(Doctrine and Life, December 2011, pp.17-26)
What is Ireland’s identity? What makes us Irish? What goes into that mixture of assumptions, values, attitudes, reflexes, priorities and interests that makes us to be what we are?
Catholic, nationalist Ireland
In the past, we thought that to be Irish was to be Catholic and nationalist. That must have left Irish Protestants feeling side-lined, but we gave little thought to that. The Catholic and nationalist blend produced a society which, in my view, was coherent, integrated, self-respecting, with a sense of community and of conscience. There was much generosity, self-sacrifice and simple goodness. It was mostly a safe place to be. Compare statistics: –
In the Republic of Ireland in 1949, there was 1 murder, 2 armed robberies, and 16 cars were stolen. (1) In 2009, there were 54 murders, 2485 robberies, extortions and hijackings, and about 13,120 cars were stolen. (2) Prisons increased from 5 to 14, and prisoners from 580 to over 6,000 in 2006. I remember a Garda superintendent stating at a public lecture about 1959 that the principal crime the Gardaí had to deal with was the theft of bikes. That seems like a distant dream.
I wouldn’t recognize the squalid, suffocating, superstitious society of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes as the Ireland I grew up in. I was proud of being Irish and Catholic, and happy with both. With its many faults, I found Ireland a good place to live in, and I believe most of my generation hold similar views.
Both the Catholic church and nationalism now stand discredited. The latter has been tainted by association with thirty years of violence in Northern Ireland. The old dream of national unity – getting back the Six Counties – now seems a mirage. We have allowed our national language virtually to die out. Nationalism has been set in a larger context through EU membership. It has shown itself to be powerfully enduring, the great survivor among twentieth-century ideologies, but has not yet defined a new path for itself in Ireland.
The church? So many are its failings, one wonders where to begin. It had a golden opportunity in Vatican II, but the history of the church since then is one of opportunities discarded. Vatican II died the death of a thousand cuts. Why? We were holy, Catholic Ireland; we didn’t need those new-fangled continental ideas, so we ignored them. Timidity, tokenism and lack of imagination stifled the council’s impulse. Priests were afraid to trust people, and clung to power. Humanae Vitae was the turning point for many Irish Catholics, the beginning of a parting of the ways. The church’s besetting fault, universally and nationally, is a refusal to face issues with honesty and courage. The church has no structures of participation and dialogue to enable discussion of issues on their merits, and there are voices which deny we need them: ‘We need saints, not structural change,’ I heard a bishop say. There is no openness, transparency or accountability, the manner in which the new translation of the Roman Missal was prepared and imposed being a recent example. Those failures preclude reform. Many Irish Catholics, while not losing faith in God, have lost hope in the church; it disappointed them too often. And that was before the abuse scandals and their cover-up came into the public arena.
Liberal, secular Ireland
Internationally, liberalism has real achievements to its credit. Constitutional recognition of rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and worship are examples; others include the ending of slavery, the development of universal primary education, of democratic institutions, and of trades unions. The separation of church and state, and separation of constitutional powers are significant. Those were real gains for humanity, and would not have come about without the influence of liberal thought and action, usually in the face of dogged opposition, some of it from the church.
Out of the demise of Catholic, nationalist Ireland came liberal, secular Ireland. It has significant but by no means universal support. It has helped to open the country up from being inward-looking; it changed it from a unitary to a pluralist society; it helped individuals liberate themselves from group pressure to conform; and it contributed to substantial and positive changes in legislation.
But Irish liberalism is frequently illiberal. It demands that issues be discussed on its terms, those of prevailing political correctness. This has become the dogmatic orthodoxy of liberalism, leading to subterfuge, pretended dialogue, and hidden agenda; it is repressive of free speech. Recently, when a TD (member of parliament) said that traditional heterosexual marriage should have favour in law she was condemned as discriminatory. There were demands that she be sacked from her party post, and threats to picket her upcoming wedding.
In the abortion debate, liberals rest their case on choice. But the unborn child is allowed no choice, even though it expresses its will to live to the extent that it can by struggling against the attack on its life. And the father of the child is excluded from choice, even though liberals see themselves as champions of sexual equality.
Irish liberalism’s prejudice – yes, prejudice – is particularly evident when it comes to religion: sometimes it is difficult to hear what claims to be objective comment above the sound of axes being ground. It wants religion reduced to the private domain, as if any public religious presence was necessarily evidence of quasi-establishment. In the name of separation of church and state, it wants to separate religion from social life. In its name, some want a single, secular, state education system, and never mind parental choice. All that while claiming to uphold diversity!
Post-Christian liberalism is based on an intellectually lazy assumption of the perfectibility of the person through unaided human effort. That is an act of faith for which there is no rational basis and much evidence to the contrary. Humanity is neither self-explanatory nor self-sufficient. This liberalism places its trust in education, legislation and administration. Legislation and administrative bureaucracies have multiplied, but without coming to grips with central issues of contemporary Western culture, such as the use and abuse of human freedom, and finding a moral basis for the exercise of that freedom. Liberalism is naïve about evil and humanity’s capacity for it, which – political correctness again – it chooses to call sickness. Contemporary liberalism tries to legislate in a moral vacuum, but that doesn’t work; law requires a moral basis. Natural law tradition has useful experience in such matters.
If the Christian faith dies in Ireland, liberalism will die along with it; their relationship is symbiotic. A savage supernaturalism, as found in some religious groups, could then come to be welcomed as a source of certainty in the face of moral drift and spiritual emptiness. How long would liberalism last then?
However, with dialogue between liberal and Christian thinkers, there could be a mutual enrichment. (Historically, if the Christian church had been more liberal, today’s liberalism would probably be more Christian.) For instance, liberalism is intensely individualistic, paying little dues to community. The Christian faith, with its focus on community, could be a corrective. And the Catholic church, reactionary by default, would benefit from an infusion of liberal thinking. Together they could make Ireland a better place.
Secularism, while philosophically distinct from atheism, in practice amounts to much the same thing. It poses as neutral, non-ideological, above factional strife, occupying the chair of objectivity. But that is disingenuous: secularism is an alternative ideology, no less a contestant in the struggle of ideas than, say, Christianity, atheism, communism, nationalism, fascism or others. It has a right to argue its case, as do other systems of ideas, but it goes further: it claims a quasi-Established position for itself as the rightful occupant of the seat of State, even while claiming to uphold pluralism. But a secular “theocracy” is no less likely to be fundamentalist, reductionist, and intolerant than any other. I recall being invited by a State-run radio station abroad to give an interview on the role of a university chaplain, provided I said nothing about religion, because that would violate the station’s secular charter, leaving it open to the charge of imposing religious values on the public. What a delicate plant is this secularism that needs such protection!
Consumer Ireland
The Celtic Tiger was our proud boast for about twelve years from the mid-nineties. Our model of social partnership was widely admired. We came to have the highest per capita GDP in the world after Japan. Unemployment dropped to record lows. We revelled in our prosperity, delighted with the building boom that re-shaped almost every city, town and village in the country. We thought we had found the magic formula of low taxes and high public spending. We defined ourselves as consumers. And then the bubble burst.
We had borrowed beyond our means, and spent as if nothing had to be repaid. We became crass and materialistic, with the arrogance of unexpected wealth. Visitors from abroad found us a changed people, and not for the better, our coarseness, profanity and bad manners a frequent subject of comment.
Our institutions were crumbling around us and we did little to stop it. The church especially seemed chronically unable to come to grips with its problems. Banks overcharged customers, underpaid interest, and borrowed and spent the country into a black hole of debt, which, even if it does not result in sovereign default, will burden the country for perhaps two generations. It has already resulted in unemployment close to 15%, while a thousand of our youngest and brightest emigrate weekly. The public are rightly angry that while bank profits were privatized, their losses were socialized; pillars of capitalism became overnight converts to socialism. Politicians let us down badly: they were in cahoots with property developers and builders, receiving hefty party and personal “donations,” lavish salaries, expenses and pensions, while ignoring repeated warnings from the European and Irish central banks that the economy was over-dependent on construction, and that property prices were inflated beyond their real value. In the culture of the free market and self-regulation, statutory regulation of financial services was toothless, when it was not simply absent. And we were having too much fun at the party to take any notice.
Where was the church, the former moral compass of the country in all this? Asleep on the job, self-absorbed.
Ireland the victim
I believe the identity Ireland has re-chosen for itself is that of victim: our problems are not our fault; someone else is to blame; we’re a special case and deserve sympathy from creditors and ratings agencies. In the past, we blamed the Brits – 800 years of colonial oppression. Now we blame the EU, ECB and IMF.
We blame, too, our country’s institutions, almost every one of which did indeed let us down shamefully. But we disown a personal role in institutions and their decisions. We talk about ‘the plain people of Ireland’ as if we were a race apart from those running our affairs, as if we were innocent, unknowing victims of the wrongdoing of others. There is something demeaning, self-belittling about this; it is the attitude of a child. The victim role is a subtle seducer: it lends itself to self-pity, to denial of responsibility, and to wallowing in helplessness. It helps no one, and greatly inhibits recovery.
Take some examples, firstly from the world of politics. In the general election of 2002, a candidate, described by the McCracken Tribunal as being ‘able to ignore, and indeed cynically evade, both the taxation and exchange control laws of the State with impunity,’ topped the poll. He has continued to do since, despite being severely criticized again by the Moriarty tribunal in 2011. Another TD, found by a jury to have colluded with tax evasion, was also re-elected. A candidate who was caught gun-running was elected. The late Jim Mitchell TD, who headed the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, which, promptly and at little cost, uncovered corruption among public officials, was voted out of office, while, in the same constituency, people gave more votes to a man arrested for involvement in an attempted kidnapping. We freely made those choices; they were our decisions; the politicians we chose reflected our values. The late Frank Cluskey TD said, à propos TD’s “clinics,” that of those who come to them, one-third ask the impossible, one-third ask the illegal, and one-third are simply looking for someone to talk to. Funny, but childish. And we wonder why no one takes us seriously.
Between 1999 and 2007, ordinary Irish men and women, through mortgages, hire purchase and credit cards, increased their level of indebtedness six-fold. We used the period of greatest prosperity in our history to plunge ourselves into debt. No one forced us; we made the choices.
Everyone who knows Ireland knows there is significant social welfare fraud, exaggerated or fabricated claims for insurance or compensation, bogus expatriate bank accounts, tax evasion, and perjury in the courts. There was fraud by farmers with “angel dust”, switching tags on cattle, moving animals from infected areas to clear areas, and with mad cow disease; there was the wrongdoing uncovered in the beef tribunal, and bogus claims for compensation by farmers who had caused the entry of foot and mouth disease into the country. The army spent tens of millions of euro meeting claims for deafness, including those whom a Department of Defence official described as not knowing they were deaf until they heard the jingle of euro. The legal profession has brought contempt on itself, seen, in the tribunals for example, as Messrs. Nod, Wink and Nudge raking in money, literally by the million. The public knows about opposing lawyers meeting on the golf course to prolong cases for more fees after the manner of Bleak House, about barristers going into court without their homework done, and then seeking adjournments which cost them nothing, while the client has to pay for their every court appearance. It does nothing for the credibility of the justice system when lawyers say that law is not about justice but about law, that the only things a client can be sure of in going to court are a decision and a bill. The much-maligned media have performed great service to the country, by, for example, pressuring the church to come clean on abuse when it did not want to do so, and keeping the spotlight of attention on political corruption. But they have a mentality of habitual and chronic negativity, hand in hand with a refusal to acknowledge their role in shaping attitudes. Media do more than report news; they shape it. And I can recall a journalist saying, ‘The task of a journalist is to win people’s trust – and then betray it.’ There is an issue of trust.
Who are the “they” responsible for all that, if not we? For the most part, we were not victims; we were active accomplices. The dividing line between good and evil is not off out there somewhere, pointed at by an accusing finger; it runs through every human heart. Irish people are deeply dispirited, not knowing where to look for leadership, tempted to despair or cynicism, but at the same time refusing to acknowledge their own large part in the problem. There is a moral void at the heart of Irish life. The trade unionist, Peter Cassells, said that Ireland’s morals are those of the cute hoor. A Garda chief superintendent with responsibility for traffic said the biggest problem in reducing road deaths is the public’s idea that law-breaking is alright – as long as you get away with it. An elderly priest, prominent in church life, told me that, in his days in the seminary in the Forties, the moral theology taught was that of the manuals, but the moral outlook inculcated by the seminary was not to get caught.
The besetting fault in the Irish character is lack of moral courage. We are moral cowards. We are afraid of each other. Far from being a land of rebels, we are conformists; we take refuge in the group, and in alcohol. In this present crisis, there is a huge challenge to Irish people to grow up; we seem to Continentals like children, alternately threatening to “burn” bond holders, and, in the next breath, pleading to be treated as a special case and given easier terms. That invites contempt.
We run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. We long for honesty in government and despair of ever getting it; but we also enjoy a bit of crookery on the side. Many on the dole also do “nixers”. Many receive social welfare benefits they are not entitled to. There is a substantial black economy which does not show up in any economic statistics, and pays no taxes, receiving the benefits of citizenship without acknowledging corresponding responsibilities. We moan about dishonesty in public life, sometimes demanding of politicians a standard of honesty we do not look for in ourselves; but, if we come face to face with a dishonest politician, we treat him as a charming rogue. There is a smell of rottenness about public attitudes; we don’t recognize a bottom line.
Alternatives?
Ireland does not have a civic culture, our litter and vandalism an illustration. We don’t do self-discipline well, but we accept imposed discipline: we discarded plastic bags with abandon, despite all appeals to civic spirit; but when we were made to pay for them, we stopped. If we have an excuse for misconduct we think we don’t need to find a remedy. Those in their middle and older years, the survivors of the Me generation of the Sixties, often show a childish, petulant self-will, unwilling to recognize any absolute but ‘I want….’
Some countries have a civic culture: in the USA, there is respect for law, the democratic process, and freedom of speech; tax-paying is observed as a civic responsibility. New Zealand, a largely secular society where I lived for a time, is just, hard-working, law-abiding, with a good community spirit, and intolerant of corruption. I remember visiting a public park in Wellington and finding there picnic tables, each equipped with a gas cylinder and a ring. No fee to pay; just use them. They had not been stolen, vandalized, or used in a drunken frenzy to smash someone’s head, one of those ‘I didn’t know what I was doing’ incidents, which, very likely, would have happened in Ireland. In Korea, university students leave gloves and helmets on their motor-bikes in the bike park in the morning, and find them there in the evening; “honour” ensures it.
So where does Ireland go in the process of developing a new identity? There are resources to draw on. Two examples come to mind: the Special Olympics in 2003 were, by every account, a success story that revealed great goodwill, generosity, capacity for work, and organizational ability among Irish people. The second is that of a farmer, in the bitter cold of last winter, on his own initiative and out of simple goodness, using his tractor to help stranded vehicles up a hill near his farm. That spirit can rescue this country.
Ireland’s middle and older generations have passed to the next two generations their unpaid gambling bills. Having made such a mess of things, perhaps they have forfeited the right to a say in the future. Maybe it is time to hear the voice of the younger generation.
I would like to see the incoming president, on taking office in November, invite young people to take part in an ongoing Forum on Ireland’s Future. Young people are unburdened by past history. They have ideas, energy, a healthy impatience, a sensitive nose for humbug, and – rarest of all gifts – enthusiasm. They will make mistakes, but, overall, they’ll get more right than wrong.
In the final analysis, a new vision of a future for Ireland, a new identity, will be the product, not of a forum, however helpful that might be, but the outcome of personal choices made daily and locally. To quote Richard Rohr OFM, ‘We don’t think our way into a new way of living; we live our way into a new way of thinking.’
Footnotes
1) Central Statistics Office, That was Then; This is Now, Dublin, 2000, p.60.
2) http://www.cso.ie/statistics/CrimeandJustice.htm