Apologies for the two week absence, various circumstances intervened and I was unable to write.
I want to shortly post about certain divisions within the Church in Ireland and what they mean for us, but another short post on same-sex marriage first.
I don’t particularly want to dwell on culture war flashpoints like this. There’s so much ink spilt about these issues and in some ways they can distract us from the work that really needs to be done.
So I hadn’t intended posting again about same-sex marriage, but recent events have thrown up a few more thoughts worth reflecting on, and since one of the purposes of this blog is to deal with the obstacles to renewal in the Church, we might as well take another look at an issue that is going to present us with one of our biggest hurdles to overcome.
Gay Pride Parade
As it happened, I was away from home last week. I came back on Saturday, and found myself in the midst of the tail end of Dublin’s gay pride parade in the city centre.
What struck me was the massive number of people in their teens and early twenties dressed up in rainbow colours and flags cheering and celebrating as they dispersed through the streets. Some media sources said that there were more than 50,000 at it, and although the numbers have been exaggerated before (such as this Irish Times article, which in addition to the 25,000 they claim were at the 2011 parade decide to include 100,000 who ‘watched;’ I wonder if they’ll do that for this weekend’s Rally for Life?) I don’t doubt given the movement’s momentum post-referendum that for once the numbers are accurate.
My point being that the Catholic Church in Ireland has lost an entire generation, in the sense that it has embraced and campaigned for a cause antithetical to Catholic sexual morality.
Even amongst the vanishingly small percentage of under 25s who are still practicing Catholics and active amongst Church groups, a certain sizeable portion are also in favour of gay marriage in spite of the Church’s teachings. I can’t blame them, really, when the Church has done such an abysmal job of evangelising and catechising in this country.
The problem is compounded by peer pressure. How can you convince a teenager who is insecure in themselves to stand up against their peers on such an emotive issue as this in which opponents of same-sex marriage are labelled bigots and haters? How many would be willing to risk the unpopularity of being associated with such a cause?
This issue isn’t quite like any other. Of course, there have been losing battles over other issues such as divorce and abortion and contraception and cohabitation and so on, but there has never been such a public demand to accept an issue. People will debate abortion and acknowledge that the pro-life side has an argument, and divorce will always be seen as a bit messy, but with gay marriage one must AFFIRM.
We can see more of this in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s outlandish decision to invent a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage (Who knew that it was hiding away amongst all those amendments all this time? But five justices somehow managed to coax such a right out of hiding like a rabbit out of a hat).
One of the consequences of this is Facebook’s campaign to have people adopt rainbow colours on their profile picture. There’s a good critique here of how this results not just in celebrating but also in shaming those who do not embrace the rainbow colours (I don’t know why the editors of that piece decided to bring Lenin into the issue, but the text of the article stands).
The placing of Yes Equality signs and rainbow flags in the windows of businesses put me in mind of this essay by Vaclav Havel, the Czech politician and philosopher who opposed Communism, particularly the section about the greengrocer. To quote:
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?
I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony with society,” as they say.
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan’s real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer’s existence. It reflects his vital interests.
I couldn’t walk by a business without a Yes Equality sign without wondering why the decision had been made not to put one in the window, and whether or not there was pressure to do so.
So it is with Facebook. Of course, it’s a softer form of pressure than that exerted by the Communist party, but it’s a form of pressure from all around nonetheless.
The Obstacles
So this brings me back to a point I mentioned in my last post on this. This issue is one that will separate people from the Gospel message.
But more than that, I wonder now if I was too hasty in dismissing what I referred to as ‘Persecution Lite.’
I am hesitant to use the word persecution at all, even with the qualifier. Here in Ireland or elsewhere in the west we do not have to endure the torture of Communist regimes or the rape and beheadings of ISIS. Some commentators have said that it is insulting to use the same term to describe intolerance of religious conservatives in the west as is used to describe the slaughter of Christians and other groupings currently happening in the Middle East.
There’s a lot of truth in such remarks. We do have it comparatively very easy here.
Perhaps I will refer to it as ‘intolerance’ in this piece, although that too is a clumsy word with other connotations.
So we are not facing the persecution of beheadings and crucifixions and lions in the Coliseum.
But we are facing the intolerance displayed towards Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript who was forced out of Mozilla for donating to an anti-gay marriage campaign in California. I know of others, people who do not have the profile of Eich, who are afraid to make public their beliefs because of fear that they will be fired; this is particularly a problem in large tech corporations.
It will be the intolerance displayed towards Paul Barnes, former owner of Daintree Paper, who was forced out of business because he refused to stock gay wedding cake toppers. The subsequent manager decided to crow about her decision to bring them straight back in when she took over the business. Naturally, other businesses will take note.
It will be the intolerance displayed towards institutions which do not conform to the status quo, as the Obama administration’s Solicitor General Donald Verrilli stated might be a problem for universities or colleges which oppose same-sex marriage after the Supreme Court ruling.
It will be the intolerance displayed towards voices that dissent.
So it might not be persecution, in the sense that we normally think of that word. But that’s small comfort to somebody who loses their job or their business for having the wrong opinion.
And moreover, persecution has to begin somewhere, with the demonization, marginalisation and silencing of a society’s designated acceptable targets of hate.
Which now means us.
So again, this brings us to two obstacles we face.
The first is the one that I mentioned before: people, especially but not only younger people, now believe that Catholicism stands for hatred, and this is going to present the biggest obstacle towards helping them to come to know and love God in His Church.
The second is the institutional difficulty. How do we get the word out about what we believe when we are unable to speak out for fear of losing our jobs or being marginalised or having our businesses destroyed? How do we speak out when there is no outlet permitted in the media or at university, or only the most limited, truncated freedom of speech?
I raise these points not to be defeatist, but rather to point out that these are the obstacles. There are barriers in front of us. We cannot be deterred by them, but we cannot ignore them either.
We must take stock of what these barriers are, what their nature is, how they might be overcome.
And then we go around them, or over them, or under them, or through them.
The first step, of course, is to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have. We need to know and understand our faith before we can share it. We must try to understand and take to heart the Church’s teaching on sexuality.
I’m not certain still how to go around the emotional barriers that people have on this issue, the kind of drawbridges that get pulled up when people find out that you don’t agree with gay marriage.
As for the practical points of getting the word out, we need to be creative and find new platforms and outlets and build communities in new ways outside the systems that exist. The internet is our friend here, at least for as long as that too is free.
The Labour Party, however, has its own plans for the internet in this country. You’ve been warned. (That source seems to be quite left-wing, so obviously I don’t agree with his arguments against censorship on the basis that it holds back abortion, but the primary point at the beginning of his post about how draconian these bills are still stands)
By Grace and Banners Fallen 