has the effect of obscuring them, distracting people from the dangers on our own doorsteps.  Just that let sink in for a minute. Historically, 58 per cent of abuse in Ireland was committed within the family circle; nowadays it's at least 85 per cent, and perhaps as high as 97 per cent, and it seems that between a quarter and a third of that is committed by adolescents.

Right now, if you're attacking the Church, you're not attacking abuse. Worse, you're distracting people's attention from where it's really happening, and by doing so, you're faciliating it and are endangering children.

(And, for what it's worth, you're not even giving a moment's thought to the problem of neglect, which is apparently an even bigger problem than abuse nowadays.)


In what Circumstances would Somebody not want to Report?
Still, let's stay with this. Historically most abuse took place within the family circle, and nowadays almost all abuse takes place there.  We rarely read about it in the papers, but we know from the SAVI report that almost half of all abuse victims at some point disclose their abuse to somebody, with barely one abuse case in twenty ever being taken to the Gardaí.

That's the first thing. Almost half of Ireland's abuse survivors have confided in people about the abuse they've experienced, without passing it on to the guards, possibly because they knew that only about one in ten reported abuse cases leads to a conviction. In huge numbers of cases they must have told people of abuse they suffered from people who were still alive and still had access to children.  Husbands will have told their wives, for instance, of childhood experiences, just as wives will have told their husbands. They'll have had good reasons for not reporting it; it'll have been a long time ago, they'll want to move on with their lives rather than revisiting old pain, and besides, they'll hope their abusers will have changed.

These are understandable reasons. Frances Fitzgerald was talking the other day on the Frontline and rhetorically asking in what circumstances people might not want to report abuse. Well, those are circumstances that I think you'll find all over the country.

Hell, you'll see similar instances in the Cloyne Report, instances of people having come to the Diocese to report decades-old instances of abuse, but insisting that they didn't want the matter to go to the Gardaí. People hope that others can change, and don't want to trawl through their own childhood hells afresh.

But the fact is that there are people who'd argue that that constitutes the covering up of abuse. It's not a phrase I'd use to describe it, but I could understand that argument. If you're told of abuse, and you listen, and try to help the survivor, but don't try to punish the abuser -- is that covering things up?

(I don't mean legally, as unless the situation I've described counts as a 'reasonable excuse', anyone who acted that way would soon be deemed guilty of just that, and vulnerable to a five year prison sentence. I mean realistically.)


Remember Senator Norris' Letter

One of the things I talked about when the Norris affair broke a couple of months back was that I didn't believe Norris had reacted to Ezra Nawi's crime in a way that was at odds with how the typical Irish person -- or perhaps the typical person anywhere -- would react to such a crime. I said:

'Faced with the reality of someone he knew having -- let's be frank -- taken advantage of a child for his own pleasure, Senator Norris had responded with love and concern, but with love and concern that was directed wholly towards the person he knew.

This, as it happens, is how I think huge numbers of Irish people respond when they hear that people they know have been accused -- or even found guilty -- of such crimes. In their minds they rationalise the behaviour of their loved ones, they minimise the damage that was done, and say that whatever their loved ones may have done, they're still their brothers, or their sons, or their friends. This is, in fact, exactly how Denis O'Callaghan behaved in dealing with allegations of abuse in Cloyne. The Cloyne Report recognises his personal kindness but quotes him as admitting that he sometimes tended to show favour to accused priests, having been emotionally drawn to their plight, in such a way that that compromised his care for complainants.'

It's been observed by psychologists that when there's abuse in families, the family will often be more protective of the abuser than the abused. Sure, sometimes this is just a case of families wanting to protect their reputation, but more often there's something far more natural and wholesome -- but no less destructive -- at work.

While there'll be anger there, and horror, and a deep sense of betrayal, there'll also be a huge amount of confusion and fear. The tendency is to think that there's something wrong with the abusive child or brother or husband or whoever, and perhaps even that the parents or older siblings or wife are in some way to blame; they want to help the abuser. What's more, they fear for how he'd be punished in the hands of the authorities, and don't see how the shame of him being punished could help anybody; there's a lady I know who says that pride is the sin of the Irish, and she may well be right. Linked with this, there's a deep need to minimise in their minds the amount of harm that's been done to the victim; the less damage that's been done, the less culpable the abuser is.

All of this is natural. And in the main, it's driven by love, by loyalty, by forgiveness -- by the very best qualities we have. And it's terribly dangerous.

Because, of course, in so many cases, this doesn't seriously engage with the problems, and instead seeks to sweep them under the carpet and hope they go away. Would such behaviour count as a cover-up? Yes, I think it would, and potentially a very destructive one too. But not one driven in any way by malice, rather one driven by a confused and disoriented sense of compassion and hope.



Could the Church possibly be to blame for this too?
A few times over the years I've seen people take the view that even if it is true that most Irish abuse happens within families rather than within the institutional Church, it's still the fault of the Church, and I saw this line being wheeled out today in connection with Banville's article. The Twitter feed of Colm O'Gorman kicked off in spectacular fashion in connection with this, and Colm wasn't slow to pass comment on the article, saying, in a series of tweets:

'So now we know. Its the women of Ireland who are to blame for the covering up abuse across Irish society. So women are to blame as is the desire to uphold the primacy of the family. So a Catholic is attacking the primacy of the family? Bizarre. "In terms of child abuse the Catholic Church is holding up a mirror to Irish society" Of course it is. Obviously. Transparency is its mantra.

There is no doubt about the fact that society did deny the reality of abuse. We knew, and we chose not to name it or act. But to suggest that wives and mothers were THE problem? That the RCC is holding up a mirror to society? Such comment ignores the simple reality of the overarching power of the RCC in Irish society. It dictated public attitudes. IT defined them. It is vital that we honestly assess the 'Why' of our gross collective failures re child protection. But not by attacking an entire gender! [...] The RCC dictated societal attitudes and values. The culture of silence & deference was of their creation.'

This needs unpacking.


Breaking it down...
The line about the Irish Church holding up a mirror to Irish society has nothing to do with transparency, because mirrors are rarely transparent; rather, Banville's point is that the behaviour of the Irish Church reflects Irish society. If Irish priests abused, was this because Irish people abuse? If Irish bishops covered up that abuse, was this because Irish people cover up abuse? Given how many Irish familes until very recently had priests, brothers, and nuns in their ranks, it's clearly nonsense to distinguish between the twentieth-century Irish Church and twentieth-century Irish society. They were, in effect, the same thing. That the behaviour of clergy should have reflected the behaviour of the society that produced them isn't really that surprising at all.

The Banville article doesn't suggest that when it came to covering up abuse in Ireland, Irish wives and mothers were the problem; it does, however, say that their actions will have been a huge part in the problem, and I think that's true, especially given the structure until recently of the typical twentieth-century Irish household. Is this an attack on a whole gender? No, not at all; the Banville article simplifies matters on gender lines, such that while it explicitly holds that a huge amount of abuse was concealed by females, it implicitly takes the view that basically all abuse was committed by males.

Does it make any sense to blame the culture of concealment on the Catholic Church? I don't think it does, any more than to blame the culture of abuse in Ireland on the Catholic Church, attempts which Fintan O'Toole the other day rightly dismissed as cynical rubbish.

For such claims to be meaningful, they'd need to be compared with abuse and concealment data compiled using identical methods across a range of countries, both culturally Catholic ones and otherwise, and you'd need to work hard to explain, for example, why secular atheist post-Protestant Sweden seems to have remarkably high abuse rates. Indeed, that our own isn't quite so unusual is surely attested by O'Gorman's former organisation, One in Four, having been founded in the UK in 1999, three years before the SAVI study discovered that the rate of abuse in Ireland was slightly higher than one-in-four. One in Four must surely have taken its name from data relevant to somewhere other than Ireland.

The simple fact is that abuse is concealed pretty much everywhere it happens. It is a staggeringly under-reported crime in every country. O'Gorman says that Amnesty International Ireland is soon to publish research on the underlying dynamics that tolerated and permitted abuse in Ireland, but unless it relies heavily on data using the same methods from other countries, it'll tell us very little: it'll be highly misleading raw data, devoid of context or meaning, prone to mistaking correlation for causation.

I realise I'm prejudging it, but a tweet such as the following --  'It will address societal attitudes, the nature of power in Ireland of the time and lessons for today. Very in depth.' -- is hardly the sort of thing to inspire confidence. It suggests that this soon-to-be-published Amnesty study is hardly the massive pan-European study that's needed, but is instead merely another national study, and one -- unlike the SAVI study -- conducted by an organisation run by someone who has a very serious axe to grind.

Not without reason, of course, but an axe for all that.


Inflammatory Comments?
Was Father Banville over the top in what he said? Maybe, but unlike Enda Kenny with his claims in the Dáil, he wasn't actually wrong; he just painted in broad strokes. Was this inflammatory? Yes, it was, but at this stage I'm starting to think inflammatory language is needed.

Banville's saying nothing that wasn't already implied in the SAVI study, but how many people have ever heard of that? The Cloyne Report, which revealed little other than that two clergymen hadn't followed their own professed guidelines but in doing so had broken no laws, was mentioned in 163 Irish Times pieces in just one month, whereas over the previous nine years the SAVI study -- the most in-depth and far-reaching study ever conducted in Ireland into the phenomenon of abuse in Ireland -- had been mentioned in just 63 Irish Times articles and letters. The most important and revealing body of data on sexual abuse in Ireland had basically been ignored, save by Vincent Brown and Breda O'Brien, each of whom would occasionally try to alert people to its importance.

We're endangering children by keeping the media focus on the Church. We need to look at ourselves. If jolts such as Banville's are what it takes to jar us out of our complacency, well, so be it.