Old Ireland is not dead and gone. And we are the better for it
Afew weeks ago I had reason to attend Mass in a reasonably large rural town in the west of Ireland. Two things struck me on entering the church on a beautiful Saturday evening. One, the priest was a young African man. The other, perhaps contradictory, thought was that there seemed to be a decent-sized attendance, with the church about half full.
There was no sermon. Instead, the congregation – mostly but not exclusively middle aged and elderly – was treated to a talk by a representative of the pro-life movement. The speaker was a young woman of about 30. Clearly nervous, she read from a prepared script.
But this was no fire and brimstone ‘Save the Eighth’ performance. Rather, the speaker began by saying abortion was a complex issue that gave rise to strong opinions on either side. She said she wasn’t there to shove her opinions down the throats of anybody in the congregation and that she and her colleagues didn’t want to add to anyone’s pain and suffering when discussing abortion. She said that having an unwanted pregnancy brought serious challenges to women and that the pro-life movement understood and supported such women.
Getting more confident, the speaker described a biased media obsessed with repealing the Eighth Amendment, which she said had saved large numbers of people since its introduction in 1983.
She went on to give descriptions of parents who knew that their fatally ill babies would live for only a few minutes after birth, but how those minutes were cherished by the mothers and fathers.
She finished by stating that the voices of the Repeal the Eighth constituency that dominated the airwaves had to be countered by those of the pro-life movement, and it would only be with the support of ordinary people that the Eighth Amendment could be saved.
She asked those who agreed with her to let their local representatives know and she ended up by thanking the priest and the congregation for giving her the opportunity to present the view of the pro-life movement.
There was a slight pause before a relatively muted round of applause. 1983 this wasn’t. It’s worth reminding ourselves that at the time of the referendum giving constitutional protection to the unborn, Ireland was overwhelmingly Catholic.
Churches were routinely packed, with up to five Masses on Sunday. The sex abuse scandals that have crippled the modern Catholic Church were still shamefully hidden away and covered up by the hierarchy. But the pro-life campaign exploded in the 1980s and the battle lines between conservatism and liberalism were drawn and have hardened over the intervening three decades.
A cascade of sex abuse scandals destroyed the Catholic Church’s standing. The Church, particularly in urban Ireland, left many people cold. Not only did it have no moral compass itself, but the message it did preach felt hopelessly outdated. The vulgarity of the Celtic Tiger saw many worship a new god: materialism. If ever there was a false god in Ireland it was that.
Liberalism, the orthodoxy of the modern Left, is now emboldened. Austerity is its easy target economically. Victories on issues such as divorce and same-sex marriage suggest an inevitable march towards another win in a future abortion referendum.
This is buttressed by a view that the Catholic Church no longer has influence in modern Ireland.
Liberalism demands change. It stands for modernity and for a perpetual revolution. It is far more exciting than the familiarity and stability espoused by conservatives. Yet there is a case to be made that the ‘Catholicism in terminal decline’ thesis is overstated. In the 2016 census, people had the option of ticking the ‘no religion’ box, yet 78% opted for Catholicism. That’s four out five people.
The crushing end of that mythical fleeting Celtic Tiger has left a huge void in the lives of multitudes of citizens. Many are searching for a new meaning in their lives and yearn for the stability of a good home, a good education and good career prospects for their children.
Much of the liberal elite take the view that Catholicism equates to tacit tolerance of devotion to an outmoded institution that doesn’t treat women equally, covers up child abuse under the aura of mental reservation and has no real place in a modern, pluralist society.
It views abortion as a human right. Yet persuading a majority to vote to repeal the Eighth will be far more difficult than it was to get people to vote for marriage equality in 2015. Judging by the census, the silent majority still see their Catholicism as an unimpeachable commitment to faith and observance. And it is this quiet observance of Catholic identity that should give succour to our pro-life speaker, and worry those who believe repealing the Eighth is simply a matter of when the referendum will be called.
Polls showing a victory for those advocating repeal are likely to narrow if and when a referendum is called. Aborting babies somehow does not quite have the compassion and love argument central to the marriage equality referendum.
This Easter will, for the majority of people, be about family. Mothers and fathers whose children are gay, are single parents, or are, to use the ridiculously quaint phrase, ‘living in sin’, will also go to Mass. They won’t tweet about it, but they will do it.
Ireland has changed dramatically since the abortion referendum of 1983 and much of it is for the better. Socially, Ireland is a far more liberal and tolerant place. The stigma unmarried mothers carried around with them is thankfully gone.
Much of Ireland cleaves to the notions of meitheal – that traditional ethos of community. They cherish family and eat their dinner in the middle of the day, particularly on a Sunday. New immigrant families share the same traits. Those ties that bind citizens together continue to exist in modern Ireland.
Sustained through the terrible years of abuse revelations by the quiet rituals of Irish life, the 78% survived the Celtic Tiger and it will not be broken by a doctrinaire liberalism on the march. Ireland is not against change. It just values patience.