Why despite everything I still call myself CATHOLIC
Traditionalists will tut, the secularists might sneer, but Kate Kerrigan’s faith is very much part of who she is
PUBLICLY saying ‘I’m an Irish Catholic’ these days is no longer the proud statement it once was. It is a whisper. A muted admission. We all now know how, for decades, the Catholic Church we were in thrall to had sold us a lie.
They took our faith in them and twisted it into something dark and sinister. Who would want to be a Catholic these days?
Who would want to admit allegiance to such a cruel institution? It is a question I have asked myself with every fresh revelation. The latest being Tuam. Simply continuing to be a Catholic often feels like a betrayal. Most of us are conflicted, torn.
In public, we sit on the fence and say we are only putting our children through the rites of passage for a ‘day out’ or to fit in. And yet, when the census forms came, around 78% of us, a vast majority, ticked the box marked ‘Catholic’. Including me.
I did not waver or question myself for a moment. In the privacy and anonymity of the census, I simply told the truth. I am a Catholic. Not text book. Not by the definition of the old guard or the secularists, but by my own definition. In my heart, soul and sense of identity, I feel sufficiently Catholic to describe myself as such.
With those identifying themselves as Catholic down by 6% since the 2011 census, it was hardly the dramatic plummet in
numbers that many of us — Catholics included — were expecting. Yet instead of accepting this as an unexpected yet real truth, sections of the media have been desperately trying to discredit that figure. Calling those of us who are quietly going about our private business with God into question.
Exactly what kind of Catholic are you? Are you practising? Do you go to Mass every Sunday? Do you believe in original sin? The Virgin birth? Transubstantiation? When was the last time you went to confession?
So, are you a real Catholic, or simply a weak, unthinking person who ticked the Catholic box in the census just because you don’t care enough about human rights, or the Eighth Amendment or the grip that the Church has on our schools? Catholic-shaming is now a media sport.
This was the first census with a ‘no religion’ option. By its nature the census was anonymous so there was no reason to tick Catholic if you didn’t mean it. One consequence of the terrible things the Catholic Church has done has been to turn good priests and ordinary, everyday Catholics into PR martyrs. But it certainly hasn’t eroded our sense of Irish Catholicism so much that we are leaving in our droves.
Yes, we are eschewing Mass. We are using contraception. We are supporting our LGBT children. We are getting divorced. And the many people who still describe themselves as Catholic will be going to England for abortions. Irish Catholics are distancing ourselves from the edicts of Rome but we are not letting go of our fundamental faith. Not in any great number. Not yet.
When the results of the census came out, I was relieved to find that there are so many people out there who, like me, choose to identify themselves as Catholics even though we do not ‘practise’ in the traditional sense.
I am a cultural Catholic. That is to say, I was reared in the Church, married in the Church and will be buried in the Catholic Church.
I have consciously chosen to pass that culture on to my sons to shore up their sense of identity, culturally and morally, as they go through life. I cherrypick the belief system, editing out the bad bits.
When it comes to my sons, and just as my parents did for me, I will drag them through the rites of passage, until they decide for themselves whether to chuck it all in in their teens before maybe returning to it later — if they decide to get married, for example.
If they are gay, they will have to have a civil ceremony, and in that case, I will lobby one of the many Catholics priests who I know who are also intelligent, liberal humanitarians, to bless their union because, and even atheists agree with this, nobody does ceremony quite like a Catholic priest.
In terms of my relationship with God, I have a pragmatic, scientific outlook on life, and because of that I struggle to totally believe in Him.
However, I aspire to faith, and wear my atheistic tendencies as a struggle rather than a badge of honour. I believe in the Christian values of Jesus Christ. My broad understanding of his teachings are what motivated me to campaign for equal rights for my LGBT friends and family in the marriage referendum.
For those same humanitarian reasons, I will campaign for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. I do not feel any conflict in that regard in relation to my Catholic faith and if anyone disagrees with that, well then that is their own business. How I choose to sit with my Catholic conscience is my business.
I did not like the last Pope and while I have less objection to Pope Francis, I never put money in the purple Vatican envelope at mass. They have far too much already. Instead, I put my contributions into the yellow Parish envelope, hoping that our lovely parish priest uses it to take a well earned break from the rigours of working so damn hard for so damn little.
I emphatically object to the role the Catholic Church plays in our education system and believe that our schools should be multi- or non-denominational.
Religion belongs in the home and not at school. My youngest son actually goes to an Educate Together school, where he learns about world religions and on Tuesday evenings I bring him for Faith Formation classes where he has begun preparing for his First Holy Communion in time for next May. When his big day comes, I will watch him make his way up the aisle and I will be overcome with emotion. He will be wearing his older brother’s suit (which I have kept aside for nearly 10 years purely for this purpose) and, surrounded by his whole family, including cousins who have all experienced this day in their time, he will receive ‘the body and blood of Christ’.
Unlike me, he will not believe in transubstantiation. He already identifies Catholicism as a narrative that he can choose to believe, or choose not to believe.
Catholicism in our family is as much about identity, belonging and community as actual faith.
My teenage son, meanwhile, takes great issue with the Church and especially its teachings on LGBT issues. He nonetheless acknowledges that it is ‘who he is’ and where he comes from.
He’s not active in the Church but he is not running from it either. Why should he be ashamed of his Catholic heritage any more than I should have been ashamed of my Irish heritage when the IRA was bombing London when I was living there?
Catholic faith is no longer about going to Mass or doing everything the priest, or the Pope, tells you to do. Those days are gone. I am in charge of my own Catholicism. I teach my sons that it makes sense to have faith in a power greater than themselves. Something beyond human will to believe in. Religion gives structure to that belief and, having been bought up a Catholic, that is my route in. As a child I drew solace from the stories and had a deep faith in God and Jesus and the Blessed Virgin. I remain loyal to that faith and that Church. I might hate the organisation that is the Catholic Church but I won’t deny that it has defined me. It gave me the structure that corralled my difficult childhood, the faith that got me through my darkest days, the rites that buried my loved ones, the rosary that I still use to feel connected to them.
THE Church I grew up with and which I continue to identify with is deeply flawed but I don’t reject it enough to sacrifice who I am. As a self-confessed Catholic, I cannot disassociate the name from the scandals of Catholic history, nor can I disassociate myself from the corrupt cruelty of the Vatican. Simply saying, ‘I’m not a Catholic’ cannot wipe away the truth of history. If I could change the narrative so that the Tuam babies cruelty had never happened by simply ticking a box declaring ‘no religion’ or save one child from a paedophile priest by unregistering myself from baptism online, then I would. But it doesn’t work like that.
The 2016 census figures show that, today, in Ireland, we are still a Catholic country and no-one can deny those official figures.
But we are also a liberal, global, and very different Catholic country to the one of old. Let’s not tar everybody with the same brush or throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Secularists and anti-Catholic lobbyists believe that a continuing adherence to Irish Catholicism will erode their agenda to revolutionise Ireland
There are 3.7m Catholics in Ireland. Kate Kerrigan is just one of them
socially and politically.
Yet Ireland’s Catholics are already doing that. Some 60% of Irish people voted Yes in the marriage referendum and, according to the census results, a large proportion of those would also have been Catholic.
As a Catholic country we also brought in divorce, and soon the 78% of the population who are Catholics will, in all likelihood, help to repeal the Eighth Amendment. If the majority of the country, meanwhile, wants to wrestle our education system out of the hands of the bishops, then it will happen. As a self-proclaimed Catholic, that’s what I would like to happen, and I don’t believe I am untypical.
However, if nearly 80% of the country want their children educated in Catholic schools, then the secularists will just have to suck it up and wait for the figures to drop.
But in the meantime we will continue to identify ourselves as Catholic and to practise within our faith in a way that works for us in relation to the personal conscience.
It is sad that this connection we feel to the Church and our history has us in a religious no man’s land in terms of how we are perceived by secularists and by the Church itself.
But that’s modern-day Catholicism. You might not like it, but this is how I practise my Catholic faith. In the context of an Ireland that is still very much a Catholic country.