It is hard to believe that in a week that exposed the extent of the arrogance, entitlement and cronyism of official Ireland that some commentators still found an opening to lambast the Catholic Church. The discriminatory approach to First Communion, Baptism and Confirmation social celebrations in government guidelines naturally invited comparisons from a number of indignant bishops and many commentators who would normally not be known for cutting the Catholic Church any slack.
The Zappongate twists and turns are fairly familiar to most people at this point. In sum, Leo Varadkar and friends, finding themselves transgressing covid guidelines but not the actual law had to either round off a square peg or square off a hole in an attempt to clear themselves. They took what they considered the more politically astute course of bringing the more restrictive guidelines into sync with the law rather than the other way round. This put them on the right side of the argument or was meant to.
Naturally enough, bishops along with the hospitality industry felt unacceptably cheated and struck back strongly. Some sectors of the hospitality industry are now considering their legal options. Most people would say they have a legitimate grievance or at very least a point to argue. The Church, however, is not to get that indulgence without a push back from its die-hard enemies. The fact that many Catholics and a handful of bishops have pointed out the inconsistency and apparent anti-Catholic prejudice in government guidelines has brought some of the usual protagonists to the fore
Pretty smart off the blocks were the Association of Catholics Priests (ACP) who never shy from exploiting any loophole, however tight, to inflict damage on the institutional Church. They have always advocated levels of caution in the conduct of church services way ahead of what was required by NPHET or imposed on other sectors of society by the government. Now that the anomalies are less easy to ignore, the ACP is finding a parallel line of attack.
Communions and Confirmations, it has been pointed out, quite correctly, are more about the social than the sacramental dimension for the majority of families. Of course all of life’s celebrations, anniversaries, retirements, sport wins, birthdays and graduations have a social dimension. During the pandemic, most of us adapted our celebrations to whatever the rules were at a given point. Any one of these occasions could give rise to covid transmission and have done. Unless we continue to lock up our human existence completely in regulatory aspic, the virus will somehow manage to spread. Countries like New Zealand and Australia have proved that.
So because the social dimension of First Communion seems to be all that matters for many parents, the Church’s open gate policy naturally comes into question. If you are a member of the ACP where better to thrash it all out than on the national airwaves where you can be guaranteed a good clear, sympathetic run and no opposition. Something that a spokesperson for Catholic orthodoxy would be very unlikely to get.
The ACP pitch that families and parishes should be the providers of sacramental preparation rather than the schools is not a new argument. There can be few if any bishops or priests who have not already given the question much thought. In recent years, parishes, and it is something that has to happen at parish level. have been developing various approaches to actively involving parents as well as children and schools in the process of sacramental preparation. They have also looked at ways of making parents understand that First Communion is more than a cultural rite of passage, that it demands a commitment to faith and religious practice. Parishes who have made serious demands of parents as a condition for sacramental reception have often found, to their surprise, that there is a very real hunger for faith and meaning among people whose outward lives reflect little in the way of religious interest. So, challenging the status quo can be complicated. Fr Paddy Byrne of Abbeyleix was not asked by Ciara Kelly on Newstalk what sort of sacramental programmes he runs in his own parish. He did not mention what if any efforts he had made to introduce the reforms he was recommending. That would have been a very interesting question indeed.
Fr Paddy Byrne has form in voicing criticisms of church practice. Recently he took strong exception to the Vatican’s ban on blessing same sex couples’ unions. On this theme he was very happy for the Church do shelve its doctrinal purity to accommodate secularist ideas. Go with the culture, don’t resist it, embrace it seems to be his message where the sacrament of marriage is concerned. On the Communion question he is rightly exercised indeed but does he know how complicated it can be when parents are challenged about the authenticity of their faith lives? How difficult is it to divest Catholic schools when the parents are consulted in an individual case? This could have been a good discussion but when someone has an anti-church narrative, our media simply isn’t interested in probing the issue.
Writing in the Sunday Independent, UCD assistant professor of Geography, Julien Mercile, accused the Church of not being consistently pro-life because it is not using ‘its social reach to maximise vaccine rollout’. Julian Mercile would doubtless be the first to challenge the Church for not knowing its place in public life. Meddling outside its ecclesiastical sphere is usually a complete no-no. It’s not the first time the secular State and its defenders have tried to have it both ways in Church State relations. However, it is really extraordinary that anyone would ask the Church to tacitly endorse and promote a vaccine, any vaccine. The Church has no competence in medical matters. Neither of course does it have legitimacy to raise questions about the vaccine’s efficacy and safety. It is entitled to raise ethical concerns though would might have thought that any ethical concerns raised were answered when both Pope Francis the the Pope Emeritus Benedict have been happy to take the vaccine. To ask the Church to be complicit in promoting a drug that the manufacturers would not release until they were indemnified against any claims of harm by sovereign governments shows the cavalier attitude of some secularists like Mercile to the rights of those who do not share their ideology.
Par for the course really. The Church is as always in the cross-hairs of the world and a always struggling against some fifth column or other within its own ranks. There has never been any shortage of Fr Paddys and Julien Merciles. They come and they go unlike the institution they attack.