2018: Ireland’s divorce from the Catholic Church and other unfinished business

As recent decades have withered and fallen on our decayed disillusionment and crumbling carcass of the Celtic Tiger, the Emerald Isle has become disenchanted. As recession came and went, the chamber of clerical abuse was reopened – the Pandora’s box which has dissipated the parasitic relationship between the church and the people of Ireland. Figuratively, and literally through the 1998 referendum, we allowed ourselves to divorce the nation from our past. We legalised same-sex marriage in 2015, we recognised the plight of women in the repeal of the 8th amendment in 2018, but our successes are relative and inexcusably burdened by our failures. These failures involve the sanctified disregard for the safety of children and the care of children, the consecration of clerical abuse as mere sinful stains on our country and not criminal acts where reparation is as rare as the vindication of victims.

The ignorance to the systemic betrayal of innocence enacted by some members of the church implicates countless clergies, communities, councils and cabinets. ‘No such thing as innocent bystanding’ are words from Seamus Heaney which echo through marbled cathedrals and unmarked mass graves, for years unable to rise to the pedestals on which we preserved the Catholic church. Harrowing tales of heartbreak from the Magdalenes to Tuam would eventually send tremors through the foundations of the plinth protecting those previously immune to atonement. But still, despite resignations of priests and closures of homes, we are left with crimes unanswered for, financial compensation unfulfilled or simply unwanted. Apologies do not mend open wounds.

Durcan mused that Ireland is a ‘country where all children of the nation are not cherished equally, where the best go homeless, while the worst erect blockhouse palaces self-regardingly ugly.’ Abandoned and ignored by governments, uninteresting to the media, the aftershocks of abuse systems absolve our vicious attempts to be viewed as liberal and tolerant. As long as children sleep on Garda station floors and living memory can still articulate scandals, heartbreak and trauma inflicted by the church, then we are not finished with our past – Old Ireland still haunts us.

The visit of Pope Francis to Ireland reignited public fury and allowed controversy to simmer along the emptying pastures and corrals of Phoenix Park, cosmically colliding with the revelation of his knowledge of and, by coincidence, his complicity in the McCarrick abuse scandal in the US. He has been argued as the most liberal Pontiff in history but, that being said, slight liberalism in one of the most coarsely conservative offices in the world is more the act of being ‘less archaic’ than ‘more liberal’. To ‘oppose the condemnation of homosexuality’ yet instead encourage prayer and psychiatric help for children who identify as anything other than heterosexual is not liberal, it is intolerant. To demonstrate a love for animals, to call for environmental protection and to exalt peace is not liberalism, it is humanity. If we live in a world where humanity is the pole of conservatism, then maybe we are beyond reproach.

Despite the traditional Irish identity being symbiotic to that of Catholicism, it is negligence to believe that is the contemporary case. In a society of Pride and of choice, that is evident. The separation of church and state is inherent to the continuance of a government which reflects the views of the people, rather than the senile policies of rural churches. The year of the legalisation of abortion and the revocation of blasphemy from the Irish constitution in 2018, coincided with the visit of Pope Francis, the first papal visit since John Paul II in 1979. The juxtaposition of these events is paramount in understanding the evolution of the Irish identity and its divorce from Catholicism.

In 1983, the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Act was passed by a resounding majority. 66% of the Irish electorate agreed that the right to life of a pregnant woman as equivalent to that of the unborn. In 2018, it was repealed by the same percentage, with abortion services freely available and accessible as of January 1st 2019. In 1979, Pope John Paul II said mass in Phoenix Park to a congregation of 1.25 million people. In 2018, the same mass was said by Pope Francis to 152,000 people. Between 87 and 91 percent of the population attended weekly mass throughout the 1970s and 80s. In the 2016 census, mass-going numbers had dropped to 46% of the population. Ireland is divorcing the Catholic church, one step at a time.

The departure from Catholicism as the mantra of the nation neither fills nor further erodes the void of morality which sits comfortably between upper and lower classes, which sits virtually uncontested in Leinster House, which sits basked in luxury in landlords’ bank accounts. There were 9,968 identified homeless people in Ireland on November 18th of this year, 3,811 of those were children. By June, 71,858 households in Ireland had qualified for Local Authority Housing Support due to financial difficulties out of their control. The World Economic Forum of 2018 attributed these consequences of wealth inequalities to decades of prioritising economic growth over social equity, materialising in the CSO finding that roughly 1 in every 6 people in the country live under the poverty line. Despite this, the Taoiseach recently outlined his objection to property tax harvested from the wealthy to be used in the communities of the poorer. The impoverished are enduring more poverty, while the rich are just getting richer.

To observe this Ireland is easy, to conveniently zone out warnings of climate change and statistics of homelessness is easy. Life is simpler when you delegate the problems of the many to the few, it feels fulfilling to retweet a complaint or like a post detailing our failings rather than consuming them. Virtual, superficial, feel-good ‘caring’. We can’t afford to be selfish in 2019. We can’t afford to indulge in feigned ignorance and the idea that nothing we do will make an impact. We can vote for Europe in May, we can collectively change things at home and beyond.

As of today, abortion services are available nationwide. We did that. Let’s do it again.

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