That the Church in Ireland ever got Herself into this position is because She allowed Herself to be co-opted as, for ceremonial purposes, a substitute for the British monarchy, by which the Irish public remains fascinated to the point of obsession. (Northern Nationalists aren't, but they are no more typically Irish than it would be normal behaviour over here to march through the streets behind a Union Flag while wearing a bowler hat.)
Neither from the Queen nor from her father will you ever find the quotation "we are a moral example", or words to that effect, and before him not even his great-grandmother was regarded in quite those terms. It is simply not what they are for. They have never claimed that it was. Whereas it is what the Church is for, as She claims. In the absence of Royals doing what Royals do, someone else had to do it, and there was no one else to do it but the clergy. Thus the confusion began. We all know where it ended up.
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Sorry, Mr Lindsay, but I'm unsure what you mean by these allegations. They remind me - though no doubt they weren't intended to do so - of those atheists who whine about Catholicism being a "theocracy".
ReplyDeleteAre you really saying that the Church (in Ireland or anywhere else) has no claim to be monarchical; that She has no claim to run the state; that She should be a mere private hobby like stamp-collecting (which is the essence of modern Protestantism); and that the Social Reign of Christ the King should not be allowed? All these assertions could, I suppose, be defended with some variant of the "two swords theory" concerning rendering unto Caesar. But they can't (I submit) be defended by Catholics, as opposed to, say, old-fashioned Americanist heretics.
I'm not trying to be offensive, and I'm not trying to be republican. I'm simply puzzled by what you have written in this post.
Particularly since the vast majority of present-day critics of the Irish Church (and its sex crimes, some of which indubitably occurred, most of which are fantasies by litigious psychopaths seeking vast amounts of money) are now Jews, Protestants, atheists, ex-Catholics, or some combination of these categories.
Happy New Year, BTW.
And to you. But the point is a simple one: the Church took over the ceremonial role of the monarchy in Irish life, leading to a confusion between the proper functions of the two.
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