If Mr. Oddie, as an Englishman, can speak so authoritatively about the Irish attitude toward their faith, perhaps I, as an American, may express an opinion on my own countryman’s view on that subject—that view with which Oddie takes such umbrage. Less courageous than George Weigel, I do recognize that in many Irish un-smiling eyes, any American’s view serves only to prime the anti-American pump—unless, of course, that view flatters the Irish self-image. Historically, it has. No country, except Ireland itself, has so loved Ireland and the Irish as America.
Along with suffering, oppression also provides self-disguise. Only when oppression is removed do we see its object as it really is. Until then the oppressed has only the universal guise of victimhood and evokes only sympathy in onlookers; this is true of individual persons as well as whole nations and cultures. Ireland is not just free now of historic English oppression; it is also naked. Now the world may see—not a nation of martyrs clinging in almost super-human fidelity to their faith—but Ireland.
George Weigel’s term “epicenter” (of European anti-Catholicism), to which Oddie objects so virulently, may be hyperbolic, but that’s not to say it’s inaccurate. Moreover, his analysis, excerpted by Oddie for use as a target, seems quite astute—as Weigel usually is.
What seems at play here (in the anonymous pundit’s reaction that Oddie quotes at length to reinforce his own judgment) is another manifestation of unintended self-revelation. Were there not some truth in Weigel’s remarks, why would there be such a fit of angry reaction? Perhaps because it can be very upsetting “to see ourselves as others see us.” I know that some Irish ire somewhere might jump on that sentence to point out that the poet was not Irish. That’s just tiresome, like Oddie’s condemnation of Weigel for including Quebec in his litany of formerly-Catholic-now-anti-Catholic “countries.” (How can we take seriously anything this ignorant American says? He doesn’t even know that Quebec is not a country.) But that’s the nature of that rather childish reactionary anger that arises from exposure. Any weapon at hand will do—even irrelevancy.
There is a place for compassion toward the crisis in Ireland’s church now, as is evident in Weigel’s remarks. No anger is more justified than that provoked by a betrayal of trust, especially the trust of the innocent, the trust of children. Ireland is not alone, however, in this experience. We’ve had our own horror show as well, just like other western countries. But faithful Catholics can distinguish between the Church and some evil bishops or priests. When the scandal broke here, American media expressed surprise that attendance at Mass went up—not down. Though the aggressive secularists’ agenda tried to use the wound to the Church as a cause of death, the strategy didn’t work.
But by all accounts in both American and European news media, it’s working very well in Ireland. Perhaps Irish “faith” was not that faithful in the first place. (See Joseph Pearce’s earlier post on “The Two Irelands”.) Perhaps it’s time for the Irish to look in the mirror rather than point fingers at foreigners. That old habit doesn’t work any more.
Like most Americans, I always loved Ireland, until the past couple of decades (well before the scandal broke there) when it became apparent that Ireland’s own self-love had passed the point where any love other than their own mattered. Now I sometimes feel like asking, What have you done with that Lady who kept you sane and whole in the darkness of your suffering, the Lady who saved you when the storms of protestant hatred swept through England and Europe? When millions of souls were lost, it was she who saved yours. What have you done with her now? Now that you no longer need her, have you thrown her in the waste bin? Who has betrayed whom?
The trouble with Ireland, as with the entire world, is directly the result of the failure of the Catholic Church to teach and to govern. We have been saddled with a long (and I mean, long) succession of weak, vacillating Popes who have refused to deal with problems in the Church, who have frittered away centuries of accrued respect with their stupid Vatican 2 and their disastrous liberalizations of all things Catholic, their ignoring or trashing of traditions, etc. The ultimate blame for Catholics in ireland as anywhere lies at the feet of the Vatican.
When the Church does nothing to discipline wayward Bishops, so-called “Catholic colleges, bad priests and nuns, speaks in ambiguities about the truths of the Faith, kowtows in abject fear to world opinion – especially Jewish opinion (who would have thought that Abe Foxman now has veto power over the prayers of the Mass?), when all this happens before our eyes we can then understand why Catholics are losing their faith by the thousands, nay, by the hundreds of thousands.
With an “Ordinary Form” that does nothing but produce Mass-going Protestantrs, what do you expect is going to happen?
I don’t disagree with your general thesis in the least, Dan, but I have to add the following:
A friend pointed out to me that my last paragraph is unduly hurtful. Indeed, it is, but those among the Irish who actually love the Church may see it as at least as helpful as it is hurtful.
When truth has revealed such evil, it isn’t a wise response to direct one’s anger toward the truth, and still less, toward those who speak it. It was George Weigel who identified the scandal here as a “crisis of faith.” He was right. But everywhere that same scandal has erupted (not just here) what has been revealed is that same crisis of faith; Ireland is not exceptional, no matter how “Catholic” it calls itself. It is NOT a problem merely of “governance,” as Oddie claims. In fact, it is that obsession with governance that actually produced such poor governance in the first place: an over-riding concern for smooth administration, for public relations—the mere appearance of things, for “practical” avoidance of criminal liability, etc. A far better question is: What made such considerations so paramount that evil was tolerated? The answer is not a want of governance, but a want of faith.
No band-aid changes in governance will heal the crisis there any more than it will anywhere else. We must go back and find the faith we lost when we became so preoccupied with other things, unimportant things. Retrieve it from the dustbin, from the back shelf of the closet—wherever it is we left it. Priests and bishops are produced from the laity; they don’t materialize out of thin air. Only more faithful laity can produce more faithful priests and bishops.
During the scandal here, a weeping parishioner said to me in the parking lot after Mass one day, “The Church has forgiven my sins for fifty years. I can forgive the Church now.” As trite, as small and insignificant as it sounds, it’s a good place to start.