Escaping the Box

David Quinn, a Catholic journalist here in Ireland, is probably best known for heading up the conservative think tank called the Iona Institute. The Iona Institute, despite its moderate tone, is a good contender for the position of “most hated institution,” and whenever there is a big debate around social issues like abortion or gay marriage, Quinn spends a few months at a time living rent-free in the heads of a half million angry leftists who flood the Irish Twittersphere with dire rants about his pernicious Catholic conservatism.

I don’t intend to focus too much on Quinn’s career here. What interests me most is a comment he made off the cuff a number of years ago about a political talk show he was invited onto (it might have been Primetime, but I can’t recall exactly) to talk about one of the usual conservative Catholic issues, but at the last moment there was a change of programme on account of some breaking news, and he ended up speaking on a panel about other issues that didn’t relate to the culture wars. Quinn said that it was refreshing not to have to speak about the same five culture wars topics over and over.

Something about this last remark unsettled me, and it took me a while to figure it out. Quinn only ended up talking about non-culture wars issues by a fluke; he happened to be on TV, and they happened to change the topic last minute. This is despite the fact that he had been a prominent journalist with the Irish Independent for donkey’s years. But why did a prominent journalist like Quinn, who writes on all sorts of topics, never get invited to talk about non-culture wars affairs?

Likewise one of the other few prominent practicing Catholics in our Irish media, Breda O’Brien, writes for the Irish Times about a broad, expansive range of topics, often with a social justice (in the good sense) bent, and yet I’m fairly certain that the only times she gets invited onto radio or television is to hash out gay marriage and the likes.

Quinn and O’Brien have reputations, you see, as Catholic journalists, and that puts them firmly in a particular box that only gets opened when it’s time to wheel out a conservative Catholic to play their particular role as the villain in any given public debate.

I touched on this in the last post, when I said that the few Catholic figures which my character “Drinks Girl” sees in the media are safely boxed away in a corner labelled “Catholic,” and by being so labelled she can safely ignore them.

In that last post, I talked about the challenges of reaching out to young adults in Ireland, as typified by Drinks Girl, and one of the challenges was finding channels which reach her. I think that what I’m grappling with here is that when Catholic public figures are labelled as Catholic, our media, and the establishment, and high society, label them as outsiders, as persons not in the in-group. They’re not one of us.

Secularists in this country will always bang on about how Catholics are well represented in the media, as after all we have O’Brien in the Times and Quinn in the Indo. But there’s a subtle way in which such figures are pushed into an oppositional role (or squeezed into that Catholic box), which is separate from the rest of Irish society and can safely be castigated and demonised if you’re into that kind of thing, or safely ignored if you’re not.

And all the other conversations in our society, not just the debates but all the news and reviews and online discourse, revolves around those who aren’t in the box, those who are seen as normal and “one of us” and therefore not Catholic. What I think is going on here (not consciously for the most part, albeit perhaps consciously on the part of some high-ranking liberal mandarins in the media) is that certain voices are excluded from the narrative except when convenient, and by being placed in the “not one of us” box your average younger Irish person (such as Drinks Girl) cannot relate to them, and in fact sees them as part of a strange outgroup. And that makes it harder to find that channel into her heart, to bring the Gospel message, because she doesn’t view it as coming from a normal person like herself, but from one of them.

There’s a related phenomenon which I observed with the Eighth Amendment, which protected the right to life of the unborn. During the campaign to repeal that amendment by a vote of approximately 2 to 1 in 2018, the amendment was often portrayed as a Catholic imposition on Ireland, and the fact that it was voted in approximately 2 to 1 in 1983 by the Irish people themselves was glossed over. The actual Irish people who voted for that amendment in 1983 were airbrushed out during that campaign, replaced by a vague image of “the Church” imposing itself on Irish law (as though a million priests were flown in from Rome to vote for it), whereas the Irish who voted to overturn it were detailed in full colour in all the papers.

I don’t know what to do about this on the public stage at the moment. I think that if this box didn’t exist, then what we would have would be the minority of Irish public figures and celebrities and so on who were practicing Catholics being at ease with being public about their faith and their views about such social issues, but also continuing to contribute to the wider conversation about all the non-culture wars issues whether that’s the latest styles and pop culture or the back and forth of Irish politics or the various smaller niche interest groups and charitable campaigns. I don’t know how to get from here to there, how to break out of the box and have people talking about David Quinn’s controversial views on the winners and losers in the latest season of Dancing With The Stars.

But I want to pivot and talk about a point a commenter drew attention to on my last post which I think is related: the issue of being visibly Catholic, and how there’s a tension with the message we often receive to go softly-softly or to “blend into” our surroundings and be a witness by being nice people. I think that there is a way to thread this needle.

I had a conversation with a good friend back when we were in college (many moons ago) about the question of evangelising in such a deeply secular culture. His theory was that the best way to go about it was to, in the first instance, “blend in,” make sure you get to know the people you are sharing your working day with, be their friend, let them know that you are normal. Now my commenter is right; you can’t just do that and expect miracles to happen. But there’s another step. It’s to be unafraid to bring up your faith in conversation once people know you reasonably well, not in an awkward way but when there’s a natural moment, say if somebody asks how your weekend was and you tell them that you went on a retreat, or something like that, which then sparks the question “Oh, so you’re religious?” or “Oh, I didn’t know that you were a Catholic!” or something to that effect.

Because if in the first instance they see you as “one of us” and not “one of them”, it disarms them, it goes past the prejudices. To go in on day one and proclaim your faith is admirable in one way, but in a certain sense it dooms you to be put in the box, because without knowing a little more of the depth of your person, a new classmate or co-worker is going to mentally assign to you all of the prejudices they have against the Church. To be known as a person, first of all, cuts past those prejudices (except maybe with the most strident of true believers in the liberal narrative). You can then be Catholic outside the box. Of course, this only really works if you’re a decent person who is reasonably likeable. If you’re not you need to work on that first, otherwise you have to deal with a whole other set of (justified) prejudices too!

I asked my friend many years later how it had gone. He told me about a return visit to Dublin where he bumped into a classmate he’d known for years. The topic of religion came up unexpectedly in conversation, and he mentioned for the first time his Catholic faith. They ended up going for coffee for hours to talk about who the person of Jesus was. She had a deep curiosity about religion, but it was the relationship in class built up over many years previously which helped her to open up to the conversation.

The alternative is… well, I think of a particular very liberal work colleague who I got along well with, but didn’t know that I was a practicing Catholic. One day she had to deal with a member of the public making complaints, which to a large degree boiled down to homophobic (and I do not use that word lightly) rants. And looking back I realise that that might have been the only practicing Catholic she had knowingly met all year, and that if I had had a little more courage I could have opened up a bit more at an opportune time, and her tally for that year might have been one positive experience with a Catholic and one negative, instead of just the negative one. I don’t know, she might have flown off the handle at me, as certain entrenched liberals do. Or I might have taken that risk and ended up with a conversation from a place of mutual respect.

I don’t know how we get from there to a world of Catholic Bressies. But at the individual level we need to make a start, to break down the prejudices against the Church, person by person, by being relatable, lovable, and loving people, willing to speak about our faith, but having the prudence to lead into it at the right time, and only then will we find our way out of the box.

Further Musings on what Same-Sex Marriage Means for Us

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)

Musings on the Same-Sex Marriage Referendum

I just thought I would post some musings on the passing of the same-sex marriage referendum here in Ireland and on the campaign that went on beforehand.

I’m not going to dissect the referendum myself. I’m not particularly interested in blogging about the specifics of the culture wars here in Ireland. The copy of the Irish Catholic that came out after the result did a good job of that and anybody interested in analysis should go there.

Instead, I want to raise a few concerns on my mind after the whole campaign.

The victors have labelled it a defeat for the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Of course, this shouldn’t bother us. We were never promised that we would win every battle, only that Christ and His Church would triumph in the end.

What does bother me is how far we’ve moved, and how we’ve responded to it as a Church in Ireland.

To begin with, the Yes side made many convincing arguments about the legal implications of the referendum and how it would change very little. Convincing, I say, not because gay marriage doesn’t mark a profound shift in how we conceive of marriage, but because that shift has already happened. We’ve simply added gay people to this soluble, adult-oriented institution we refer to as civil marriage. Marriage has already been gutted.

For example, there is the fact that surrogacy was a key component of the No campaign’s argument. But if children deserve a mother and a father, why not tackle the issue of adoption by gay couples?

Because it’s already happening. Unmarried couples, single people, you name it, are already adopting here in Ireland. Child-rearing has already been separated from matrimony, just as procreation has. During the referendum, attempts by the No side to point out the link between procreation and marriage were rebutted by those who pointed out that many couples who got married didn’t bother having children.

More than that, the tax benefits associated with marriage have dwindled, supposedly to prevent discrimination against cohabitating couples. We’ve already axed the indissoluble nature of marriage with the passing of the divorce referendum in 1995.

I think that this referendum should be seen simply as a symbolic victory for a view of marriage, sexuality and procreation that has already been dominant in our country for some time now.

So to sum up my first point: marriage has already been completely gutted in this country. What can be done to reverse this? I think the best thing the laity who are not directly involved in ministering to married couples can do is to pour their efforts into strengthening and sanctifying their own marriages (assuming, of course, that that’s the path they are called to. We can’t forget about those God calls to the single life).

On to my second point.

Now, there are a few difficulties which this referendum presents us with. The first of course is outright persecution, by which I mean not ISIS-style beheadings but rather the inevitability of more court cases along the lines of the Asher’s Bakery case in the North directed at Christians who refuse to provide services for same-sex marriage ceremonies. Perhaps this is better termed ‘Persecution Lite.’ However I think that this is the least of our problems overall.

There’s a second issue, upon which I’m quite conflicted. On the one hand, it’s crucially important that the Church stand up for the institution of marriage, as it did during the referendum. I heard some who were dissatisfied with the level of the bishops’ response as being too milk-and-water, but in general I thought that they didn’t do too bad of a job for the most part. Their voices were heard, and they were generally heard to be reasonable, even if once or twice I wish that certain members of the hierarchy hadn’t rowed back or being a little cagey about the issue.

But here’s the problem: We now have a situation where a radical shift has taken place, and Catholic teaching on sexuality is no longer seen as just a bit of a weird thing, which is alright if you’re into it, as long as you don’t force it on anyone. Rather, Church teaching on sexuality is now seen as positively evil and unenlightened. The fact that those who believe this usually haven’t properly engaged with the Church’s arguments is beside the point. What worries me is that we now have a situation where the Church’s teaching is seen as being so off-putting and repulsive that the average Irish person who’s not into their faith all that much won’t even consider Catholicism. The perception of the teaching has become a barrier to getting to know Jesus Christ in His Church.

So what’s the solution? Let me rule out changing the teaching. It can’t be done; it reflects reality, and reality doesn’t alter itself to suit our feelings. Some teachings are always going to be difficult and we have to learn to embrace them regardless because ultimately they are what leads us to God.

So how do we both remain faithful to the Church’s teaching on marriage, and also bypass the prejudices that have emerged against it during the referendum campaign?

It occurs to me that the Church needs to take a different tack and place less emphasis upon the culture war issues such as gay marriage, at least in its outreach at a grassroots level. Statements can still be made about such issues at a hierarchical level (as will be necessary with the oncoming onslaught of pro-abortion/euthanasia propaganda coming) but perhaps what’s needed is an attempt to make conversions, bring people first to know and love God, and then their hearts will be more receptive to the difficult teachings.

The how is the critical question.