At a recent priestly ordination here in Dublin, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin made mention of the growing harassment of Catholics in Irish society:
There is a sense in Ireland today in which there is a culture of relentless reminding the Church of the sins of its members and at times of painting every individual and every moment in the history of the Church with the same condemnation. I notice a certain justified resentment among priests and religious and committed Catholics at somehow being unfairly under attack as they live out their faith and their ministry generously and with dedication (see www.dublindiocese.ie)
He made mention too of a growing sense of the need Irish Catholics feel “to stand up and respond”. While – as the Archbishop pointed out in his ordination homily – a truly Christian response requires acknowledgment of one’s failings as well as the avoidance of polemical quarrels, it could be added that Catholics need to know when the criticisms have moved from the realm of the justifiable and constructive into the realm of the unfair and vindictive – in a word into the realm of bigotry.
The virtue of Christian meekness does not require of the followers of Christ that they allow their civic rights (in this case, the right to a good name) to be trampled on. In fact the opposite is just the case. The Christian is obliged to take his or her place in civil society and demand the same rights – no more and no less – as everyone else. In the words of St Josemaria Escriva:
We cannot simply fold our arms when a subtle persecution condemns the Church to die of starvation, putting it outside the sphere of public life, and above all obstructing its part in education, culture and family life.
These are not our rights; they are God’s rights. He has entrusted them to us Catholics so that we may exercise them! (Furrow, 310)
A case in point here in Ireland is the tenor of a recent debate over the proposed locating of a new National Maternity Hospital on lands owned by the Sisters of Charity. Leading medical practitioners are insisting that the owners of the land – the Sisters – would not be allowed to insist on a Catholic ethos in the new medical facility. While the matter is complicated, and there is nothing to suggest that the Sisters of Charity will in fact insist on a Catholic ethos on their property, what has arisen is a rehearsal of calls for the removal of Catholic institutions from health services in the country at large. A senior obstetrician has called for an absolute separation between church and medicine, especially when it comes to female reproductive healthcare. “No religious organisation”, in the opinion of this particular medic, should be allowed run a hospital which receives public funding, and the Catholic Church receives special mention because of its “chequered history” in female reproductive health.
Most social comment on the debate follows in the same vein: Catholic charitable institutions were abysmal failures in the past, and the Catholic teaching on reproductive ethics should not be present in publicly funded hospitals.
There are two separate issues which we should find disturbing in such comment. The first is simply its prejudice; what we see here is nothing short of an ugly bigotry against a particular religious group in Ireland. A person with even the most rudimentary historical awareness could not be unaware of the heroic work of religious orders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in providing education and healthcare to a desperately poor population. The work of multitudes of religious in provision of education and healthcare over decades is not negated by the much vaunted failings of the orphanages and Magdalene laundries. Only iron cast prejudice could ignore this, or even worse, put sinister interpretations on it. Secondly there is a prejudice – almost hysterical at times – against Catholic medical ethics. On what grounds? The arguments advanced against Catholic medical ethics are invariably thin: it is anachronistic (which would be fine as an argument if we had any reason to believe that history is marching towards Valhalla); it offends against a woman’s right to choose (which, granted it is only a slogan, only implies that women, for some reason, have been granted a privileged position beyond good and evil). The hysterical tenor of the assaults on the Catholic ethos unmask a depth of animosity working with paucity of argument. A person has no obligation to be moved by hysteria; yes by historical facts and rational arguments.
The etymology of the word “prejudice” is illuminating: the word comes from the Latin words for “injustice”, and “prior judgment” and so refers to the injustice done when an event or person is approached with an already formed judgement, prior to the facts being established. Normally the facts of the matter are replaced with something much germane to the lazy mind: hearsay, broad generalisation, caricature and the like. We find this at work in all the more infamous instances of large scale bigotry in modern times. And generally, we would have to add, such prejudices are stoked up by opinion makers for their own ends. There is no doubt that here in Ireland this role has been played by elements in the mass media: the Raskolnikovs who stir up the Smerdyakovs of our society.
Philip Jenkins, the author of the famous 2003 work on anti-Catholicism in modern America: The New Anti-Catholicism, The Last Acceptable Prejudice, gave a useful guideline for gauging if something appearing in the public domain should be considered bigoted:
The issue should not be whether film X or art exhibit Y is deliberately intending to affront Catholics. We should rather ask whether comparable expressions would be allowed if they caused outrage or offense to any other group, whether or not that degree of offense seems reasonable or understandable to outsiders. If the answer is yes, that our society will indeed tolerate controversial or offensive presentations of other groups – of Muslims and Jews, African-Americans and Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans, gays and lesbians – then Catholics should not protest that they are being singled out for unfair treatment. If, however, controversy is out of bounds for these other groups – as it assuredly is – then we certainly should not lighten up, and the Catholic League is going to be in business for a very long time to come (Philip Jenkins “Catholic-Bashing: America’s Last Acceptable Prejudice” May 2003 issue of Catalyst Magazine.)
Applying this to our present situation in Ireland we might ask how we would react if the object of public furore were institutions which followed an Anglican, Jewish or Islamic ethos. Certainly the time has come for Catholics “to stand up and respond”.