Nugent's Nonsense: Spilt Ink in the Irish Times, Part 1

In Edinburgh a few years back I saw a terrible play, but one which I'll not name as it was written by someone I know, and I'd rather not humiliate him further: the reviews at the time were bad enough, with one describing the play as 'flatulent'. Intended as an attack on religion, the play was -- aside from being dramatically dire -- embarrassingly ill-informed. Weeks afterwards the play came up in a conversation with the friend with whom I'd seen the play, and atheist though she was she was left in stitches as I scornfully explained how the author -- her friend, of a sort -- hadn't got even the most basic stuff right.

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher of war, got in right when he said:

'Know yourself and know your enemy, and in a hundred battles you will never taste defeat.' 

But then, my English teacher was spot on too when he used to advise us to write about what we know. It's the same principle: don't go attacking things unless you understand what you're attacking.

Michael Nugent: Superman

All of which brings me to Michael Nugent, who has a column -- the first of a series -- in today's Irish Times, and who seems no better informed than my friend's dramatic friend. The series is a response to a rather feeble series of articles in the summer.

I don't know if you know Michael Nugent, but if you take a look at his lengthy Wikipedia entry you'll see that he's clearly a Very Important Man, somebody destined to be remembered for all time. To put Michael's greatness into context, among those with more modestly sized entries are: Filippo Brunelleschi, inventor of linear perspective, architect supreme, and one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance; Charlotte and Emily Brontë, who respectively gave the world Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights; Ludwig Feuerbach, perhaps the most influential atheist ever; Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics; Ana Pavlova, the most famous ballerina the world has ever seen; Kevin O'Higgins, one of the most important founding fathers of independent Ireland; Georges Lemaître, first proponent of the 'Big Bang' theory; Sophie Scholl, martyred member of the White Rose, regarded by many as the greatest German of the last hundred years* ; Jack B. Yeats, arguably the greatest Irish artist of the last century; and Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was until his recent demise surely the Greatest Living Englishman.

The entries on Vermeer and George Eliot are only slightly longer than Michael's. And he's only fifty! Imagine how long his entry will be if he lives another ten, twenty, or thirty years! Michael Nugent, it would seem, is a giant.

Atheist Ireland: A Puzzled Parish

Michael is chairman of Atheist Ireland, a tiny pressure group, with a paid-up membership no larger than the typical Mass attendance on any given Sunday in my parish at home. It  first came to my attention while trying desperately to be prosecuted for challenging Dermot Ahern's blasphemy legislation, publishing as it did a list of 25 supposedly blasphemous quotations. Leaving aside how it's arguable that many if not all of the quotations had literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic value and that as a rule they were not intended to outrage substantial numbers of believers, it's quite clear that publication of this list in order to make a point about free speech was, by virtue of its political character, explicitly exempt from prosecution under section 36.3 of the Defamation Act 2009.

If Atheist Ireland had been trying to prove how toothless Ahern's legislation was, they made their point well, but if they genuinely believed it was a threat, well, all this shows is that they're not very good at reading. Ahern's law was designed to be unenforceable: in accordance with the needs of the Constitution it technically closed a legislative loophhole, while being worded in such a way that it would be impossible for anyone to be successfully prosecuted for blasphemy.

One of the most curious features of Atheist Ireland is its 'Read the Bible Campaign'; I'm not sure why it doesn't have a 'Read the Qur'an Campaign', though it might be because that might seem provocative, or a 'Read the Tanakh Campaign, though it might be because that might seem anti-semitic, or a 'Read the Bhagavad Gita Campaign', though it might be because they have no idea what any of the Hindu scriptures are. Anyway, it seems an odd campaign, as it suggests that far from having a secular agenda, Atheist Ireland has an almost exclusively anti-Christian agenda -- even an anti-Catholic one -- and that it pushes this agenda in an extraordinarily ignorant way.

'Atheist Ireland actively encourages people to read the Christian Bible,' it begins, though this surely invites the question of 'which Christian Bible?'

Do Atheist Ireland mean the 73-book Catholic Bible, as used by most Christians in Ireland and indeed the world? Or does it mean the sixteenth-century's 66-book Lutheran Bible, as used -- sometimes in association with other holy books -- by about a third of the world's Christians? Or does it mean the 77-or-so book Orthodox Bibles as used by the various Orthodox Christian groups? Do Atheist Ireland even realise that Christians don't agree on the contents of the Bible? Does Mister Nugent know this?

I'm rather intrigued by this question, because I'm assuming that when Mister Nugent thinks of the Bible he thinks of the 73-book Catholic version, that being by far the most common version to be found in Ireland. This would make sense, as he seems to be making the implicit case that if wavering Irish Christians read their Bibles they'd realise it was all rubbish. As he puts it, 'It makes many assertions that are scientifically absurd and ethically unjust. And it undermines two key cornerstones of the Christian faith: the Ten Commandments and the story of Jesus.'

Well, aside from errors and dubious assertions in his little proposal, the very notion of the proposal in itself shows how little Mister Nugent understands the Catholicism he opposes. A project like that could well prove deeply damaging to the faith of a Protestant who takes a Sola Scriptura approach to the Bible, but shouldn't have any impact whatsover on Catholics. 

Catholics ought to know that the Church predated even the earliest New Testament books by about fifteen years, that the New Testament was written within the Church reflecting the already existing belief of the Church, and that the books of the New Testament were primarily written to be proclaimed and prayed within the Church. They should further know that it was the Church that kept, protected, compiled, and canonised the Bible as we now have it, doing so informally from the second century on and formally at a series of local councils around the end of the fourth century, confirming the decisions of those councils at the Second Council of Nicea in 787.

The Church knows that Bible has no shortage of passages that are problematic, to put it mildly, if they are read out of their proper context. Reading them in context means understanding them as manifestations of whatever genre in which they were written, in connection with their time and intended audience, in association with other Biblical books, and as perceived through time by the Church which recognised and canonised them as inspired Scripture. The Church's traditional way of reading the Bible has always been nuanced and layered, wholly unlike the more obviously literal ways of reading the Scriptures that were promoted and became common during the Protestant Reformation.

If I can quote Yves Congar's The Meaning of Tradition on this, as it well expresses the mainstream Catholic line on this:

'The reality contained in the sacred text would be described as its literary, historical, or exegetical meaning, but its dogmatic meaning is found outside the text, considered materially, which supposes the intervention of a new activity, namely, the faith of the Church. The place where this is found is precisely tradition as understood by the Fathers; it is there, in this setting and in these conditions, that the holy Scriptures reveal their meaning -- a meaning that is not simply the one accessible to philologists and historians but that which must nourish God's people in order that it may be God's people in the fullest sense.'

Atheist Ireland seems a small and rather silly group, to be honest, and I doubt it's in any way representative of most Irish atheists. I certainly hope it's not. Still, it's a platform of sorts, I suppose, and something to justify Michael being given a series of columns in what was once Ireland's newspaper of record.

Thoughts on Today's Folly

Today's column seems to be little more than a parade of sweeping generalisations and questionable assertions, but I'd not fault it for that as it's clearly intended as an introduction; I imagine Michael's planning on putting a veneer of meat on these flimsy bones over the coming weeks.

Two things, though, are worth saying now.

Firstly, early on he says this:

'Do you believe in a god (small "g")? Atheists reject the idea that your preferred god exists, in the same way that you reject the idea that other gods exist: because there is no reliable evidence that they do exist, and lots of reliable evidence that they are ideas invented by humans.'

This is a colossal category error, and one that I've seen wheeled out loads of times by the likes of Richard Dawkins. Atheists  need to get past this 'I just believe in one fewer god than you do' nonsense.

I don't believe in 'a god', anymore than does your typical Protestant, Muslim, Jew, Deist, Aristotelian, Platonist, or a host of others; indeed, I'd say we all recognise that there's but one God, the God who is the Necessary Being, the Uncaused Cause, the Prime Mover, the Ultimate Standard, the Lawgiver. This is a concept of God wholly different from the gods of the Greeks and the Vikings, and so forth. 

No Greek would ever have claimed that the philandering Zeus was perfectly good, just as no Viking would ever have said that the existence of the Universe couldn't be understood without Odin's existence underpinning it. So no, I believe, not in 'a god', but in God. And I believe that God is one and the same with God as recognised by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Maimonides, Averroes, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson; we may understand Him differently, but we all recognise that the Godhead subsists in the one being.

And in case anyone thinks I'm off on a limb on this one, take a look at Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council's 'Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions'; just because Catholics believe Muslims are wrong on the nature of God, say, and on the divinity of Jesus, this doesn't mean they're wrong on everything. We all worship the one God.

The other thing worth homing in on is this. Nugent says the following early in his article:

'Why are atheists so certain that gods do not exist? Actually, most of us aren’t. We merely reject the assertion that one or more gods do exist, based on the best currently available evidence. We would change our minds if we were given new and credible evidence that we are mistaken.'

I shall be looking forward to him detailing what he would consider to be 'new and credible' evidence.

* And someone about whom everyone should know

Who Referees the Referees?

Well, today's not been a good day on the sport front. I was at my cousins' for most of the day, stranded there with an unexpectedly immobilised bike -- a new inner tube is needed, it seems, and some fresh repair patches -- and took advantage of their telly to watch the Merseyside Derby, them all having gone off to the match themselves.

It was an ugly, nasty, messy match, wholly ruined by Jack Rodwell having been sent off less than halfway through the first half for having done something which was scarcely a foul at all, and hardly something that warranted a red card. After that Everton ceased the swarming advances that had already promised so much and committed themselves to a frantic defence, occasionally venturing a sketchy counter-attack. If we fouled after that, we did so in a panic. The game had been ruined.

And that, frankly, was the icing on a rather foul cake, as I'd already been disgusted that morning by England having cheated Scotland out of a place in the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup. You remember the episode in the last minute of England's match against Argentina when an England player held back an Argentinian for just long enough for his attempt at a foot rush to be wasted, following a sustained Argentinian attack on the English line? 

As the commentator said: 

'Oh, he pulled him down it seemed... the officials are unmoved...every South American in this main stand wasn't... Argentina feel they should have had a penalty...'

Well, the referee and his henchmen didn't care, and England, having played in a deeply cynical way for the whole match, scraped a 13-9 win.

What rule was broken there? 10.4 (f) looks like the key one:

'Playing an opponent without the ball: Except in a scrum, ruck, or maul, a player who is not in possession of the ball must not hold, push, or obstruct an opponent not carrying the ball.'

The sanction for that's a penalty kick, of course, although 10.2 (a) comes into play if the offence is deemed to have prevented a try, and of course the referee can always caution and even send off players for such offences too.

That was a few weeks back, but today we saw exactly the same thing happen again, in more or less the same part of the pitch, with Chris Ashton likewise obstructing a foot-rush, and at a time when Scotland had numbers ready to come to support: Just listen to the commentator:

'Blair... to Parks.... Ford... finds Paterson. Scotland running through the hands easily with Danielli who chases his own kick. Was he obstructed? Beautifully taken, but picked up by De Luca, who couldn't take it cleanly... the ball was knocked on... so much to talk about. Awww.... was that the opportunity for Scotland to nail their try?'

Was he obstructed? Yes, he certainly was. Look at Ashton there, grabbing Danielli with both hands, his left hand on his shoulder, his right hand reaching around across his chest and with both neither leg supporting his weight on the ground as Danielli breaks free of him.

And was it Scotland's opportunity? It certainly looks that way. After all, look at how the Guardian described the event at the time:

'Was this Scotland's chance gone? Danielli chips and chases down the left, and so nearly latches onto the ball deep in the corner. He can't get to it, but de Luca is just behind him. All he has to do is pick the ball up, take two steps, and plonk the ball down for a try, but he lets the ball slip through his hands like a bar of soap, and the chance is gone. Oh my. You can't be passing up opportunities like that, especially when you play in a team who struggle to score tries.'

That's how close Scotland came to scoring there. And no, nobody bothered after the match bothered to talk about Ashton's obstruction, despite it having been a clear instance of such, and something that may well have thwarted a Scottish try. I guess there was too much else to discuss, and maybe it seemed mean-spirited to take the shine off Johnson's lumberers. And so England won 16-12, having for the second time in the tournament scraped a victory by four points, each time having managed their win after shamelessly and illegally obstructing an opposing player trying to foot-rush towards the goal line.

There was a time when English people would rather lose honourably than win through cheating. Sic transit gloria mundi...


(And in the meantime, I look forward very cautiously to tomorrow.  Should Ireland beat Italy? Yes. Will they? Who knows... given how this World Cup is going, it's entirely possibility that Italy will play out of their skins, hammer us in the scrum, panic us, and win a very ugly match. These things happen. Fingers crossed that they don't, so.)

Deceitful Cassandras...

I think Peter Oborne's rant on Newsnight yesterday was useful. Jon Worth's response to it is pretty much on the money:

'Extraordinary "debate" on Newsnight last night between Amadeu Altafaj Tardio (Ollie Rehn’s spokesperson) and Peter Oborne. Oborne repeatedly calls Altafaj Tardio "the idiot in Brussels", a phrase that Paxman also uses, and Oborne is equally vile towards Richard Lambert, giving him a copy of Guilty Men.

I don’t know whether I am more annoyed by Altafaj Tardio who was just rubbish (but hell, he’s employed by Rehn, so are we remotely surprised?), Peter Oborne who was vile and offensive, Jeremy Paxman who let Oborne rant on and on, or Newsnight for having invited Oborne and Altafaj Tardio onto the programme in the first place. Oborne’s vitriol might have a place in the Daily Mail but it surely has no place on Newsnight.'

Pretty much, I say, but not quite.

The episode had some value, not least is providing those of us who've long argued that the BBC doesn't have a bias towards the Union with a handy little stick with which to beat those who claim it does. Look at how the National broadcaster invited Peter Oborne onto its premier current affairs show, allowing him to insult a spokesman for an EU Commissioner and to insult those who'd advocated an EU project that had been on the cards even before the UK joined the then EEC. Look at how the presenter of that show himself addressed the spokesman as 'Mister Idiot from Brussels', allowing Oborne to rant freely to a point where the spokesman walked off.

Anything who thinks Chris Patten is compromised in his position as chairman of the BBC Trust by virtue of having been an EU commissioner between 2000 and 2004 -- with all that that entails -- should make a point of keeping their mouths shut in future. After last night, you can't say anything.


Self-fulfilling Prophets...
Aside from the sheer gratuitous bad manners shown by Oborne, I get irked by this sort of carry-on for a host of other reasons, not least that most of the people sneering about the troubles facing the common currency now are people who've opposed it from the start. It reeks of an 'I told you so' attitude, but hardly in an honest way, not least because the game's not nearly over yet, and they may yet be proven wrong.

If Britain is to sneer about France and Germany never having applied the EU's own rules properly, thus having undermined it from the start, they should give some thought to how the United Kingdom stood sniffing at the sidelines when the project was being launched; perhaps these problems could have been headed off with British help.

To hear these people whine is almost like listening to a footballer complaining about his team losing a match, in a situation where he himself has chosen to sit out the game. Imagine, say, Carlos Tevez whinging about Manchester City having been beaten by Bayern Munich the other day, despite him having refused to go on when summoned from the bench, or Roy Keane whinging about Ireland having been knocked out of the 2002 World Cup, despite him having gone home rather than playing. Imagine. That's what it's like.

An unfair analogy? No, I don't think so.


The Origins of the Euro
See, the thing is, monetary union has always been part of the European project, and the UK knew that all through all the years it was so desperate to join. The Treaty of Rome's primary aim, as stated way back in 1957 in the first sentence of the treaty's preamble, was to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe. In order to do this, the EEC aimed to eliminate the barriers that divide Europe, to strengthen the unity of their economies, and to implement a common commercial policy. The second article of the treaty makes clear that the EEC had never been intended to be merely about establishing a common market:

'The Community shall have as its task, by establishing a common market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it.'

Yes, those are my italics. A common currency had always been on the agenda, as a necessary tool to harmonise the development of Europe's economies, and it was in 1969 that work first began on establishing it. The then Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Pierre Werner, was commissioned by the six EEC countries of the day to head a group to look into the practicalities of economic and monetary union and in particular the issuing of a single currency. Werner's report was submitted in 1971, before the UK joined the EEC, and the UK was informed of the direction in which the EEC was heading; it was free not to join, but it did so anyway, signing the Treaty of Rome in 1972.

The plan wasn't implemented, of course, for various reasons, not the least of which related to the convulsive effects of the Oil Crisis, but it was only ever put on the back burner -- monetary union was always on the agenda.


And then there's Mrs Thatcher...
Thatcher is, of course, the hero of so many British Europhobes, whose apotheosis as an anti-European divinity has only ever possible by the determined refusal of so many to consider her early role in championing the European project, and by their ignoring how it was she who signed 1987's Single European Act with all that entailed...

Thatcher, of course, had been a prominent member of the Heath Government that had brought their country nto the EEC, despite opposition from the Labour party of the day. She was one of those who signed Britain up to a process of ever-closer union with her neighbours, and who knew that that ever-closer union was always intended to involve a currency union and the abolition of the pound. Just a few years later, in early 1975, she vigorously affirmed that this had been the right thing to do, praising Britain's accession to the EEC as Ted Heath's greatest achievement and saying of him:

'This torch must be picked up and carried by whoever is chosen by the party to succeed him. The commitment to European partnership is one which I full share.'

And then, on 8 April 1975 she openly championed Britain's full and determined participation in all aspects of the European project, and did so using arguments that are as valid now as they were 36 years ago.

I know I've talked about much of this before, but I've been meaning to get into that 1975 speech for a long time, and it needs context. I'll look at the speech itself tomorrow, I think.

Ah, Fintan, you're letting yourself down...

Fintan O'Toole has yet another disappointing article about Martin McGuinness in the Irish Times this week. Barring certain issues I've always respected Fintan's views, but I really feel he's embarrassed himself whenever he's said anything on the issue of this presidential election. This week his general thesis is that 'five propositions advanced by McGuinness’s defenders still remain to be dealt with.'

Now, as I said, I'm no fan of McGuinness, but this kind of carry-on is embarrassing for all concerned. How is one ever expected to take Fintan seriously again when he comes out with this series of straw men?

1. Martin McGuinness is acceptable to the DUP in the North, so it is hypocritical to suggest that he should not be president.

This rather simplifies this point, which I've not been alone in making, and Fintan deals with it through some impressive sleight of hand. 

'Martin McGuinness's role as deputy first minister is a function of the unique system of government created by the Belfast Agreement,' he says, as though the Good Friday Agreement had been come into being of its own accord. It did nothing of the sort, of course: the system of government created by the Belfast Agreement was created by the negotiators of the Belfast Agreement, which included the Irish Government, and by those who ratified the Belfast Agreement, those including the Irish electorate, 94 per cent of whom voted to insert a new article 29.7 into the Constitution, subsection 1 of which states:

'The State may consent to be bound by the British-Irish Agreement done at Belfast on the 10th day of April, 1998, hereinafter called the Agreement.'

The Good Friday Agreement had been opposed by the DUP, and the results of the Northern Irish referendum on the agreement make it very clear that it was voted against by the majority of Ulster's unionists. If the DUP had to embrace McGuinness and Sinn Féin as the price of entering government, this is because it's a price we set.

The Presidency, on the other hand, says Fintan, is not party political: 'it's the personal embodiment of collective values.' Is it? Or is that just what Fintan thinks it should be? Because I've been looking quite hard at articles 12, 13, and 14 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, and I don't see anything there that says the Presidency is the personal embodiment of anything.

2. The past should be forgotten – what happened during the conflict is now irrelevant.

Fintan doesn't believe this should be the case, but can appreciate, he says, that others might take this line. Unfortunately, he says, McGuinness and his supporters are inconsistent on this, such that, he says, 'Sinn Féin doesn’t actually believe that past atrocities should be forgotten. It demands accountability for war crimes – except when they were committed by the IRA.' Again, this isn't quite true. It's not really the case that Sinn Féin makes an exception for the IRA -- it doesn't demand accountability, as far as I know, for crimes committed by the UVF, LVF, UDA, INLA, or other groups.

If anything, it seems they demand accountability only for war crimes committed by the forces of the Crown, in the name of the Crown, against the subjects of the Crown, and they do so in light of how the Good Friday Agreement did not entail any amnesty, implicit or explicit, for the perpetrators of those crimes.  

3. Eamon de Valera was elected president and Martin McGuinness would be no different.

Fintan's dismissal of this point is as curt as it is simplistic:

'Where is the evidence that de Valera committed, ordered or sanctioned war crimes? His one outing as a military commander was during Easter 1916, at Boland's Mills, where there was no fighting. The War of Independence was run by Michael Collins – Dev spent much of it in the US. During the Civil War, he was undoubtedly the political figurehead of the anti-Treaty side, but he had no control over the IRA.

In February 1923, he privately complained that he could only view the war "as through a wall of glass, powerless to intervene effectively".'

Does Fintan think the 1916 Rising was an attack against a peaceable and largely undefended city? If he does, how does he get round the fact that de Valera was involved in planning and leading such an attack? More importantly, does Fintan really think that Michael Collins ran the entire War of Independence, during which atrocities certainly were committed? And does Fintan really think that de Valera, the President of the Republic, would have been incapable of breaking that war to an end had he so tried? As for the Civil War, which de Valera largely provoked -- does Fintan really think de Valera was a mere victim of circumstances? Should we accept one private and self-serving claim as a full exoneration for his part in starting a war that killed thousands of Irish people in just a couple of years?

The fact is that both Sean T. O'Kelly and Eamon de Valera opposed the new state established under the Treaty, and warred against it, with O'Kelly having been imprisoned for his opposition to the State. And both men wound up holding the Presidency, for a total of twenty-eight years between them.

4. Martin McGuinness is like Nelson Mandela.

Other than both men having had a record of friendliness with Colonel Gaddafi, and both having followed paths that took them from violence to peace, I've never been convinced that this was a particularly convincing comparison, so I'll let Fintan go on that...

5. It is preposterous to suggest, as I did last week that, as president, Martin McGuinness "could, in principle, be liable to arrest for war crimes under international law".

Yes,  it is. It was preposterous then and is no less preposterous now; and comparisons this week between McGuinness and Dick Cheney don't help Fintan's very silly case. 

The comparison is utterly facile: were Cheney to be tried he would be tried by the International Criminal Court for events since 2002 in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in commection with rendition. Why 2002? Because the ICC has no remit over war crimes committed before that date. Indeed, no organisation has such a remit. 

Perhaps Fintan can tell us which war crimes Martin McGuinness has committed since 2002?

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

All of this, of course, still leaves us with one big question: even if marriage always has been understood in a certain way, and even if religious people continue to understand it in that way, what harm could it possibly do to change how we legally define it? After all, doing so would make some people feel happier about themselves, and it's not as if anybody's talking of forcing religious institutions to celebrate same-sex marriages...

'What harm could it do?' That's the big question here. Because if a symbolic change can be enacted without a practical price, surely it'd be churlish to obstruct it. But what if that legal redefinition, that symbolic change, indeed incurred a practical price? 

It seems to me that there are quite a few areas of concern on this, such that I think the price to be paid for such an insubstantial change is far too high.

Religious Wedding Ceremonies, or, when ability becomes obligation...

As we all know, laws don't mean what politicians say they mean; they mean what they say, and they mean what judges say that means, and judges do not interpret laws in isolation but as part of the law of the land taken as a whole. As such, any law that gave religious bodies the right to solemnise same-sex marriages, but that said religious bodies would have no duty to solemnise such commitments, would have to be read in light of the Human Rights Act and other equality legislation, notably the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations.

What does this mean? It means that once it's legally established that religious same-sex wedding ceremonies can happen, it's only a matter of time before the refusal of a religious body to solemnise same-sex wedding ceremonies is deemed illegal. Tolerance will not be enough; approval will be mandatory.

I don't think this will affect the Catholic Church too much, but I can see the Anglicans getting into real trouble on this one. You can see how it'll happen, of course; a couple of liberal vicars will disobey their bishops and celebrate same-sex weddings, legally registering them as they go, thus setting a precedent, and once that happens, some poor evangelical vicar will get it in the neck for refusing to do the same thing.

Serious amounts of 'damages' will wind up having to be paid as the price of acting in accordance with one's own conscience, the rules of one's institution, and the original intent of the law of the land. This isn't a 'slippery slope' argument. This is the way the law works, and is how we've seen equality legislation being interpreted thus far.


Civil Ceremonies, or barring people from jobs...
As we also know, there have already been difficulties in the UK with marital registrars who have refused to register civil partnerships; some have resigned, whereas others have faced disciplinary proceedings. One lady, Lillian Ladele, who'd worked as a registrar in Islington for years, was deemed to have committed gross misconduct for having swapped shifts so that she did not personally have to preside over civil partnerships; she was denied opportunities for promotion, disciplined, and threatened with dismissal. This wound its way through the courts, with the Court of Appeal finding that Islington Council had done nothing wrong, Lord Neuberger ruling:

'It appears to me that, however much sympathy one may have with someone such as Ms Ladele, who is faced with choosing between giving up a post she plainly appreciates or officiating at events which she considers to be contrary to her religious beliefs, the legislature has decided that the requirements of a modern liberal democracy, such as the United Kingdom, include outlawing discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on grounds of sexual orientation, subject only to very limited exceptions'

Note that she hadn't attempted to block civil partnerships from being registered; she had in fact arranged things so that that registration could take place, but without her involvement.

I have no doubt that there'll have been other registrars who've had difficulties with civil partnerships who nonetheless have continued in their jobs and presided over them in acceptance of the fact that civil partnerships were new things, officially-sanctioned social mechanisms to give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples, that were nonetheless never intended to be identical to marriages.

And I have no idea how they'll cope now, especially if there's no allowance to be made for disagreements in conscience. There'll be a lot of people who'll think the government can call a dog a duck if it wants to, but it still won't be able to quack.

I'd expect that such people will have to choose between their jobs and their beliefs, and will be forced either to lose their jobs or to become hypocrites; what's more, I think that if the State henceforth is to require registrars to register same-sex unions as marriages, regardless of their personal beliefs, it will effectively be barring people from applying for such jobs.

It's worth looking at the second part of the ninth article of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK a signatory:

'Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.'

Look at that. Freedom to manifest one's beliefs should only be limited if it is necessary to do so. Not useful. Not desirable. Necessary. As I explained the other day, the Convention does not regard same-sex marriage as a right, so it's not something that's entitled to protection. I'm not sure the State should be seeking to redefine something, to a purely cosmetic end, if the cost of doing so is to force people to act against their consciences or to block people from having jobs.

Remember: civil-partnerships already have all the substantive rights of marriage. Frankly, I'm not sure anyone should be looking for the State to pat them on the head if the price of their feeling better is for somebody else to lose their job, and I'm not convinced the State should be indulging anyone who thinks their feelings are worth more than somebody else's livelihood.


More Problems for the Anglicans, or the question of establishment...
As I said the other day, given the fact that Parliament has licensed the traditional liturgy of the Church of England, there's a powerful sense in which Parliament speaks through the Church of England, indeed, there's a sense in which the Church of England is an arm of the State. As such, it's the State that speaks when the Church of England declares:

'... that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their Matrimony lawful.'

I realise this might be seen as a technical issue rather than an issue of basic justice, but the established Church, as an arm of the State, can hardly announce on a regular basis that lots of bonds sanctioned by the State are in fact unlawful. Indeed, I don't see that any marriage could be lawfully redefined in England without Parliament formally changing the status of the Church of England, such that it would cease to be an expression of the State; and what that would do to the Queen, Defender of the Faith that she is, I really don't know. After all, back in 1953 she took a coronation oath in which she was asked:

'Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolable the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?'

To which she responded:

'All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God'

Given her oath, I'm not sure the Queen could sign into law any law that redefined marriage; as such, redefining marriage could well turn out to be a step towards disestablishment. Call me old-fashioned, but that seems an odd thing for a Conservative-led government to work towards.

Can you really imagine David Cameron declaring that he supports the disestablishment of the Church of England, 'not despite being a Conservative, but because I am a Conservative'?

Recognition of Marriages, or an Orwellian law that affects everyone...
There's a typically snide kind of response that is often thrown in the faces of people who have issues with same-sex marriages, which tends to take the form of 'Well, if you don't approve of gay marriages, don't have one! Nobody's forcing you to!'

This is problematic in a number of ways, but not the least of the issues with such a line is that it confuses weddings and marriages. A wedding is merely a ceremony in which a marriage is recognised; it lasts an hour, a day, or a week, depending on your culture and the type of wedding. A marriage, on the other hand, is a much more protracted affair, typically understood as lasting until one of the two partners dies.

If the State redefined marriage to include same-sex covenants it would effectively be demanding that everybody recognise those same-sex covenants as being marriages, irrespective of what people might privately believe. It shouldn't be hard to see how that could have an effect on religious people, of whatever faith, who simply believe that same-sex unions cannot be marriages.

Mainstream Christian teaching would be open to prosecution under section 5 of the Public Order Act. The law doesn't require there to be an intention to insult, after all. It just requires people to feel insulted, in a context where the insulting person could be expected to realise that there might be somebody around who'd feel insulted or demeaned by what's being said or written.

Ordinary priests, teachers, and parents would become open to hate speech legislation.

If any service, or facility, or anything at all is offered to married couples only, well, the State would now be explicitly saying that it must also be made available to same-sex couples, regardless of your own views on what marriage is.

This would be a profoundly illiberal development, establishing a precedent for the State to redefine any pre-existing and generally recognised concept and to demand that people accept its new definition. Does anybody want that? Does anybody want the State to have a coercive power to redefine the very words we use in order to drive any ideological agenda, however noble we might think that cause to be?

Because if you're tempted to say the State should to be able to redefine words to suit your agenda, you're giving it the right to redefine them to suit somebody else's...


And then there's Unknown Unknowns...
I was ahead of the curve in disliking Donald Rumsfeld, having read years back of how he'd basically ended Kissinger's career at the top of American politics because he believed Kissinger was a wimp. That said, I thought he was the subject of a lot of unfair criticism after he said, in February 2002, that:

'There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.'

I thought that was a perfectly clear, sensible, and systematic sentence. My main problem with him saying it was that he didn't seem capable to taking on board the implications of what he said, as had he done so, I'd imagine the Bush regime would have been rather less keen to lead the charge to invade Iraq. There are some things we simply cannot foresee in any sense, and we should keep this in mind when considering such a radical change to an institution that predates the State and has long been the foundation of British society. We have no idea what the consequences might be...

Much opposition to government same-sex marriage relates things directly to children and the fact that a same-sex marriage is, by definition, sterile: it cannot, in and of itself, ever produce a child. There's a level at which this opposition is, of course, redundant: thanks especially to changes in UK adoption law, there's a sense in which same-sex relationships are already recognised in UK law as environments in which children can be reared and nurtured*. That said, I don't think we can get away from the fact that seeking to redefine marriage in UK law is part of a general process over the last half-century which has seen marriage eroded almost out of existence. Only half as many Britons are getting married now as were getting married -- from a smaller population -- in the 1960s, and almost half of the marriages that now take place end in divorce. The idea of marriage as a stable bond that acts as the foundation of a balanced and secure family in which children can be born and raised has been undermined for decades.

Only a few weeks back Britain panicked as thousands of teenagers ran riot, plundering and ransacking her cities, terrifying ordinary people everywhere. For all the nuance we need to apply in thinking about this, it seems clear that the roots of these riots lay in two main phenomena.

I've talked already here about the economic strategy of the right -- and that includes Blair who largely followed Thatcher's line on this -- having rendered millions of less-able and ill-educated people surplus to Britain's economic requirements, leaving them hopeless and frustrated in deteriorating and soul-destroying sink estates. This is a reality that pundits on the right seem, in the main, unwilling to face.

The other issue, however, is one that should discomfort the left. There seems little denying that the riots were a symptom of a much broader social breakdown, and that well-intentioned social liberalism -- which dominates Britain's attitude to social policy -- must bear much of the responsibility for this. Dying to Belong, the Centre for Social Justice's 2009 study into gang culture, identified family breakdown as a key driver in gang culture, noting that experience of early divorce or separation massively increased the likelihood of crimes being committed in youth and early adulthood.

That's not to say, of course, that same-sex partnerships or 'marriages' will cause crimes; such a claim would be as absurd as it would be offensive. However, it's important to recognise that marriage, long recognised as the bedrock of British society, has been under attack for decades; it seems to me that if the Government seriously wants to address the problems of social breakdown in modern Britain, it should be trying to protect and support the traditional institutions of British society, rather than seeking to redefine them out of existence.


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*Whether this will prove a good thing is another matter: it might be absolutely fine -- for the sake of the children, I hope so -- or it might not. Though what tiny amount of evidence there is suggests that there's no harm done through children being raised in any environment in which they could never have naturally arisen, there is simply next to no real evidence on the subject.

Same-sex adoption was illegal everywhere prior to 1995, as far as I can tell, and it's really only been in the last decades that national legislatures have voted to legalise the practice: the fact is that hardly any children, raised in same-sex households, have grown up yet. They might well turn out to be the best people who've ever lived but we just can't say based on the scanty information we've got. There's a sense in which people passing opinions on this matter are passing them based on the earliest preliminary stages of a well-intentioned social experiment. It's not normal practice to adjudicate on experiments until the results are in, and it's especially bad form to do so when you've a strong vested income in a certain outcome...

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

Christian views of marriage

It has to be said that Christians differ somewhat among themselves in their understandings of marriage, with some, such as Catholics, holding the institution in higher regard than others. Broadly speaking, though, all Christians agree that marriage is not a mere social construct but is, in fact, something made by God. In arguing this, they'll point to biology, anthropology, history, and philosophy, arguing on wholly natural and rational grounds for the existence of a natural law. They will, of course, also refer to the Bible and Christian tradition, and will point to a few key Biblical passages, notably Mark 10:6-9:

'But from the beginning of creation, "God made them male and female." "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.'

There are plenty of other passages too, of course, talking about marital relations and about how Christian marriage exists as living image of the relationship between Christ and his Church, but at the heart of all those passages is this one, which identifies a marriage as being a God-made covenant between a woman and a man, who are united into a new being.

While Catholics see Christian marriages as sacramental in a way that other marriages are not, the Church nonetheless does not in any way dispute the validity or legitimacy of non-Christian marriages. It sees them, rather, as entirely valid and real, so long as they meet the definition of marriage. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of marriage in general that:

'The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring...

"The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."'

I do not believe it would be possible for the Catholic Church to recognise same-sex unions as being marriages, leaving aside how it clearly could not sanction or celebrate such same-sex unions. And when I speak of the Church in this sense, I'm not thinking just of the hierarchy or the priesthood -- those that are sometimes and disingenuously referred to as the 'the institutional Church'. I'm thinking of all believers. I do not see how any Catholic with a properly formed conscience could accept same-sex unions as being marriages.

And I'm pretty sure it's not only Catholics that would find that an impossible hurdle.

Again, remember that this isn't about love, or about whether gay people can be committed to each other as deeply as a straight couple, or about whether the State or Society accepts that a relationship is loving or committed. And it's not about whether a civil partnership is a civil partnership.*

It's about the nature of marriage.

Shouldn't religious views be kept out of politics?

I mentioned the other day that while I do believe in the separation of State and Church, I don't think it is desirable, fair, or even possible to separate politics and religion.

Most people who tend to advocate such a separation argue based on the assumptions -- whether explicit or implicit -- that a lack of religious belief is normative, that religious belief is inherently irrational, and that one's beliefs can be divorced from one's conscience and identity. All three of these assumptions are, at the very least, questionable; I would take the view that they are, in fact, deeply wrong.

What's more, there tends to be a double standard at work in these matters; those who oppose people acting politically because of their religious views tend not to object when religious people support causes they support, even if their motives are rooted in their religious beliefs. Think about it...

• How many people maintain that the American Declaration of Independence's claims about the human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness being inalienable should be disregarded, as the Declaration explicitly identifies their inalienable character as being derived from their Divine origin?
• How many people argue that the Quaker Anthony Benezet, the Methodist John Wesley, or the Anglicans John Newton and William Wilberforce were wrong to have argued and struggled against slavery because they saw it as being against Christian teaching?
• How many people say that the opposition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sophie and Hans Scholl to the Nazi state was inappropriate, given its roots in their Lutheran faith?
• How many people hold that Oscar Romero should not have invoked the Catholic faith of the Salvadorean soldiers when calling on them to disobey their brutal and repressive orders?
• How many people believe that Jerzy Popiełuszko should have kept his Catholic views to himself and withheld his criticisms of Poland's communist government?
• How many people claim that Christians ought to have been barred from marching against the invasion of Iraq or protesting against the executions of both Troy Davis and Lawrence Brewer if their views were founded on their faith?

Faith has consequences. It's not just a matter of belief; it's a matter of belief in action, or dynamic belief, if you like. Belief should be manifested in practice. We do what we do because of who we are, and who are, in large part, depends on what we believe.

In practice, those who claim that religion should be kept out of politics are usually quite happy to accept religious people as allies, regardless of their motives; they only ever invoke the supposed principle that religion and politics should be kept apart when religious people disagree on religious grounds with their pet issues.

I'll wrap this up tomorrow.

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* It is.

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...

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* 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?