(The Nationalist. This article was published together with State of the Nation as a single piece on 21 May 1999.)
Ireland’s institutions have taken a battering in recent years. Just think of the list.
The Catholic Church: with child sex abuse, often covered up and badly handled when exposed; cruelty, ignorance and neglect in industrial schools and orphanages under its control. From being the most trusted institution to being among the least.
The army: with deafness claims costing the country tens of millions of pounds.
The Gardaí: with blue ‘flu.
The country’s medical services: with the frequent threat of strikes by nurses, long delays in hospital waiting lists, and the scandal over hepatitis and the Blood Transfusion Service.
The banks: with evidence of customers overcharged, underpayment of interest, and large numbers of bogus expatriate accounts.
The farming community: with the cases of angel dust, switching ear tags on cattle, moving animals from infected areas to clear areas, and mad cow disease; and the wrongdoing uncovered in the beef tribunal.
Politicians and political parties: with payments from builders and developers, and friends who gave large sums of money for, it is said, no particular reason.
The criminal justice system: with a series of administrative blunders in the Department of Justice in recent years, with the public perception of the system as being slow, expensive, unfair and biased in favour of the criminal against the victim.
The legal profession: seen, especially in the tribunals, as Messrs. Nod, Wink and Nudge raking in money as fast as they can while having a good laugh at the public’s expense.
The list is not complete and readers can add their own experience to it.
So where do we go from here? The worst reaction would be that of cynicism; it is the bastard child of despair. It is a cancer, drawing vitality like a parasite out of the host that it depends on for life. Cynicism, negativity, and pessimism should not be flaunted as if they were evidence of wisdom, maturity and experience.
Instead, what about intellectual honesty, moral courage and dialogue? Some of the institutions mentioned above have come to grips with their problems in recent times and started putting their house in order. The Gardaí, for example, have become more professional: they honestly acknowledged that they were not doing well, they started getting their act together – and crime rates have fallen steadily.
Moral courage is needed, especially to challenge the evil in oneself. That’s far more demanding than outrage from the moral high ground. The dividing line between good and evil is not off out there somewhere in society, pointed at by an accusing finger; it runs through every human heart.
And dialogue: the willingness to listen, not only with the ears, but with the heart; to take the risk of trying to understand the other even if not to accept their position; the effort to present one’s own position clearly, articulately and intelligently.