Spheres of Influence

Let me begin this post with a diagram, which I shall then explain:

Diagram 1: I had a much more complicated version with smaller writing and more arrows, but seeing as it’s the Year of Mercy I decided not to inflict that upon you all.

Now, to explain.

This diagram represents all of the various ‘spheres’ of our society that impact upon Irish society and culture. The size and relative position of the various spheres is not really relevant; I made some bigger to highlight them, and some are clearly attached to show an interdependency, but each and every one of those spheres impacts on society as a whole.

A few details that might need further explanation. The Catholic Church has a cross in its sphere. You’ll notice that there is also a cross beside those spheres where the Church has some nominal control over the sector. It’s not to say that this control amounts to anything. The only such spheres I identified were in primary education, secondary education, and healthcare.

As we’ve seen, the Church’s role in education has been a disaster, at least insofar as instruction in basic Catholicism is concerned. Likewise, its nominal patronage of numerous hospitals in the country doesn’t exactly count for much when Irish hospitals are happy to capitulate to the new abortion laws.

But it’s worth including, if only to show how many spheres the Church has no major influence in.

A second symbol is a blue triangle, which you can see in the Tertiary Education sphere. This triangle also appears beside all of the spheres which nowadays usually require a three-to-five year stint in Tertiary Education in order to actively participate. In other words, you don’t get to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or even in many cases a journalist or newsreader without having a Bachelor’s or perhaps Master’s degree. I highlighted this to show how absolutely crucial this sphere is. Access to most other spheres is mediated through this one sphere.

Of course, every sphere influences every sphere in some way. The Government, in all of its various listed forms, impacts upon every other sphere via legislation… and yet the makeup of governments in a democracy is down to the people, who are influenced by all the other spheres.

For example, the government just passed the legislation regarding same-sex marriage. But that campaign was influenced by almost every one of those spheres.

In the corner labelled ‘The Culture,’ each sphere played a part. The sphere of Sport played its role, with sportsmen taking public sides and using their popularity as a platform to weigh in. Traditional media such as newspapers and television as well as digital media played their role too obviously, and inevitably we had those from the ‘Arts’ weighing in to give their two cents.

But so too did other spheres, such as that powerful sphere lurking in the bottom right corner in which I attempted to jam all of the various institutions that deal with business and money, with companies donating to campaigns and putting up ‘Yes Equality’ stickers in shop windows and so on. Not to mention the involvement of the Gardaí, a sphere normally resolutely neutral, as it should be.

The same-sex marriage campaign is a very obvious example, perhaps a little too obvious for our purposes.

My point is that if a particular grouping, such as the Catholic Church, wishes to have any influence whatsoever on society (and I don’t mean that in a shadowy, Machiavellian kind of way; I don’t condone that type of thing) it needs to be putting itself out there in each of those spheres in order to be heard in society. It needs to be contesting these spheres. These are all of the areas of society that we need to be evangelising and putting forward the Gospel in if we want to reach hearts and minds.

The most critical and influential are the two I’ve separated into their own little grouplets: ‘The Culture,’ meaning broadly all the entertainment and news people consume and the things they do in their free time, and Education.

Now, think about each of those spheres. Most of them are nicely, neatly wrapped up by varying factions and groupings that are hostile to the Church.

You probably need little convincing that Traditional Media, bar a handful of Catholic newspapers, are hostile to the Church. I just recently wrote about our lack of influence online, at least in terms of Irish-based blogs and websites; much of the Irish internet is hostile to Catholicism.

In terms of Sports, well, there was a time when the GAA worked hand in hand with the Church, for instance. Now matches of all kinds are organised on a Sunday, clashing with Mass times.

In terms of business, one need only look at the amoral behaviour of many of our financial institutions during the boom years to know that not much Catholic teaching has made an impact there, although there are good Catholics involved in business here and there.

As for Tertiary Education, well, as has been noted many campuses are not exactly open to the idea of Catholic societies, for example.

And many of the homegrown and international NGOs and other bodies have been lobbying the government for some time to change laws regarding same-sex marriage and abortion.

We need to come up with strategies that take all of these spheres into account. We need to contest them. These are the areas in which power resides, and that power is being used against us, day after day after day. The questions we need to ask are:

How can we gain influence in each sphere once more? How are these spheres being used against us and how can we counter this?

Really, it’s not going to be a question so much of seizing control of these spheres (not really something I’m interested in; I did just spend my last post bashing Franco after all) so much as it is carving out a space in each where our voice might be heard, might not be silenced forever. Even if it is a voice crying in the wilderness, we have to try to become all things to all men that some might be saved.

I will attempt to develop these ideas further in future blog posts… for now ideas and comments are appreciated.

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On a side note, we must remember that the Church has something to say about each of these spheres. Somebody quite close to me, on seeing the first draft of this image, suggested that one could edit it and include the names of Church documents, Encyclicals and the like, that relate to each of these spheres. It would be a valuable exercise, and I might get around to it at some stage.