Saturday View
It’s now a fortnight since voters in the Republic opted by a decisive margin to remove from the constitution the right to life of unborn children. Within the Catholic Church, bishops are left assessing what the result means for Catholicism and the future of the institution on this island. There will also be questions about the decision church leaders made to effectively sit out the campaign.
I say effectively, because it’s not entirely fair to say the hierarchy was absent from the referendum debate. But they confined their input to having pastoral letters read at masses and clear briefings about the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life.
The Catholic Communications Office at Maynooth established a dedicated ‘life desk’, but the focus was decisively on equipping priests with the resources they needed and getting the message out to mass-going Catholics, rather than catching the attention of the media.
An internal debate is now raging about the effectiveness of the Irish bishops’ strategy. Some Right-wing Catholic blogs, mostly emanating from Britain and the United States, have accused the Church of letting the side down by not robustly demanding that voters opt to retain the eighth amendment.
Coming from such eccentric sources, the assessment will gain little traction. What will sting, however, is the grumbling going on in some influential Catholic circles in Ireland and in Rome that the bishops failed to offer leadership — and some bishops would share this criticism of some of their peers on the episcopal bench.
So, why was the Church so sias lent in the public debate around abortion in the media? Was it that the institution is crumbling and tired? Did it lack the foot soldiers or competent spokespeople? Was it anxious about the fact that high-profile people, such as Bishop Eamonn Casey and Fr Michael Cleary, who fronted the campaign in 1983, were later used to such great effect as sticks to beat the Church with?
All of the above. But, more crucially, I think the hierarchy correctly diagnosed that a significant portion of the Irish people — including many mass-goers — no longer care what the Church has to say on the pressing issues of the day. Bishops also feared a backlash due to the fact the Church hasn’t entirely covered itself in glory when it comes to issues affecting women.
It proved not to be an unfounded fear if the post-referendum response to bishops Kevin Doran and Phonsie Cullinan was anything to go by. Dr Doran appeared on RTE radio to suggest that Catholics who voted Yes might want to consider availing of the sacrament of reconciliation. Bishop Cullinan said he was “horrified” to see people celebrating a vote to pave the way for abortion in Dublin Castle. The reaction was swift as it was critical.
While one might question the prudence of men of the cloth taking such an approach in the wake of the vote, it’s hard to fathom how anyone could be surprised that a bishop thinks that a practising Catholic rejecting something that the Church believes to be so core might have something to reflect on.
It goes to illustrate the point that if bishops had chosen to be front and centre in the campaign, the margin in favour of repeal may have been even greater as some voters marked an X not so much for repeal but as a rejection of the Church.
In essence, faced with a referendum the No side couldn’t possibly win, the bishops had a prudential judgment to make about how influential their voices would be, and they chose to be low-key.
Part of the appeal of Catholicism for many is the uncompromising nature of Church teaching on controversial social issues. If Catholicism is in decline in Western culture, conservative Catholics argue, better a decline with integrity, rather than desperately seeking a relevance that forever eludes it.
The huge challenge for a church that is mandated to speak about Jesus Christ and articulate a spirituality which is life-giving, is that it runs the risk of becoming little more than a conservative pressure group only heard from during controversial debates.
Many Irish people continue to feel welcomed and nourished to be a part of the Church in their local parish, but they are increasingly at odds with Catholicism as an institution.
The dilemma for bishops is whether they want to lay down the law for these a la carte Catholics and alienate more people, or continue to turn a blind eye.
Either way, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.