On a separate note, check out this interesting link from a few years back.
As the title suggests, I identify with one of these categories. But we need to steer a middle ground between dwelling on the negative and being so happy-clappy that we ignore all the problems in the world. Realism about our situation, uplfited with the virtue of Hope and the gift of Joy is the best course I should think.
Yet another division that needs to be bridged without trampling those of a different disposition.
I’d like to return to a problem I briefly alluded to in my last post, namely the fact that we’re very reliant on the US Catholic blogosphere for much of our online analysis and news in the English-speaking Catholic world, or at least here in Ireland.
A comprehensive list of examples would be too exhausting to compile; just take a look at the samples in the last link for a lengthy debate between points of view that only scratches the surface when it comes to US Catholic blogs and online news outlets. Most of those links are bouncing ideas off or rattling sabres with yet more blogs and there is a massive range of opinion, if at times a bit too much hot air in this humble blogger’s opinion.
Although I am less familiar with it, the British Catholic Blogosphere seems to be fairly extensive as well going by this list.
Although it is good to pay attention to what goes on in the US Church, and I have no intention of ceasing to look at US Catholic blogs and news sources, the lack of a wide range of online Catholic engagement, discussion and debate regarding our specific situation in Ireland is not a good thing. Without this debate, the sharing of ideas and contacts and the sharpening of our thoughts, strategies and arguments against one another, our sense of isolation can be increased and we can lack the resources and knowledge necessary to help our own situation.
An American or English or Australian Catholic blog can certainly provide very good opinion, analysis and formation when it comes to more generic topics such as different devotions, the lives of the Saints or different experiences and strategies in cultural battles can be very useful, and many US resources are very helpful for liturgical calendars and so on.
But what we lack is a wide-ranging online discussion of our specific situation and the nuances and history that must be navigated. Things like the specific history of our abortion battles and how it impacts upon networking and strategy. Things like online lists of prayer groups, resources, local networks. Things like places to form networks between Catholics across the island.
Now, some of these things already exist to a degree. I am not saying that there is no Irish Catholic presence on the internet. Such a statement on an Irish Catholic blog would be, well, ironic.
What I am saying is that it is pitifully small. Google ‘Irish Catholic Blogs’ and suchlike and you will find the first few search pages littered with the ageing shipwrecks of Irish Catholic blogs and websites started full of hope and ended prematurely, the last posts in 2013 or 2011 or before.
Part of the problem is that we are smaller than the US, of course. But looking at the extent of the British Catholic Blogosphere, in a country with a similar Catholic population to us, surely we could be doing better. And our size works in our favour, because we can be more concentrated in our effect.
We need more discussion, more linking up between people, more debate, more research, more ideas, more promotion of the ideas that are working out there in the real world.
So let me plug a number of the things that are out there.
First off, there is the excellent if small-scale Irish Catholic Forums. I have mentioned them before; several very good people are engaged in a fascinating discussion of our problems in the Church in Ireland and the history of those difficulties. I post there myself, albeit as one of the less erudite members. One difficulty there is that the active membership hovers at around a dozen people, with others joining intermittently or for once-off posts. There are many more ‘lurkers’ who don’t join in the discussion. It’s an excellent resource, that could benefit from more traffic from people willing to engage in constructive debate.
I also previously quoted at length from Shane’s blog Lux Occulta in this post here. He has very good historical resources and has uploaded numerous interviews and Irish Catholic pamphlets, although I don’t always agree with his strident traditionalist views. Nonetheless he is performing a very valuable service, providing us with a resource that allows for a real look at Irish Catholic life in that period.
There is the Irish Papist blog as well by Maolsheachlann O’Ceallaigh, the head of the Irish G.K. Chesterton society. Very broad-ranging look at a lot of issues, touching on Life, the Universe and Everything from a Catholic perspective. Maolsheachlann always has an interesting perspective on things, and I appreciate the fact that he branched out from apologetics early on. He also very kindly linked to this blog back when it started up.
The Thirsty Gargoyle hasn’t posted in almost a year, but his archives are well worth a browse. Besides interesting historical pieces and musings on comic books, he has the most in-depth, balanced, well-researched analysis of the child abuse scandals here in Ireland, not to mention other issues such as abortion debates and more. Always an edifying read.
A more recent blog is Shadows on the Road, Ireland’s outpost on the Catholic channel on Patheos run by Ben Conroy of Iona Institute fame (contain your searing white rage, o liberals). Ben has represented the Church and causes such as the campaign against same-sex marriage, chastity education and more on the radio and television very admirably, and he’s a bit of a gent too.
Please also check out Ex Umbris et Imaginibus by the Carmelite spiritual director of the Fraternity of St. Genesius here in Ireland, he always has a fantastic, even-handed look at the Church here and abroad, and the blog of the Brandsma Review which contains some of the pieces from each issue. I should also mention the blog of Roger and Kim Buck, traditionalist Americans now living in Northern Ireland.
There’s more than just blogs, of course; the Irish Catholic website has many of their articles online, for instance, as well as the resource website Catholic Ireland. Then there is the new iCatholic news website too.
There are others, too. It would be incorrect to say that there is no Irish Catholic presence online. But without more voices, more ideas, more debates on a scale similar to the US (but appropriate for our size here in Ireland) we risk not making the most out of the internet and all the possibilities and opportunities it provides.
All of this, of course, will be next to useless if every second Irish Catholic blog goes down the route of hysteria and infighting we’ve seen elsewhere over the smallest differences of opinion.
As the saying goes, ‘in the essential, unity, in the non-essential, liberty, in everything, charity.’
Something has been bothering me about the reaction to Pope Francis in the run-up to and during the Synod on the Family, particularly amongst orthodox or traditionalist Catholics.
Those in the liberal camp, and the usual media suspects, of course, are spinning this as if it’s the beginning of the Great Liberal Revolution and so on. Plus ca change, as the French say.
But amongst those who profess loyalty to the Magisterium of the Church (I’m choosing my words carefully here), there seems to be a completely polarised reaction.
On the one hand, there are those who are freaking out, big time. There is a belief in some quarters, it would appear, that the papacy of Francis heralds The End Times, the End of the World As We Know It and generally very bad things. I exaggerate to an extent, although in some cases there are those who do seem to believe this.
For example, we have:
On the other hand, there seem to be a good number of Catholics essentially shutting down any criticism of Pope Francis as mere hysteria. Move along, nothing to see here, they seem to say. This is from Catholics who are normally quite balanced and whose views I normally respect.
How do we have such incredibly divergent reactions? Whatever happened to the possibility of a balanced viewpoint? Every Catholic opinion-former I can see is either laying into Francis as if he’s the antichrist or else they’re whitewashing the whole Synodal process as if the massive debates and political shenanigans involved are inconsequential and Francis is blameless.
In exasperation, I remarked to somebody close to me that I just wished that there would be more balanced coverage somewhere. They replied, ‘YOU should write something more balanced.’
Oh dear. Well, I suppose I should.
Here’s what I think.
On the one hand, as Popes go, Francis is quite good. He’s incredibly pastoral, in the right sense of that word, meeting people where they are at, actually going out ‘into the marketplace’ as the phrase goes, trying to reach out to lost sheep person to person. He has done an excellent job of reminding us that we must reach out to the poor first and foremost, rather than getting bogged down in endless culture war debates, whilst simultaneously standing up strongly for life and marriage. I’ve been informed that his Apostolic Exhortation Evanglii Gaudium is excellent on joyfully preaching the Gospel (as its title might suggest) and I’m actually dying to read it.
At the same time, he’s not perfect. Many of his off-the-cuff remarks have been ill-considered; to take an example, I know Catholic parents with large families who were quite hurt by his remarks about ‘Catholic rabbits,’ which he later apologised for. Other remarks have been wildly taken out of context by the media worldwide, and yet they have done a massive amount of damage. Our Holy Father is not always prudent in his choice of words.
Moreover, some of his decisions regarding personnel at the Synod are questionable, to say the least, particularly his decision to grant Cardinal Danneels of Belgium a position as Synod Father. Besides his outspoken support of gay marriage and allegedly pressuring King Baudouin to sign Belgium’s abortion law, the good Cardinal has also been implicated in the cover-up of Belgian child abuse scandals. Why has he been given this position then? Why has a man who defended a bishop who abused his own nephew permitted to weigh in on the Church’s response to family matters? It beggars belief.
The Synod is worrying, if only because it will cause more confusion about what the Church actually stands for, something the Church does not need right now. I am particularly frustrated at the fact that this Synod, like the last one, has been spent to a large degree waffling on about proposals that go against Church teaching when the time could have been spent actually coming up with ways to deal with the multitude of issues facing the modern Christian family: divorce, separation, trying to raise children in a hostile culture, or local issues such as polygamy in Africa and Asia or the dangerously low birth rate in many Western nations.
Here’s the thing: is it not simply possible, that rather being the personified ‘Smoke of Satan’ as I saw one writer refer to him, or rather than being yet another living Saint, as we tend to see all of our Popes of the last century (indeed, some were; I’m not questioning the Church’s judgement on this), that Pope Francis is simply a decent pastor, trying to do good work according to his own style, who like all of us has the capacity to make mistakes, even big ones?
After all, Pope Paul VI, the Pope who presided over the disastrous misinterpretations of Vatican II, was also the Pope who gave us the prophetic and courageous Encyclical Humanae Vitae.
After all, Pope Emeritus Benedict, the incredibly wise and gentle Pope who gave us so many clear, insightful teachings and genuinely tried to tear out the culture of child abuse and cover-up amongst certain members of the clergy was in the end unable to escape media portrayals and the machinations of his opponents in the curia.
After all, St. John Paul II, for all of his incredible work trying to reach out to the world, helping to bring down Communism, correct many of the excesses that went before and providing beautiful teachings on art and human love, made mistakes, including some terrible mistakes; think of his blind endorsement of the infamous Fr. Marcial Maciel, in spite of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s deep-seated concerns about the man who did in fact turn out to be leading a terrible double life. This doesn’t take away from his canonisation one bit.
I think I know what the difficulty here is. We have fallen into a particularly Ultramontane view of the Papacy. A perfect storm of circumstances, namely the collapse of much of the Church’s traditional power bases and orthopraxy (that is, the correct implementation of Church teaching on the ground) coupled with new forms of instantaneous global communication have meant that many Catholics have turned to the authority of the Papacy, the one thing that seemed to be a common bulwark against collapse, unchanging throughout the turbulence of the twentieth century, a phenomenon which has gathered pace over the course of the last few decades.
Since the Pope is looked to for this kind of leadership and stability, as opposed to local Bishops’ Conferences and priests, an expectation of perfection is placed upon a figure who is, at the end of the day, a human being. The Vicar of Christ that man may be, but he is not Christ and not perfect. When this level of perfection is not met, there is a tendency to whitewash and explain away, or else to experience a strong negative reaction.
This state of affairs can last without a collapse as long as the papacy remains relatively unchanging and the throne of Peter is occupied by a man who is both holy and wise, a tall order in most circumstances. Of course, the abdication of Pope Benedict should teach us that nothing in this world remains constant.
We have been blessed with the Popes of the last century. They have been, to varying degrees, both holy and wise.
But let’s cast our eyes back to some of the Popes from before living memory. There were the Medici and Borgia Popes, amongst others, who wildly abused their power during the Renaissance period. Their abuses (sale of indulgences and positions, shoring up their power bases by making their friends and relatives Cardinals, using Church funds to launch personal wars, fathering numerous children) led directly to the Reformation.
Let’s face it. Pope Francis may have his faults, but they are tame compared to these.
We are guaranteed, according to Church teaching, that the Pope will not make an ex cathedra statement on faith or morals that is false. That’s all. There is presumably some kind of grace of state that goes with the Papacy, but like any grace one must embrace it freely.
We need to detach ourselves from an unhealthy reliance on the papacy, because as long as it lasts it will take one Alexander VI or a Pope along those lines to knock the feet from under us. We need to have both eyes open when it comes to the Holy Father.
Similarly, there needs to be more balance, charity and respect for the position of the Pope in the criticism levelled at him.
Pope Francis isn’t the antichrist. Neither is he God. He’s a weak human being, like the rest of us, who makes mistakes. And we need to stop tearing each other apart in debating those mistakes.
We need to stop the polarisation, the frustrating, divisive, stupid battles we fight against each other over the smallest of differences!
Although the examples of blogs above are coming from the USA and not Ireland, (something I hope to address soon) I think that we may be seeing the same kind of divide we see between the different camps I mentioned before here. The verbal battles over Pope Francis almost seem like proxy battles for a different polarisation between traditionalists and liberals, Camp A and Camp B (still haven’t thought of other names for those two!).
Some things have been pointed out to me over the last month or two (or possibly three) which I have not yet got around to addressing.
First, in this post, I said that ‘So it was in Ireland; the seeds of faith sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow, as Jesus says, but as soon as the hot sun of materialism and secularism came out it withered away and died.’ It was pointed out to me that this was a bit sweeping, and indeed it was.
I still hold that the faith here in Ireland had many underlying weaknesses, and that this description of it has a lot of truth to it. Nevertheless, I do not wish to disparage the countless number of Irish men and women who out of genuine faith gave their lives in the faithful service of God, whether as priests and religious or as lay men and women. I have often come across debates where one person argues that the faith of the early 20th century Irish was real and another argues that it was a false veneer. I sincerely believe that this is a case of both/and; some truly longed to know, love and serve God, and others went along for the ride without letting love for God truly reach their hearts. I shall try to be less sweeping in future.
Meanwhile, some points on this post on the Four Camps.
First of all, somebody pointed out that the A-B axis has a lot of similarity with the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael division in Irish politics. Not true across the board, perhaps, but I think that there’s a lot to be said for it.
Another friend pointed out that calling these two ‘camps’ Camp A and Camp B is confusing. Which it is. I can’t seem to come up with terms that adequately define the two groups though and I want neutral terms moreover. Suggestions would be appreciated!
‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.’
I suspect that I am in the minority amongst practicing Catholics for holding this view, but I sincerely believe that one thing that would be of critical importance to any renewal within the Church in Ireland (and, indeed, globally) is an objective, detailed and comprehensive history of the Church and its battles in this country.
Who controls the present in Ireland? Chiefly the universities and media, I would say. Neither are impartial observers. Take this interesting article on historyireland.com on historical revisionism in this country. The focus is on nationalist history, but although this is not principally my area of expertise, I suspect that the history of the Church is portrayed by secular historians in a similarly skewed way.
One key way in which religious history is often reinterpreted by atheist academics and journalists is the application of a Marxist framework to religious belief, which assumes that all religion is about power structures and power struggles, an elite trying to control the masses. There are, of course, men of the cloth who use religion in this way, but the Marxist worldview (I use ‘Marxist’ in the academic sense of the word) refuses to even acknowledge the possibility that some clerics could join the priesthood, for example, out of a desire to serve God.
We also often hear talk of ‘the bad old days.’ There were, indeed, many bad things happening in 20th Century Catholic Ireland that have thankfully come to light. Industrial schools, clerical child abuse, thoroughly unchristian attitudes towards unmarried mothers (which never seemed to apply to unmarried fathers, funnily enough). But to present only one side, namely the negative side of history, is to skew the picture.
On the other hand, we can often have Catholics who hearken back to the glory days and ignore that which is bad, pointing to the massive number of vocations and high rate of Mass attendance and so on. Never mind that clericalism, the honour of having a son in the priesthood and a distorted vision of discernment that viewed those who left seminary as ‘failures’ grossly inflated the numbers and meant unsuitable candidates trained for the priesthood. Never mind that many of those who left our shores and went to England and further abroad stopped going to Mass once society wasn’t looking over their shoulders.
But why is it important to correct this narrative? Why is it important to look to the past instead of just move on doing God’s work and trying to revive the Church?
I would argue that there are several reasons to do so.
One reason is that it is important to set the record straight, so that people can realise that the past wasn’t all bad and that the Church is more than just a force for unmitigated evil, as bad as many of its actions in this country were. A narrative dominated by the enemies of the Church in this country, one that focuses solely on the negative to the exclusion of the good, will convince people that the Church has no answer to their problems or their spiritual longings.
But more importantly, it is vital that we understand how we got to where we are and what went wrong so that we can learn from past mistakes, learn what worked well and what didn’t, learn what forces and personages were at play in previous years that may still have an impact on the future of the Church here. We need to think on a large scale here, looking at both very recent history and that of the last two or three hundred years. The Penal times and the nineteenth century were key in the developments in the Church that were to come post-Independence.
This needs to look to the future; both to the immediate future, but also to decades from now when new generations will need to learn from the mistakes of much older ones. The urgency of this is that one of the most important sources for understanding the Church in the 20th Century, namely oral sources, are by their nature dwindling. Every year the limited number of people who lived through the Church’s dominant period pass away, leaving out a part of the story.
Most important of all, I think, is the complex, multifaceted question of why the apparently strong Irish Church collapsed as it did. A decline and fall narrative, if you will, albeit one that must resist a pessimistic ‘long defeat’ attitude or the temptation to look for simple answers.
But apart from this there are other issues. Here is a sweeping sample of questions that might shed light on the Church in this country, what went wrong, how past mistakes might be avoided and future ones corrected:
There are also a number of interesting questions to be asked on a more global scale, such as the history of Vatican II and its outcomes, the emergence of the New Ecclesiastical Movements (a detailed analysis of what they get right and what they get wrong would be very useful indeed) and the history of the Traditionalist movement come to mind. That said, there are a good number of books out there written on such topics from a variety of viewpoints; their international nature means that they have attracted more attention.
Two difficulties occur to me in such a project, and they are to a degree interlinked. I doubt that many would see the value in such a project given our limited resources and more pressing concerns, and besides, who is going to take it on? Such research would be a full-time job, probably involving a team of people. Who would pay for such a thing and where would it be run from? It couldn’t be done through a secular university, such is the bureaucracy involved in academia these days. Through the Bishops’ Conference perhaps? But then that might lead to conflicts of interest. I’m honestly not certain.
One very good resource in this regard is a blog run by a young Catholic under the pseudonym ‘Shane’ called Lux Occulta (‘Hidden Light’ in Latin). I often disagree with Shane’s viewpoint, but the work he does of putting up old Catholic articles, pamphlets and interviews with clergy amongst other things gives a valuable window into the life of the Church in Ireland over the last two hundred years.
Let me give an example of how this work sheds light on certain aspects of Catholicism by taking one of the questions I listed above: ‘Was Irish Catholicism really influenced by Jansenism as is often claimed, or more by Victorian Puritanism? To what degree was the rigid nature of Irish Catholicism down to theological factors and to what degree to social factors?’
Jansenism imported from France is often the supposed culprit here. Shane provides some cuttings arguing against this thesis. Now, I’m not certain that this proves that the fault is purely that of Victorian prudishness, but it would bear further examination.
This probably seems an overly academic issue of interest only to historians. But I believe that there would be value in taking a look at this topic to determine the root of the puritanical side of Irish Catholicism so as to avoid taking on such values in future.
Let me give a more concrete example, again drawing from material Shane has provided. This is a pamphlet on the 1983 Pro-Life Referendum which draws attention to the media’s role during the referendum. One of the most notable aspects of this pamphlet is that it identifies not only a strong media bias against the referendum in the 1980s (in contrast to the majority of the population who voted to enshrine an anti-abortion law in the Irish Constitution), but also that several media personalities and politicians who opposed the referendum were unwilling to come out and say that they supported abortion. They opposed it based on the specific wording. (Ironically, they may have been right, one of many bitter ironies about this issue in Ireland). Many of these figures have since voiced their support for liberalising the law here, now that they don’t face the same backlash. Some of these individuals include Irish household names such as Vincent Browne and Michael D. Higgins, the current President.
There is a wealth of information here that the Church and the pro-life movement could have learned from (although they are not the same thing, the Church features heavily in the content of the pamphlet due to its support for the amendment).
This is just one small document. A detailed history of the pro-life movement, and more broadly the history of the political battles fought over Culture War flashpoints such as abortion, divorce, same-sex marriage and so on, from the 1980s through to the present day via the very important early 1990s would be an invaluable resource for discovering what went right, what went wrong and how the Church was outflanked by its opponents. It would be key for deciding how to move ahead in the political arena, if it is not too late.
If it is possible, an objective look at the history of the various divisions in the Irish pro-life movements would be useful, especially with a view to healing them and building bridges, although it would be difficult to be truly objective and to have people open up and give oral accounts of what happened given that many wounds are still hurting twenty and thirty years on.
Without such a broad-ranging study, we are left with the Left’s take on things, which whilst sometimes shedding light, also leaves a great deal to be desired when it comes to objectivity.
One other good resource is the Irish Catholics’ Forum, where several very knowledgeable posters and a few significantly less knowledgeable ones such as myself contribute. Well worth checking out, although the difficulty again is that the historical elements are piecemeal, which is not the fault of the contributors since none of them are provided with an income to research these issues.
Historical research is not my area of expertise; nevertheless, when I’m a little farther along with the development of my ideas I may attempt to tackle one of the questions above simply as an exercise and post the results here. Don’t hold your breath though!
By Grace and Banners Fallen 