The Church has lost its moral authority. The battle is won. It’s time to move on
‘You’re more likely to get a sermon from the Iona Institute than the clergy’
DUBLIN, October 10, 1950: ‘We regard with the greatest apprehension the proposal to give to local medical officers the right to tell Catholic girls and women how they should behave in regard to [motherhood, sex, chastity and marriage]… We have no guarantee that State officials will respect Catholic principles.”
Dublin, April 21, 2017: ‘It is wholly inappropriate in 21st century pluralist, secular Ireland that the ownership of this publicly funded women and infants hospital should be entrusted in any shape, way or form to a religious organisation.’
The latter is from a letter sent nine days ago by Professor Chris Fitzpatrick to the Co-location Project Board of the National Maternity Hospital, protesting its ownership by St Vincent’s Healthcare Group.
The former, famously, is from the letter to the then taoiseach from the Catholic hierarchy protesting against the Mother and Child Scheme, which was read aloud to Noël Browne by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in the Archbishop’s Palace.
There are 67 years between those two letters. That may sound like a lot, but consider that it’s less than one lifetime. Many people reading this today will remember Browne and McQuaid with perfect clarity, and hence have lived to see the Church’s role in public affairs turned completely on its head.
The Mother and Child controversy was a more complicated and ambiguous matter than it is often represented as being. Browne did not resign as health minister because of the interference by the bishops, and doctors themselves were among those strongly resisting socialised medicine, Aneurin Bevan-style.
But when it comes to interpreting what was happening in that era of history, there is this much certainty to be had: First, the Catholic Church did not want the State having charge of public health. Second, the Catholic Church was in a position absolutely to delimit the role of the State in public health. What the bishops said went.
Look how far we’ve come. Amid all the complication and persistent ambiguity about the ownership of the new National Maternity Hospital, there is this much certainty to be had. First, nobody, with the possible exception of the Sisters of Charity themselves, wants the Church to have any influence whatsoever over the hospital – and that includes those who voted in favour of this wonky deal. Second, the State is under relentless pressure to delimit the Church’s role not just in the new hospital but in public health generally. What the bishops say matters not a jot.
Actually we’ve heard from two bishops in reference to the hospital row in recent weeks. One was Bishop Kevin Doran, who never seems to say anything without later having to backpedal. The other was Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who wants off the board of the National Maternity Hospital because he says his exofficio chairmanship of it is ‘anachronistic’. Not even the Archbishop of Dublin – the successor to John Charles McQuaid – wants to insinuate himself into hospital affairs any more.
Even those of us not quite old enough to remember the Mother and Child Scheme will recall a very different attitude to bishops not so long ago. I was in a Sisters of Bon Secours hospital as a child when the Archbishop of Tuam paid one of his regular visits, and the nuns, in a flounce of dazzling white serge, threw themselves on their knees to kiss his ring. This was the 1970s.
In the last year of that decade, Pope John Paul II visited Ireland and threequarters of the population turned out to look at him. A year later, and after a great deal of fuss, contraception was finally made legal, though only on prescription. That was 1980, 37 years ago – but to put it in perspective, it’s six years more than the lifespan to date of Health Minister Simon Harris.
Three years after that, in 1983, the Eighth Amendment was passed, placing what its proponents hoped would be a permanent ban on abortion in the Constitution. A week ago the Citizens Assembly recommended that abortion be permitted in a wide range of circumstances. That’s 34 years ago – still outdoing Mr Harris.
Until 1993, homosexual acts were a crime in Ireland. In May 2015, we voted to legalise gay marriage. That’s a gap of 22 years – about the age of the average millennial.
What these time spans tend to demonstrate is that a great many people of voting age in Ireland are simply too young to appreciate how much has changed. The fact is there’s been a secular revolution, and Rome Rule is over.
An international comparison may be instructive here. The Anglican Church is so deeply and indivisibly established in English society that you can surprise your British friends by letting them know the extent of it. The head of the church and the head of state are one and the same woman, and 26 Anglican bishops automatically have seats in the House of Lords. British society is ostensibly more diverse than our own, but religion still has a special position in it and no one seems that bothered.
Ireland, by comparison, is a far more secular place than we give ourselves credit for. The Church is a spent force in this country, all dwindling numbers and dwindling powers. We’re just still too angry with them all – and too rattled about all that’s happened – to acknowledge it. We’re like a society that has watched too many horror films where, in the last frame, the monster turns out not to be dead after all.
YES, the census reports that 78.3% of people identify as Catholic. But does anyone suppose these people are asking bishops how to think? Of course not. To varying degrees and in varying circumstances, they’re people who encourage contraception, support divorce, who have children and grandchildren born ‘out of wedlock’, who voted for gay marriage, who understand the need for abortion, and who turn up for Sunday Mass without any apparent cognitive dissonance. They identify as Catholic for spiritual or cultural reasons or both. They’re just not that pushed about the dogma. And in any case, these days you’re more likely to get a sermon from the Iona Institute than from an actual member of the clergy.
They’re not that pushed about the dogma in Britain either, where Catholic institutions are enduringly popular. One of the poshest and most fashionable hospitals in London is the Catholic St John and St Elizabeth Hospital, founded by the Sisters of Mercy. Its private maternity unit is closed now but among the women who gave birth there were Cate Blanchett, Emma Thompson, Jerry Hall and Kate Moss.
There is competition to get into the 10% of state-funded schools in Britain that are Catholic-run, because they outperform the national average in exam results by 5%. Parents put their children through ‘baptisms of convenience’, not for a place in heaven but for a place in Oxbridge.
Our relationship with the Catholic Church in Ireland was toxic for generations – one-sided, controlling, abusive, bullying. But they’ve lost their power over us now. And any psychologist will tell you you’re not over a toxic relationship until you’ve attained a state of indifference towards the other party. It’s how you move on.