Ireland has changed, but around one in 10 of the population still turned out to see Pope Francis. It’s a pity the DUP didn’t take the opportunity to forge alliances with fellow conservatives
Like embarrassing relatives, traditional forces are expected to now stay quiet in Ireland, but there’s a God-shaped hole in a great many people’s lives and secularism can’t fill it, says Eilis O’Hanlon
If members of the Irish and international media had been forced over the past fewdaystopayasmallfee every time one of them declared how much the Irish Republic has changed since the time of Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979, the estimated €32m cost of this weekend’s trip by Pope Francis would have been met many times over.
And of course, they were right. The country has changed. Whether that’s as meaningful an observation as they seemed to imagine is another matter altogether.
It’s been nearly 40 years since John Paul touched down in Dublin, and the past, as that other famous cliche goes, is another country. So Ireland has now legalised divorce, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and abortion. Social attitudes are much more liberal, as they are in every other country and sphere of life. A la carte Irish Catholics no longer live their lives as ordered by priests.
But what was most notable over the weekend was how much has remained the same underneath those shifting sands. The number of those who came out to pay homage to Francis may have been well downon1979,whenmorethan a million people made the same journey; but the half a million-strong crowd gathered in the Phoenix Park for Mass yesterday remains staggering by any measure.
It’s likely to be the largest single gathering of people in Europe this year, and represents around one in ten of the population of the Republic. No other figure, organisation or cause could command such solid support. When President
Obama came to Ireland a few years ago a mere 60,000 people gathered in Dublin’s College Greentolapuphisshtick,and that was declared an overwhelming success.
The warmth of Francis’ welcome certainly took the Irish chattering classes by surprise. They love it when the Pope waffles on about inequality or the environment, because then he sounds as if he’d fit right in at one of their dinner parties, but they don’t like being reminded thattheysharetheislandwith other, older, more traditional forces.
Like embarrassing relatives, conservatives are expected these days to stay quiet and know their place. Their existence does not chime with the funky, liberal, modern face that Ireland wants to present to the world.
Over the weekend the progressives were made to fear briefly that they were the ones who are out of step, and they didn’t like the feeling one bit.
That, though, wouldn’t be the right conclusion to draw either. Attitudes towards personal and sexual morality may undergo revision, but human beings don’t change that much. They still want meaning in their lives, something bigger than themselves. That’s what the Church offers. The sense of continuity and belonging is why it survives through multiple challenges, and it’s a remarkable testament to how deep those roots go that more than three-quarters of the Irish still freely choose to call themselves Catholic despite that word having been stained by decades of association with the monstrous sexual abuse of children.
Not least when that stain has not been removed. The Church has never made sufficient amends for what it allowed to happen in Ireland and elsewhere.
Pope Francis asked for “forgiveness” at yesterday’s Mass, not only for the sexual abuse of children but also for the mistreatment of women in Mother and Baby Homes and the Magdalene Laundries, and that’s a hugely significant development, especially after the somewhat robotic and ritualistic murmurings of regret which he uttered at the previous day’s set piece address alongside Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and later at the shrine in Knock.
His words on those two occasions lacked the passion needed to acknowledge what he himself called “this great scandal”. It was left initially to the Taoiseach to eloquently denounce the Church’s crimes, whilst also acknowledging that the Irish state had in the past colluded in them.
Despite what Francis said in the Phoenix Park, it’s still not clear that the Catholic Church fully grasps the extent of the evil that it wreaked on the most vulnerable. Survivors will rightly want to know more about the “concrete actions” that His Holiness now agrees are needed to bring about “justice”. If the Vatican continues to protect its own, his words will come to seem even more hollow, and that will add further insult to victims, who will have been given false hope once again.
If he really does believe that those in the Church who
committed or excused abuse are “caca”, the Spanish word for excrement which he used during a private meeting with abuse survivors on Saturday, then why are so many of them still swanning around in clerical vestments?
To define the Catholic Church entirely by its response to child abuse would be as reductive as equating Islam only with suicide bombing. Faith runs deeper than the crimes of any particular institution, and hundreds of thousands of Irish people clearly still cherish its comforts.
But until there are no dark corners left in which clerical abusers and their enablers in authority can hide, it’s wise to greet his remarks yesterday with a large pinch of cynicism.
Francis’ words were not aimed at people like me. I remember well the excitement of getting the bus down from Belfast to see John Paul II in Drogheda back in the day, but nothing in me, not even nostalgia or curiosity, longed to join this weekend’s pilgrimage to Dublin, and I did feel slightly dispirited at hearing ordinary Catholics on Irish TV and radio yesterday instantly declare that the Pope had done enough on thisvisittomakeamends.
That remains to be seen. But there’s a God-shaped hole in a great many people’s lives, and secularism can’t fill it. Ireland has grown into an infinitely more tolerant and inclusive place than it was 40 years ago, but that diversity must have shallow roots if it can’t make room for them.
Modernity should not mean throwing out what was good about tradition.
In that respect, it’s a pity that the DUP couldn’t find the vision to be officially represented during the Pope’s visit South, because the old political certainties are not as solid as they once were, and there are new alliances to be forged.
Under siege as they both are in so many ways, conservatives in the Protestant and Catholic Churches alike are set to come under increasing challenge in the years ahead.
They may ultimately find that they have more interests in common than differences.
It’s still not clear the Church fully grasps the extent of the evil that it wreaked on vulnerable
Faith runs deeper than any institution’s crimes... hundreds of thousands still cherish its comforts