A Secular Ireland: Just As Conformist

Breda O'Brien writes:

Among commentators and would-be opinion formers, there is a great deal of talk about political reform right now, and so there should be. There are so many glaring problems in our system – ranging from the lack of any meaningful local government to the Seanad that is crying out for reform. There are useful and interesting debates going on, from vision statements to concrete proposals like citizens’ assemblies. Yet it is impossible not to wonder what purchase these ideas have with the ordinary, scared citizens of Ireland. Irish people have not had much time for vision in politics.

It may seem laughable now, but Fianna Fáil was re-elected in 2007 largely because there were faint hints of an economic downturn. People judged that Fianna Fáil would be the party most able to navigate that downturn. We like to speak of the sophistication of the Irish electorate. The truth may be less flattering. It is frightening, but we may not just have the politicians, but the politics we deserve. The reservoir of rage that has been swelling in recent months has done little to improve matters. Take, for example, recent comments by John Gormley, referring to working in the “asylum”, and “the sleepless nights, the non-stop criticism and the no-win situation”. He was excoriated, accused of bleating like an animal left out in the cold, and of playing the victim card. Is it not possible that he was just speaking the simple truth?

There was also the reaction to his fellow Green TD, Paul Gogarty. To say the excitable TD has garnered more than his fair share of headlines in his time would be an understatement. Yet there was far less criticism of his truly bizarre action in 2008, when he rolled around the floor when Frances Fitzgerald was making a speech in Rathcoole, than of his decision to take his toddler, Daisy, to a press conference. We claim we want to make politics more family-friendly, yet when someone does something like this it is treated like an affront to the nation. Arguably, Daisy has more stake in what happens than most of the people complaining, because it is she and future generations who will pay for current decisions.

It is as if there is a great wave of anger just waiting to break over any politician for any reason. Who would want to be a politician at the moment? There is a justifiable level of anger at the lack of foresight, but it has become personalised and ugly. We seem to have forgotten that politicians are people, with children who go to school and spouses who have to make thankless sacrifices. Everything about politicians is fair game at the moment, from physical characteristics to insinuations that every single one of them is in it for personal gain. Unless we develop the ability to criticise policies and actions rather than hammer individuals, fewer and fewer people will want to enter politics. Certainly, criticise extravagant pensions, or even an individual’s attitudes, but don’t play the man.

Political reform will not come about unless the ordinary citizen looks at his or her reasons for voting. We need a new value system. It is hard to see where this will come from. In recent times, I have heard commentator after commentator speaking of the fact that we have thrown off the shackles of oppressive Catholicism. It is tempting to ask, and how’s that working for you? While by definition none of us want oppressive Catholicism, is this allegedly post-Catholic country a wonderful place to be? Some (not all) of the voices offering a critique of Celtic Tiger values were Christian. Were we better off throwing those voices out, too? It’s not on a par with the suffering experienced by families and individuals damaged by clerical child abuse, but it is truly sad that at a time when the social teaching of Christianity on justice and fairness was never more needed, there are few Christian leaders with the moral authority to remind us of it.

Most of the commentators proposing change seem to assume that the future is secular, with religion merely a private hobby. But as John Bruton pointed out in the House of Lords in London recently, it is naive to believe voters “divide their minds up into watertight compartments, marked religious, political, personal, family and so forth”. His point was not that only religious people are ethical, but that religion still plays a significant part for many people in forming their ethical beliefs. Quoting Pope Benedict, he said: “Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.” Political reform hinges on moral reform. For many people, it will not be informed by religious beliefs, but it would be a shame if religion was excluded from the national conversation, and one conformist ideology replaced another.

Hope may be at hand. The events of November 2010 have led to calls for a Second Republic, putting everything back on the table. The present Constitution was opposed by an alliance between the far wealthier and better-connected Southern Unionists, and the far more numerous Catholic "ultras" who considered it inadequate on that basis. They were united, not only by the fact that most Protestants were far closer to much of Catholic moral teaching in those days than is often the case today, but also by a common aversion to what looked like a sort of Irish Bolshevism which they were equally determined to resist, a resistance to which they both saw the continuation of Commonwealth ties, ties among which the monarchy was not then optional, as an indispensable weapon.

And they were right. Let those who want even more of the Mammon-worshipping secularisation, and even more of the no less Mammon-worshipping loosening of the ties to Britain, make the case for a new Constitution in those terms. And let them be answered by those who recognise recent and current events as the vindication of an alternative vision, a fully and proudly Catholic-based entity fully and proudly integrated into the natural economic, strategic and cultural unit that is this archipelago. We shall all see who wins out in the end. The proponents of a British-style social democracy such as Irish Catholics, acting on the Church’s Social Teaching, have been so successful in building in the United Kingdom and in the Old Commonwealth, but such as Dev’s Republic has never approached becoming? I rather expect so. Or is that noble and realistic vision of the 26 Counties to go by default, lost once again to the fantasies of wannabes from Dev to Gerry Adams?