Archives for posts with tag: Catholicism
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On Nihilism

April 29, 2016 //

Another day, another speech by a cleric, frustrated that all their historic entitlements are fading away.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/dismantling-catholic-ethos-of-schools-would-leave-moral-vacuum-1.2628509?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

“The alternative is a vacuum that can express itself in nihilism and the growing phenomenon in our schools of self harm,” he said.

Fuck nihilism. It’s a trope used against atheists for so long, you would think it should be given an honorary peerage at this stage.

As an atheist for over 25 years, I feel about as un-nihilistic as it’s possible to be. I find meaning in so much: my friends, my children, my thoughts and my many different enthusiasms. The idea that this life is meaningless to me is laughable.

The truth is that meaning is not exclusive to the pious. There is so much wonder and fascination in this world that it would be impossible to get through it all in a lifetime, nay, twenty lifetimes. Finding meaning in things is what we all do, whether that be helping kids, building Lego towers, watching football or blogging random thoughts. 

The non-religious life can be as rich in thoughts, emotion and meaningful achievement as anyone wearing the sunglasses of a faith. It just comforts some people to think otherwise.

The diminishment of religion in our schools will not herald in a life without meaning. The doors to a life of curiosity, fascination, purpose and love have always been open to us. You don’t have to believe in a deity to appreciate this fully.

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Categories opinions, Uncategorized

A historical injustice

May 4, 2015 //

“I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do”

Confetior

The debate over the upcoming Marriage Referendum in Ireland continues to fascinate me. The NO campaign is largely driven by bishops, priests and spokespeople linked to the Irish Catholic church. In principle, the Church calls itself a beacon of humanity and compassion in the world. The utterances and actions of recent weeks belie such lofty aspirations. In doing so, they wilfully ignore a historic injustice they had some part in propagating and prolonging.

The past few centuries have not been kind to homosexual people. They have been bullied, scorned, laughed at, imprisoned, threatened with violence, assaulted, killed and gassed. Up to very recently, society saw them as deviants and predators and censured them accordingly. There was never any recognition that homosexuality was something you were born with; something you had little control over. The authorities at the time felt compelled to repress it and push it under cover. In doing so, countless lives were destroyed. We were driven to fear the enemy within.

Even to this day, governments around the world have laws against homosexuality. In Russia and Malaysia, gay people are routinely thrown in jail. In Uganda, legislators are trying hard to impose the death penalty for homosexuality. These malignant injustices are here with us today and, presumably, for a long time to come.

Surely this is a cause we should all support: for all members of our society to be given a chance, to be treated the same, to have past wrongs acknowledged and prevented. Unfortunately – despite the lip-service they pay to human rights – we are not seeing this from the elders of the Catholic Church.

You would think that any organisation professing to defend the downtrodden and the oppressed would see this referendum as an opportunity to provide positive leadership, but no. They have come out as dismissive, reactionary and uncaring; using precisely the same Jesuitic rhetoric in 2015 as the defenders of past injustices did back in years past. In all this debate they have forgotten whose side they should be on, preferring instead to champion ancient prejudices.

Not just one, but two generations have been alienated by such pronouncements. What we have is an organisation arguing itself into obsolescence, not caring about the consequences or how such views will be perceived by future generations. Not in our name, we say. Some day in the future, a pope will issue an apology for these wrongs, but by then it will be far too late.

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Categories opinions

Belief in Angels

October 10, 2014 //

AngelI was involved in a Cork 96FM radio programme a few days ago, talking about angel belief. Prior to my bit on the programme, a number of women were interviewed. They were deeply invested in their beliefs, many claiming to have seen visions or having received the assistance of angels at important moments in their lives. The women were clearly very religious, many of them describing themselves as “spiritual”, as opposed to paid-up Catholic Mass-goers.

They talked about their encounters with angel healers. According to them, the healers were able to tell them things they couldn’t possibly have known in advance. It was clear that the healers were using cold-reading and warm-reading techniques. Psychologists and mentalists have long discovered that these methods are not at all magical; instead they prey on mental flaws and blind-spots that we all possess. These manipulative and deceptive practices still catch the unwary, hook, line and sinker.

Angel belief has been given a shot in the arm because of a recent pronouncement by the Pope, who recently declared that they exist, whether we choose to believe in them or not. The Pope may well be saying this from a position of belief, however part of me suspects that he is addressing a wider problem within his Church. There has been a notable decline in church involvement by women, who have become disillusioned by the behaviour, attitudes and scandals within the world’s biggest boys’ club.

What strikes me about angel belief is the power of the imagery. I doubt if there are many things more potent than the idea that an authority figure is caring for us and nurturing us. It’s inculcated in us from childhood. When things get bad, we can rely on this image to make us feel better. Mary and Jesus are portrayed as nurturing, parental figures for this very reason. While this kind of belief can seem harmless enough, I have some concerns. Should things continue to get worse, then instead of focusing on the problem, people could be wracked by guilt for having disappointed their “angel”; that, in some way they are being punished for a transgression. This could pile additional stress on what is already a difficult situation. Additionally, such feelings of comfort are temporary and unlikely to solve chronic issues and problems fixable with outside help. Far from being a solution, angel belief could morph into a permanent avoidance strategy. I don’t think that’s healthy.

I am not going to condemn people who believe in angels. What people choose to believe is up to them, so long as they are not trying to foist these beliefs onto us, or put other people’s health and mental health at risk. Angel healing is big business, as anyone who has recently visited a book shop will testify. It saddens me that so many people are locked in a parent-child relationship with an imaginary entity. It allows the angels’ real life proxies – the authors and healers profiting from these beliefs – to be viewed very uncritically by their adherents. Given the subject matter they claim to be experts on and the fact that their only “evidence” is personal anecdote, these people are not quite as knowledgable as they make themselves out to be.

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Categories opinions

A level playing field?

October 4, 2011 //

I’m currently going through the painful process of finding a place for my eldest son in secondary school next year. Competition for places is high, so it’s not unusual to find that many schools have an enrolment policy, which helps them decide who gets an offer and who doesn’t. One consideration is whether you live near the school. Another consideration is whether you have a sibling already in the school. Performance in entrance tests and interviews may be considered. In one school we visited, a key criterion appeared to be the extent to which parents wanted their child in the school, i.e., how much they were willing to pester the school management to get their kid a place.

All well and good, but many schools have another card up their sleeve. When you have ticked the suitability boxes on almost everything, your child might still be rejected. He might simply be part of the wrong religion.

Let’s cut to the chase. Children are getting accepted into schools, not on merit, not on ability, but on the overriding need to have the right formulation of strange ideas in their head. Hell, it’s not even their head – it’s expected to be in the heads of their parents. You couldn’t think of a worse reason for a kid to be rejected if you tried.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as Catholic maths, or Protestant geography, or Buddhist science. Schooling is schooling, and, apart from religion classes themselves, your religion should bear no relationship to what is taught in the classroom.

Religion offers people an opportunity to discriminate. Imagine you had to bring your family abroad, to Pakistan, say, and the only school for your daughter was an Islamic school. Part of each day involved learning parts of the Koran off by heart. If you were not Muslim, you would probably be unhappy having her learn it, no matter how well disposed to the school you were. Yet, we don’t see anything wrong with the children of non-affiliated parents being expected to conform to a similar system right here in our own country. Even if the child is exempted from these classes, a line is being drawn quite explicitly between her and other students.

I also wonder whether the “ethos” and “values” cards are overplayed. Religion does not play a part in most workplaces and yet most people seem to be able to show respect for each other. Common humanity: courtesy, manners and compassion, is not the preserve of any one religion or philosophy, as we soon find when we meet people with vastly different upbringings.

The fact that religion can be used as grounds for selection, in such a crucial area of life as education, is a monstrous failure by the Irish State. Religion has no role in the definition of who can be an Irish citizen. Article 44 of the Irish Constitution specifically states that the State shall not discriminate on religious lines. Surely this extends to schools, paid as they are out of taxpayer money?

Here’s my suggestion. It should be made illegal for schools in receipt of public money, to discriminate against children and parents on religious grounds. Ireland urgently needs a level playing field.

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Categories opinions

The “ravages of secularism”

October 1, 2011 //

"La Rogativa" (Trevor Huxham)

Two church leaders, Archbishop Michael Neary and Bishop Patrick Rooke, strongly attacked secularism in Tuesday’s Mayo News. They called secularism a cult, and defined it as a philosophy defined by selfishness and greed. It was seen as the “common enemy” – the implication being that secularism was responsible, among other things, for the Celtic Tiger debacle.

These comments completely miss what secularism is about. The basis behind secularism is an acknowledgement that in a free society, people believe all kinds of things and are entitled to believe all kinds of things. It notes, therefore, that it is not the job of government to dictate beliefs to anyone, or to promote a particular set of beliefs above others. Public society should operate on a neutral setting with regard to belief systems, in order to provide a flat playing pitch to everyone. We expect that our schools, our hospitals, our local and national governments, and all offices underwritten by the tax payer, do not discriminate or unduly benefit people, simply on the basis of a particular belief system.

What is self-serving, greedy or cultish about that?

Core to secularism is freedom of speech, and however the churches might object, this includes the freedom to criticise religious beliefs – to expose them to public scrutiny and debate. Despite what it may seem to clerics unused to such questioning, this is the complete opposite of how a cult works – there is no control, no censure, no subjects that are out of bounds. There is no central authority figure. Secularism is called a cult by the clerical establishment because their beliefs are challenged, criticised and occasionally ridiculed.

What happened to Ireland’s economy during the 2000’s was lamentable, but I cannot see how it can be linked to secularism. It’s a safe bet that many of the property developers, regulators, speculators and bankers involved in the boom were practicing Catholics, coming, by and large, from a generation that had much a stronger Catholic influence than we do today. Implying that “they were really closet secularists” is simply a feeble attempt to redefine, for the sake of convenience, what “secularism” and “Catholicism” actually mean.

So I say to these men, grow up. You are living in a society where many different beliefs, and none, coexist. You live in a society where the entitlement and power given to you and your followers is eroding; where people are free to challenge you and to criticise your views, no matter how sacred you think they are; and where greed crosses all mindsets, all cultural boundaries, including your own, yet you see fit to conveniently blame it all on secularism, with no basis whatsoever.

Photo: “La Rogativa”, Trevor Huxham, 2007, (CC Licenced).

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Categories opinions

Could the Irish Catholic Church split from Rome?

August 2, 2011 //

Photo via Marino González (Flickr : Merlin1487) CC Licensed

Over the weekend, Carol Hunt wrote a thought provoking piece about the prospect of the Irish Catholic Church going its own way, free from Vatican influence. Plenty of food for thought. In an article covering 1500 years of Irish history, she explains how the “Romanisation” of Irish Catholicism, with its contorted theology, unquestioned paternalism and petty proscriptions, is a relatively recent phenomenon; emerging primarily from the aftermath of the 1847 potato famine. Irish Catholicism had ploughed its own furrow for centuries, she argues. Maybe, it’s time for it to return to its roots.

Fascinating though a wholly Irish Catholic Church might be, I can’t see it happening soon. Even if the Vatican insult the lot of us when they respond to Enda Kenny’s Dáil speech, I don’t see the bulk of practicing Catholics here doing anything about it. Ultimately, it comes down to inertia. Many of those most likely to have had the energy to change the church from within have long since left the church in disgust and frustration, with no intention of ever going back. The remainder are split unequally along two lines: a core of deeply committed Catholics who prefer to believe that the whole scandal is a secular assault on their religion and a larger, more moderate group who, while affronted by the behaviour of the clergy in the past two decades, are unwilling to do anything about it.

There are likely to be a multitude of drivers motivating the second group to do nothing. For many, obedience to the Church is the respectable thing to do. Public dissent and argument have always been strongly discouraged within the Church, so why raise your head above the parapet? Some are keenly mindful of their “Catholic” identity, as opposed to a “Protestant” identity, in an island where too much blood has been spilled over these minor theological differences. In the background is the lingering fear of damnation, both in the putative next life and this one too. In the end, no matter what anachronistic pronouncements are uttered from on high; no matter what will emerge from the scandals of the future, most moderate Catholics will put up with it all for the sake of an easy life.

It’s not as if home-grown Catholicism, as opposed to Roman Catholicism, isn’t attractive to many within this second group. Most Irish Catholics would do away with the failed ban on contraception in the morning. They would welcome married clergy and women priests. They certainly wouldn’t mourn the passing of Vatican countenanced clericalism and secrecy, particularly when we have all seen its devastating effects in Ireland and around the world. It’s just that, for Irish practicing Catholics, desiring something and doing something about it are two very different things.

Protests and dissenting voices have been limited and sporadic.  Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, has been highly critical of the Catholic hierarchy’s behaviour and is an uncompromising advocate of reform. He has been a lone voice, however, increasingly marginalised even if he is saying what many Catholics are privately thinking.

When a few trogloditic priests around the country revealed their true colours over the past few weeks – comparing Enda Kenny to Hitler and referring to the Cloyne aftermath as being part of a secular Jewish agenda – a few brave souls walked out of Mass and there were a small number of letters to the newspapers. The vast bulk of people remained silent. It seems that the spirit is willing, but the motivation to do anything about it is about as strong as a wet straw.

So, no. I don’t expect any real changes any time soon. Irish Catholicism will continue to ally itself with Rome, despite what outrages might emerge involving the Vatican in the coming years. The prognosis for this church is a slow and steady decline into irrelevance and backwardness while old age and disillusionment steadily swabs up the remaining bulk of congregants.

* Photo “Broken Cross” by Merlin1487 (Marino González) on Flickr (CC Licensed)

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Categories thinking

Melleray Grotto

December 30, 2010 //

The day turned out to be wet and misty, so instead of our planned hillwalk we ended up walking the Glenshelane Forest Trail near Cappoquin, Co. Waterford. “Glenshelane” translates into “Valley of the Fairies” and with its meandering streams and moss covered trees there is something magical about the place (or at least the parts that have not been the subject of recent tree-felling).

By accident, we ended up at a place called Melleray Grotto. It’s a strange place. Nestled beside a bridge across the Monavugga river, the grotto has a large shelter and car-park in addition to the usual statues of Mary and St. Theresa. According to the signs and leaflets there, three children saw multiple apparitions of the Virgin Mary there in 1985, the same year as the moving statues phenomenon in Ireland.

The children reported seeing Noah, Jesus and the Devil among other biblical characters. According to them, Mary spoke to them on a number of occasions. The free leaflet provides us with a transcript of what she said: pronouncements like “I Want Prayer” and “The World Must Improve” – not exactly the most inspirational of stuff. She even went on to predict a great cataclysm in 1995. Unless I am much mistaken, this did not happen in 1995, or am I wrong? (Ah, but of course, there was that matter of a divorce referendum…).

I was left with the distinct impression that the whole thing was a hoax or a prank that went somewhat out of control, or perhaps the exploitation of people who might have been in need of professional medical help. Over the period of the “visions”, thousands of people descended on the place, just as they were doing in similar places around the country.

On the seats nearby was a Catholic newspaper that seemed gave the distinct impression of a religion on the ropes; as if they had rounded up the wagon train and all you could see, looking from the outside, were guns pointing at you. Everyone becomes their target – atheists, secularists, liberal Christians, Muslims, anyone who does not sign up to their strict interpretation of Christianity. This is fine, I guess, for preserving intact the worldview of the faithful, but useless as a vehicle for attracting new recruits. The paper is full of anger, bitterness and despair for the future.

It’s a ramshackle place where one’s common understanding of the world takes a somersault, to be replaced by arcane stories and apparent miracles. A place where normal critical thinking takes a vacation. Not so different, I would think, to Hindu shrines half a continent away, with their votive candles, petitions and magical holy water. The pleas and prayers are sodden with desperation and agony. Rather than making people more comfortable about their troubles, I wonder if it only makes things worse by assigning an agent, a conscious cause, to their suffering. If their problems – serious illness or  a bereavement  say – were caused by a conscious agent, then you will never stop asking why and no answers will ever come. That’s not comfort in my book.

The Grottos is an odd, fascinating and somewhat sad place: a distinct throwback to the Middle Ages and an insight into the power and irrationality of human belief.

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Categories tours and trips

An incomplete education

July 18, 2010 //

I think I was around fifteen years old. The elderly Christian Brother teaching us Religious Studies brought us all downstairs to the video room. The lesson for the day would be a documentary on Our Lady of Garabandal, a supposed “apparition” of Mary somewhere in Spain. The key message from the programme was the Blessed Virgin’s unhappiness with the world. Unless we started saying the Rosary pretty darn quick, terrible unspecified things would happen. No discussion, no criticism. We were expected to accept all of the programme’s premises at face value.

This was a major downside of an Irish Catholic education in the 1980’s. Alongside fairly solid subjects such as maths, science and the foreign languages, we were schooled in rank superstition. This was not educational, it was anti-educational. We left school in possession of a rather toxic mindset: that if a person was wearing the right clothes or had the right prefix before his name, or the right suffix after his name, then you were expected to accept that he was telling the truth, no matter what rubbish he was uttering from his mouth.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when friends of mine were discussing alternative medicine cures for various ailments. There was no analysis, no criticism. The proof was in the anecdote and the anecdote was the gold-standard.

Then there was the hubbub at Knock a few months ago, attracting thousands to witness Joe Coleman muttering nonsense into the middle distance. Many of us might laugh, but it served as a reminder that the Ireland of the moving statues hadn’t gone away, you know.

Pick up any local paper and you will find ads for peddlers of the most outrageous woo, from Chinese medicine to homeopathic treatments to new age crystal remedies. And how could we forget the pyramid schemes and the property bubbles that hit the country over the past few years? It all points a vulnerability common to us all. You might not beat the Irish, but fool us you can, and fool us you do. Every single day.

It’s all quite depressing stuff. If you want to make make a fast buck using nothing but smoke and mirrors, Ireland is as good a place as any to try your hand.

Now, I know that belief in the miraculous, the supernatural and the magical is a worldwide phenomenon. Most societies are steeped in it and it will be with us as long as our species breathe on this planet. Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be good for all of us if our kids were better prepared to accept things more on evidence than on hearsay? Wouldn’t it be better if we were taught how our brains can play tricks on us and how to avoid the more common mistakes? Wouldn’t it benefit us to quickly recognise manipulation by others? Our education system somehow avoided this aspect of our schooling and the results are everywhere to be seen.

The Irish education system, or should I say, the Catholic education system of Ireland (sadly these expressions are synonymous), didn’t dwell too much on such questions, lest we peered too closely at the shaky foundations of Catholicism’s own dogmas and diktats. We were, of course, taught to think critically, but critical thinking had its limits.

I would love to say that the system has improved greatly since I left school and that we are turning out school-leavers who have a much better handle on reality, but I fear that change has been glacially slow. I stand to be corrected in this regard.

It’s another reason why a Catholic education is not necessarily the best education for our schoolchildren. We deserve better. It’s time we got better.

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Categories Ireland

Another month, another depressing report on clerical child abuse..

November 30, 2009 //

The latest report on child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese does not fail to shock. The abuse itself is chilling, depressing and appalling, but compounding it is the behaviour of senior bishops and cardinals as they conspired – over a 40 year period – to cover up the scale of the scandal throughout the Dublin area. A new word has been added to the common lexicon – “mental reservation“: where bishops could freely excuse themselves from telling the truth when under pressure to do so. The welfare of children was of little importance to these men, and the resultant suffering is incalculable.

Mary Raftery neatly sums up the gravity of this report and it’s implications for the Catholic Church in Ireland. One passage in particular stands out:

What emerges most clearly from the report is that priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals had the greatest difficulty in telling right from wrong, and crucially that their determination of what constituted wrongdoing was vastly different from that of the population at large.

Let’s think about that, for a second. The Catholic Church, like most religions, believes that the greatest value it confers to society is its ability to guide people in distinguishing right from wrong. And yet, it’s most eminent leaders and scholars behaved – and still behave – in a way that would lead you to the firm conclusion that, despite their years of learning, refinement and experience, they have no clue as to what is commonly accepted as morally acceptable or morally abhorrent behaviour. If the very leaders of this church can’t distinguish between right and wrong, what use is Catholicism at all? Why should any sane society uncritically accept the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in our schools? What real benefit does it offer our children?

The implications of the report are clear: The Church badly needs to be removed from the affairs of the Irish State. Let the parents and teachers teach our children right from wrong – they will do a better job. The churchmen had their chance for long time and they blew it. Enough is enough.

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Categories Ireland

Thousands of pilgrims witness Nothing at Knock

October 29, 2009 //
Knock Shrine

via Declan McAleese (Flickr - creative commons licensed)

KNOCK, Co. Mayo – 31 October 2009

Fifty thousand people from around Ireland turned up the town of Knock, Co. Mayo, today to see a glorious display of Nothing. The anticipation had been building up for weeks after clairvoyant Joe Coleman successfully predicted at least two displays of Nothing over the past months, with this day expected to be the best display of Nothing in fifty years. Bus-loads of pilgrims began to arrive into Knock since last Wednesday. Hotel rooms and guest-houses were booked up as far afield as Ballina and Tuam. James O’Shaughnessy from Rosslare arrived in Knock the night before, having walked in his bare feet from Wexford. All the pilgims spoke in feverish terms about their anticipation of today’s event. “It’s about time that the people of Ireland woke up, cast off our material desires and realised that all out problems would be solved if we moped around looking at bugger all for a while”, said Micheal Foley from Moate, Co. Westmeath.

The day lived up to expectations right from the start. “It was amazing”, said Bill O’Rourke from Prosperous, Co. Kildare. “As soon as we got there we immediately started seeing Nothing, and for the entire time we were there we continued to see Very Little Happen on a regular basis. We must have been there four hours. I’ve never experienced so much Nothingness on a single occasion before”.

Mary Kelleher from Ennis, was slightly more skeptical. “Well, I’m sure I saw a flock of crows at one stage, so saying we saw Nothing is a bit too strong. But it might have been a trick of the eyes. God acts in mysterious ways, you know”. However Martin O’Carroll from Gort was far more insistent. “Praise be! It was an incredible experience! There were thousands of us there, and we all witnessed directly the complete absence of anything interesting at all! You can’t put that down to chance”.

At 3pm on the day , a slight wind blew from the west, but it soon died down again. Some in the crowd immediately fainted from sheer wonderment. Around 3.15, the sun was momentarily seen from behind the grey clouds. “I definitely saw it shining”, said Pat McGarrigle from Roscommon. “It was there in the sky, and it was shining down. The locality suddenly brightened up around us. We could feel the sun’s rays on our faces. We all burst into prayer”.

As the crowd began to disperse around 7pm, a great light appeared in the sky. The Aer Arann flight from Dublin had arrived on time.

Joe Coleman declared the occasion a great success. “By the end of the day, everyone was completely bored. Our traditional values are obviously still strong. Let this be a warning to the politicians and the Church hierarchy. If you believe in your heart that Nothing will happen, then it can come true despite what the authorities might tell you”. He is currently organising a pilgimage to Lourdes, “where a great Non-Event is due to take place before the assembled multitudes during December”.

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