YES VOTER: WHY I WILL GO SEE THE POPE

In May’s referendum, many liberal Catholics – including our writer – voted out of a sense of humanity. And they still feel close to the Christian integrity of the Pope?

IWAS with my friend’s great-aunt at her great-grandson’s Christening recently, listening politely as she complained vigorously about the Pope’s impending visit.

‘Why is the Pope coming to Ireland?’ she asked. ‘Now – of all times! Why can’t the Catholic Church just leave us all alone? Haven’t they done enough damage?’

As a woman in her seventies, Catholicism had made her life a ‘living hell’. Educated by angry nuns, trapped by early pregnancy into an unhappy marriage, she still loyally lived by Catholic regulation until her faith became so rocked by the abuse scandals that, in late middle age, she turned her back on her Church entirely.

‘I won’t go to Mass,’ she said, ‘I just do celebrations. Like today.’

She finds mine and her own children’s take-what-you-likeand-leave-the-rest attitude to Catholicism truly baffling. Her past experience of the Church was so all-or-nothing. Toe the line, or burn in hell for eternity.

‘I suppose he’s coming to try and win us back,’ she said of the Pope. ‘Well, he’s not getting my vote.’

She gulped down a mouthful of tea and her eyelids fluttered. Despite herself, she likes this Pope, I thought. Even the most ardent atheists find him impish and charming. Francis is down-to-earth. Intelligent.

I could see that when this lady voted Yes, as she did in the recent referendum, she was not simply voting for women’s right to choose, she was voting against a Church-run state that has historically mistreated women. There is no arguing against the level of the Catholic Church’s record of abuse and the State’s outrageous collusion in that for so very long. The Pope has made a few noises in the right direction but he hasn’t made proper reparation. Not yet. And that makes people angry.

‘The Pope’s not done anything for us,’ the great-aunt continued, ‘why should we welcome him?’

I said nothing.

AS a practising Catholic, albeit a rather flimsy one at times, I found the recent referendum particularly polarising.

My secular friends were elated when the vote came through. ‘We won!’ they cried. I joined them in their joy but not in their triumph at having cowed the pro-life Catholic zealots. I didn’t see the point. Marginalised uber-Catholics are a constant annoyance, especially for us ordinary Catholics.

Referendums always put them centre stage and we end up under the spotlight next to them. Apologetic, reluctant, liberal Catholics. Despised by conservatives for loosening the tightly drawn moral stance. Considered shallow and lacking in integrity by secular friends. Yet all we want is somewhere comfortable and familiar to express our relationship with God.

In the run-up to last month’s vote, the Catholic majority kept our mouths shut and our heads down – then cast our Yes votes quietly and unexpectedly. We got the result we wanted – but we are glad it’s over and done with and now we would like to move on.

The timing of the Pope’s visit, so soon after the referendum could be used as an opportunity for both ‘sides’ to reiterate their stances. Paint over the Yes banners with No Pope! Meanwhile, the conservatives can start preaching to the Yes voters to get to confession if we want to be invited to the party.

The truth is, nobody won or lost. Ireland has changed. We have changed.

The last two referendums have shown the world a seismic shift in who we are and what it means to be Irish in 2018. What we do with it next is what matters now.

‘Surely, now is the time to declare ourselves a resolutely secular state,’ my friend, the great aunt, is saying, eyeing the friendly priest with disdain.

‘Tell the Pope to stay where he is!’ she says, a little too loudly. She is still angry, I thought. I’m still angry too – a bit. But I also feel that in voting Yes I played my part in bringing about a change in Irish society that has made me feel different as a woman. I feel equal. I feel – validated. And that validation makes me want to celebrate.

Perhaps, therefore, this is the perfect time to roll out the red carpet for the Pontiff.

To the lay people, Francis is moving at a snail’s pace – but according to my priest friend,

his efforts are monumental. He is appointing liberal cardinals so there is some hope of his not automatically being succeeded by a dogmatic conservative.

He has called off Benedict’s firing squad from the US feminist nuns, there is talk of reappointing married priests to ‘remote rural areas’ (in the Amazon – not north Mayo – just yet!) and even – gasp – ordaining female deacons which would be an irreversible step in the right direction for women priests.

And here’s the thing. Francis extols the ‘people’s church’ – and you just have to ask the priests in Ireland and they will tell you that the Church here IS being run by the people insofar as we Irish Catholics are doing it our way.

We are not in thrall to the old rules. We go to Mass because we like it, not because we have to. Keeping company with Christian teachings reminds us to be kind and keep our priorities straight. It reminds us to be good. Some people need reminding of that more than others.

In church, we light candles, pray, meditate, meet our neighbours, sing in choirs, arrange flowers, take Communion and hold fundraising cake-sales. We don’t fear retribution for not doing what we’re told. We use contraception.

Most of us don’t believe we will burn in hell for all eternity for having sex out of wedlock, or being gay, or terminating an unwanted pregnancy before 12 weeks.

Despite this flagrant flaunting of rules, there are still enough of us getting confirmed, married and buried to keep the church in business. The priests, largely, understand that and serve our needs. They know that they need to be likeable and not too judgmental because we don’t take as much heed of them as we used to. Some of them quite like that, and some of them don’t.

Nonetheless, between the priests and the people, we manage to take a few unholy liberties – videoing our First Holy Communions and singing Ed Sheeran songs at weddings.

We’re making it work. The official voice of the Irish Church, the Irish bishops, however, are all still conservative Pope Benedict appointments.

At best, craw-thumping conservatives, at worst timid diplomats. they are out of touch with the liberal Catholics of Ireland, the Catholics like me who voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Maybe a look at Francis close up this August might shake some of them out of their torpor!

Francis is the first Pope since John XXIII to shake up the conservative Curia and put the people first. He is a Pope who wants to broaden the remit of what it is to identify as Catholic. He is inclusive rather than denouncing. He is ruled by Christian spirit above dogma. He lives in a Vatican guesthouse and wears ordinary shoes. Make no mistake about it, Pope Francis is a massive deal.

And he’s coming to Ireland. The Queen did a brilliant job in healing the hurt caused by 800 years of oppression. Maybe now the Pope will put some salve on the newer, rawer hurts.

I voted Yes to repeal the Eighth and for gay marriage in 2015, and I’m excited about the Pope’s visit to Ireland. I do not believe the two things are mutually exclusive and I am pretty certain he doesn’t either.

I voted Yes as woman – and as a Catholic. I felt it strongly. That feeling of waking up in a different Ireland to the one the day before. This vote meant that, as a woman, I matter.

Cynics will remember the brouhaha over John Paul’s visit, with the late Eamonn Casey entertaining the crowds just a short few years before his illicit lover, Annie Murphy, imploded Archbishop McQuaid’s Ireland by revealing that the popular bishop had fathered a child. Yet how innocent that seemed compared to the revelations that followed.

John Paul’s 1979 visit was the last time a Pope visited Ireland. For that reason alone, for the purpose of observing how the truth can impact history, we should welcome this event with open arms.

Since then, Ireland has been grieving for all that we lost. All that our brand of conservative Catholicism stole from us.

The pain of that endemic, personal and societal abuse is still there. It will be generations before it is bred out of us.

Justified anger motivated and spurned us on to do great things – to change our country for the better. To reject outdated, inappropriate laws and embrace modernity and equality.

We have achieved so much, so surely, while it is all still fresh, now would be the perfect time to celebrate the way we have always celebrated everything – with a great big show-stopping Mass.

WE took our national religion so seriously for so long – and look at the trouble it got us into. Rejecting it entirely gives it the same power. Why not take a lighter approach – and throw in some colour and some light. Embrace the possibility of old wounds healing. The Queen made it work – maybe the Pope will too.

There is no better way to showcase our new Ireland to the world than welcoming the Pope. Irish Catholics just voted in their droves for something the Church fundamentally disagrees with.

We might have been angry, some of us, but the Irish people didn’t vote ‘against the Church’ as much as we voted ‘for’ ourselves. We voted with hope for the future, more than anger at the past. We voted out of a place of humanity, a place of love – a place of Christian integrity.

That in itself is a kind of miracle, worthy of the world’s observation, worthy of spreading out in front of this ‘good’ Pope but, most of all, worthy of throwing a massive celebration. A Pope-sized party.

At the end of the Christening party, my friend’s great-aunt leaned in to me and said in a confidential whisper: ‘I still believe in God, you know. I’m just so angry with them. I can’t get over it!’

Then she looked wistfully over at the priest again and added, ‘I worry about my funeral. It feels hypocritical to ask for a Catholic burial.’

‘Go for it,’ I said, ‘after all they put you through, you’ve earned a bell, book and candle send-off.’

‘I think you’re right,’ she said. ‘Besides, don’t the sandwiches always taste better after a good, long Mass?’