‘Abortion is a threat to democracy and divorce a celebrity issue’
THERE are a few politicians here who are almost always worth listening to. In general, though, the political system is not set up for what we might call interesting discourse. Maybe that is why we have the summer school season, now upon us, which allows politicians time and space to expand on their political thinking.
That said, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe usually has original thoughts to offer, particularly in defence of centrist politics, and the Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin is also worth a listen, almost always when he hones in on the European Union and Ireland’s relationship with Europe more generally, although his views on the failings and potential of ‘new politics’ are wearing a little thin.
In the general public sphere, I also always keep an ear to Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, whose sermons, speeches and statements go mostly unremarked upon in this day and age, something he seems to phlegmatically accept without the much ado of his predecessors. Can his views be interpreted as political? Not always, but sometimes, yes, they can.
At a Mass for the Protection of Life earlier this month he had the following to say, which went unnoticed, but seems to me to be quite an interesting debate to open: “Being pro-life is a way to live as active citizens in defending that fundamental principle of democracy, that every life has equal value, that we are all equal before the law. A society that begins to establish its own categories of lives, that are considered of lesser value than others, begins a process that undermines democracy.”
Of course not all politicians are inclined to ruminate on the processes that may or may not undermine democracy, which is why I always enjoy the contributions of the everso-direct Kate O’Connell of Fine Gael, who also has a pharmacy business in comfortable Rathgar. Kate, who is strongly prochoice and is on the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment, was pretty direct on a different matter last week, namely cannabis for medical use, which the Dail’s Health Committee shot out of the water much to the chagrin of Gino Kenny of Solidarity.
Here’s O’Connell: “The committee members found the bill to be as much about decriminalising the use of cannabis as it is about promoting it for medicinal use.”
Kate the chemist also lauded the “excellent medicine regulatory authority” that was the Health Products Regulatory Authority.
Apropos of nothing in particular, the recreational use of cannabis is evident everywhere these days, or certainly in these environs, openly on the street and outside pubs, restaurants and whatnot. The day of decriminalisation is, to use a term anathema to Pope emeritus Benedict, still “relatively” close. In advance, it would be interesting to know what proportion of Fine Gael and Solidarity voters are recreational cannabis users. Answers on a postcard please…
When she is not concerned about looming property tax increases in leafy South Co Dublin, whose well-heeled residents she represents, that other Fine Gael woman overlooked for promotion to the ministerial ranks, Josepha Madigan, is busily promoting a bill to reform Irish divorce law to reduce the waiting period required for separated couples from four years to two.
When it is not concerned with the looming battle of the Eighth Amendment, the Roman Catholic Church occasionally turns its mind to the issue of divorce, although I was disappointed that Archbishop Martin did not refer to an ongoing controversy related to this issue when he addressed the Diocese of Wurzburg in Germany last Saturday on the ‘Challenge for the Church in the 21st Century’.
He has addressed the issue of the possible admission of the divorced and civilly remarried to share Communion in the past, in reference to the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family in 2014, and then in what I am sure was an unintended dismissive fashion, when he referred to this as one of two “celebrity issues”, the other being “the pastoral response to people of homosexual orientation”.
At Wurzburg, however, he did outline a, ahem, relatively interesting account of the challenge to the Church, particularly the historical background to that challenge. I was struck by his expressed doubts that Irish Catholicism was ready for the radical changes of the second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.
Not only was the Church culture of the time inadequate to face the challenge of change, he said, but that culture was in itself something that made real and realistic change more difficult. “That the once conformist Ireland changed so rapidly, and with few tears, was read as an indication of a desire for change, but perhaps it was also an indication that the earlier conformism was covering a shallow faith and a faith built on a faulty structure which people no longer really endorsed. The good old days of traditional mid-20th century Irish Catholicism may, in reality, not have been so good and healthy after all.”
Since I first wrote on the issue of the separated and divorced in the Church, I have taken an active interest in the ongoing debate worldwide. Of particular interest is the altered view of Pope Benedict.
In 1972, seven years after the second Vatican Council closed, the then Fr Joseph Ratzinger, a theological consultant to the council, wrote an essay which reaffirmed that marriage was indissoluble in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
However, he concluded that if a “second marriage has proven to have taken on a moral and ethical dimension” and was “lived in the spirit of the faith”, with “moral obligations” towards children and wife, then an opening of communion after a period of probation “seems to be nothing more than just and completely following the line of Church tradition”.
This earlier essay was circulated again in Church circles, around the time of the recent Church Synod on the Family, and has been quoted by Benedict’s German rival, Cardinal Walter Kasper, himself once described by Pope Francis as “a clever theologian, a good theologian”.
But the essay was redacted in the fourth volume of Benedict’s more recent collected writings. The new version excludes the crucial final paragraphs quoted by Cardinal Kasper.
Now Benedict argues instead for the Church to rethink existing marriage annulment procedures to allow greater leeway on dealing with remarried couples, a potential that was outlined to me personally in the Vatican last year.
In itself, however, Benedict’s 1972 essay raises another question, which is being asked by both liberal and traditional Catholics, including those who have rejected the second Vatican Council.
To revise the conclusion of his theological argumentation, without at the same time changing the arguments or the premises themselves, is disingenuous, it is argued. For if the conclusion follows with necessity, it still follows, even if Benedict tries to disguise it.
On the other hand, if the conclusion does not follow with necessity but with some probability, then the conclusion is legitimate and people can still draw it today, regardless of his revision.
That said, if Benedict’s original conclusion does not follow at all from his arguments, then he must repudiate it entirely and explain why he made people believe for 45 years that it was an acceptable opinion.
Then again, perhaps this is a relatively trivial, or too “celebrity” an issue for Archbishop Martin to properly address; that is, over and above the repeated cutting and pasting into his sermons, speeches and statements a sentence of irrelevance to the Catholic divorced, that ‘there is a high birth-rate and rates of divorce are low’.