When Virgin Media’s Tonight Show asked me to go on and discuss the late Pope’s legacy I was a little conflicted. I have mixed feelings about the late Pope, viewing him as both welcoming and divisive and I always have decidedly mixed feelings about going on the Telly box. In the end I said yes, what the heck, let’s do it, because there should be at least some representation in the Irish media from people like me who are pretty Orthodox, if entirely imperfect, Catholics.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition said someone once. Well, that’s exactly what I got.
What can you say about Irish political TV. On a previous blog on my substack I explained how the BBC was far superior than RTE and got some pushback. The BBC was biased, my mainly UK-based readers said. Well that is true. But Britons convinced that the BBC is some sort of biased monstrosity really do need me – or anyone really – to introduce them to Irish media, where even the pretence of balance has been binned.
I have done a lot of media in my time – BBC Question Time, Any Questions, the Today programme, ITV, Channel 4 news, BBC Radio Kent and even BBC radio Lancashire. The local radio is what I like the most. Sure, I have felt outnumbered now and again but never I have been in a four on one situation. That’s what happened last night.
The alarm bell went off the minute I entered the studio and noticed that the presenter Kieran Cuddihy was not wearing a tie. What’s going on here I thought. The time was ticking by and I thought surely some runner would appear and hand the man a tie. Nothing. I’m not sure I can get through this if he is going to remain tie-less. In the end this was the least of my worries.
To make matters worse the Jesuit priest ‘Gerry’ was sans collar. So the Jesuits have gone “Father Trendy” with the casual look. I was getting triggered all over the place, and the show hadn’t even started yet. The female theologian, on the panel, Gina was on the change-the-church train. So, it turned out, was everyone else.
Alison O’Connor, a very experienced journalist on the left who is often on telly blaming anything not left wing on the far right, was to my left. And so, the cameras started rolling, and off we went. Gerry and Gina said their bit, which was basically to worry that Pope Francis hadn’t gone far enough on the old women Priests and being nicer to the gay people and all that stuff. Alison’s worry was that we were all on the slow change to nowhere, most especially when it came to the women Priests. She was particularly upset – baffled even – that I expressed no desire to become a Priestess myself.
Indeed women priests became not just the hot topic, but the only topic. They all seemed to want women priests. I say all, because this included our tie-less presenter, who didn’t seem to think that this was a discussion he was moderating, but instead a thoughtcrime that he was prosecuting. There was no pretence here at all of objectivity or fairness or an even discussion. Why didn’t I want a woman priest, I was asked. I like my church the way it is, I said. And if we had women priests we’d end up with left-wing priests and I could do without that. This seemed to trigger them.
I didn’t say this but the problem with women priests is that we end up with women like The Marys (former Irish President’s Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson) and Alison O’Connor and that would be my Sunday mass ruined. When Alison really got going on the women priest thing – I told her, reasonably enough I think, that she could become a priest in the Church of Ireland. Or perhaps try liberal Judaism where she could become a Rabbi. I’d pay good money to see Alison O’Connor become a Rabbi. She’d do well reading the Torah. (And there is the added bonus that I would hear from her a lot less.)
But no: Becoming a woman Priest in some other religion wasn’t quite enough. They will settle for nothing less than woman Catholic Priests, and, while we’re at it, the complete re-positioning of the Church’s views on essentially the entire gamut of social and sexual thinking.
On we marched to the break, as I sat there still hoping the presenter might take a tie out of his pocket, but to no avail. Team woman-Priest again kicked things off. Reform, reform, reform. Gerry (that’s Father Gerry) got going on diversity and image and optics. Crikey I thought, we are talking about optics now. Gerry’s a spin doctor concerned about the image of the church. Maybe that’s why he took the collar off.
But, I wondered, even if the Church was more diverse, in accordance with the preferences of the tie-less and collar-less ones, what would be the point?
It’s all tokenism. Gina started going on about sport and I was sure we were going to start talking about women’s football. I’m in the wrong studio, I thought.
The presenter came to me one last time. Do I want women priests? No. Do I want to see more women in the first few rows at the funeral? No. The church needs to get back into the business of saving souls, I said. It should return to its job of getting more souls on the slow train to heaven. I just don’t think women’ priests are a big issue in the pews. I could be wrong, but that’s my view.
They weren’t happy. The presenter seemed to get triggered over the fact that I had no big hope to see women sitting in the first few rows of the Pope’s funeral. Optics in other words. Women aren’t welcome. Yes they are, no they are not. Things were getting heated, and at this stage it was just as well the young fella wasn’t wearing a tie, as I would have been tempted to strangle him with it.
Which is it, anyway? Do they want more women in the front row? Do they want more women Priests? Will these people actually settle for anything less than Archbishop Mary McAleese personally conducting the Papal Reqium mass in a rainbow-cassock while giving a sermon about Trans Rights? (No, my friends, is the answer. No, they will not).
We went to an ad. There was a chill wind blowing through the studio at this stage. Can I be doing with this I thought. We ended with teachers. Give them more money I said. They (the teachers) didn’t seem to want this which I thought was odd. That was it.
If I die, and am cast into purgatory, I shall not be surprised. For I have already seen it, and it is marked Studio 1, Tonight Show.