Secular as a parrot

Modern Ireland holds myriad fascinations. Here’s one: many of those who enthusiastically embrace and promote the cultural diversity of ‘the new Ireland’ also disparage almost every other aspect of 21st century Ireland. It’s great to have so many peoples making their home here, they say – pity about our bad language, our drinking and drug-taking, our moneymaking, our sex drive and our (alleged) self-absorption. Sometimes you just can’t win.

Of course, quite often the ‘celebration’ of diversity is itself a stick with which to beat the uncaring offices of the State, the indifference of the hedonistic or the callousness of our capitalists.
The latest soldier into this particular breach is the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Seán Brady. He had two shots recently. The first was in Milwaukee where he, without any evidential basis by the way, suggested that “there are increasing signs that the secular project in Ireland has failed.”
Well, it was August after all. This is the month when various summer schools take place around the country in both jurisdictions. Most of these are now platforms for people to generally mope and wring their hands in public about how empty the Irish glass is, apart of course from when it’s full of drink.
For example, some years ago Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly garnered herself much favourable coverage amongst the Concerned Classes with a lament for the state we’re in and her suggestion that we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
It’s the latest evolution of the thinking-feeling Catholic movement that emerged in Ireland with the liberalisation following Vatican 2. It wouldn’t exactly wake a sleeping parrot, but for the currency this kind of thing carries in the media. Various journalists and columnists, many of them former firebrands but now contending with teenage children of their own, and being therefore ridden by a herd of angsts, are peculiarly susceptible to such collective self-abuse.
This, of course, makes the archbishop’s second attack, this time on what he called ‘the commentariat’, all the more strange. After all, the same ‘commentariat’ spend most of their time attacking the same things as he does, like Sodom and Begorrah, corruption and greed.
The archbishop’s second speech was made at the Humbert summer school in Mayo, in which he had a go at the ‘new superstitions’.
It appears to have escaped his notice that a lot of his flock, and particularly those of a thinking-feeling persuasion, are also into a lot of touchy feely stuff. They use words like holistic and wellness a lot. They talk about spirit and soul and, as like as not, have a thing about the Celts and ‘Celtic spirituality’.
They don’t see any contradiction between this stuff and their Catholicism. He seemingly does. Of course, his principal target is astrology and tarot-reading and the like. In passing one notes that in his dismissal he is in accord with rationalist scientist Richard Dawkins a man whom, given his trenchant views on religion, the archbishop is unlikely to enlist in his crusade.
But it is also difficult to resist the obvious comment that one faith-based belief system is much the same as another, that none operate on the basis of scientific reason and that his religion has no firmer evidential basis than these new superstitions.
Indeed, this point was made to Archbishop Brady by RTÉ’s Keelin Shanley in an interview on Drivetime. One does not know what Shanley’s own views are but as a good journalist should, she challenged the interviewee on his.
The man struggled, probably quite shocked at a young woman questioning his assertions and citing Dawkins on daytime radio. You couldn’t say he recovered. The evidence he advanced largely consisted of saying that millions had followed his faith, so it must be true.
It wasn’t convincing. Indeed a cynic might suggest that, as regards the media and the new superstitions, what the archbishop is really doing is having a go at the competition.
Meanwhile, another little dust storm brewed, this time over the news that a Sikh who had trained as a member of the Garda reserve would not be allowed to wear his turban. It has been much discussed and we’re not done with it yet.
Many ‘new Irelanders’ believe that the ruling is wrong and have said so. It is linked with the wider issue of overt religious and ethnic symbols and dress. By way of example, the question of veils in schools has proved divisive in various European countries.
Others argue that the police force in a democratic republic should be visibly impartial and therefore completely neutral as regards religion and politics. At this point, this view is in the ascendant. Indeed, it now seems that the Gardaí are, to quote their press officer, reviewing ‘all religious items’, adding that in the future it was possible that expressions of Catholicism, such as wearing crucifixes, pioneer pins and ashes on Ash Wednesday would all be disallowed.
It’s another fascination isn’t it? The need to respect and be impartial towards various religions will make the State more secular, not less, and will move the lot of us yet further from the old certainties, whose abandonment Archbishop Brady so laments.