A recently-resurfaced clip of Pope Leo XIV – then Bishop Robert Prevost – has been doing the rounds lately, in which he describes a physical attack he experienced during one of his trips to Ireland some years ago for no other reason than that he was identifiable as a priest.
Discussing the effects of the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, he said nowhere had he ever seen “such a radical and rapid change as we are experiencing in Ireland,” in terms of the way the Church was perceived in a country, a fact he attributed to the scandalous nature of the crimes committed.
“After the crisis, never in my life, anywhere in the world have I been physically attacked as I was in Ireland. Well, just for this [points at his clerical collar], for going out on the street – a man passes by, he looks at me: ‘You’re a priest’ and he starts attacking me. Fortunately, another Augustinian, who is twice as big as me, defended me,” then-Bishop Prevost said, adding that the “pain and anger” the man exuded was palpable.
Nevertheless, he concluded that whatever the man’s motivations, whether it was because he was a direct victim of abuse or whether he’d lost faith because of the abuse crisis, it was an “important factor” in the experience of the Church, and no less so in the Church in Peru, the country in which he was speaking at the time.
I have never met a Catholic that sought to downplay the severity of the abuse crisis. Not one. And rightfully so. While there has been, and is, legitimate debate about the number of priests and hierarchy involved in the abuse and ensuing coverups, I have never heard anyone take the line that whatever the numbers involved, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, or that it took place years ago, there’s been so much talk about it, people should move on.
No, Catholics have typically taken the ominous words of Christ seriously, that for those who led children astray “it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea”. This is true for everyone, but especially for priests and other religious, who know that as they make their vows, they’re choosing an unparalleled degree of association with Christ and his Church. The nature of the vocation is that their good works will “give glory to God,” while conversely, whatever evil they do will, for many, mar the image of the divine and make God that much harder to see in this world.
Despite all of that, I have never seen any concern, from anyone other than concerned Catholics and their limited supporters, about the levels of dangerous and unhinged rhetoric in Ireland towards the Church, and the potential that has to do serious harm to both the Church’s most visible representatives – priests – and its adherents.
Of course, it’s not just the abuse crisis that critics will point to when waxing lyrical on the evil of the Catholic Church, but to the mother and baby homes, to the industrial schools, to Savita Halappanavar, who surely died because of the lingering Catholic influence over the country’s then-restrictive abortion laws, to every gay person who’s ever been bullied in Ireland, to General Franco, to the Inquisition, to the crusades. And on, and on, and on.
As far as many in Ireland are concerned, few are the evils on this island or in its history that cannot, to some degree, be traced back to the Catholic Church.
With that groundwork established, the move to smear Catholic – but we can speak more broadly here of non-Catholic Christians, too – positions and opinions as dangerous makes all the sense in the world. After all, it was those values that brought about the hellscape that Ireland is still clawing its way out of, and it’s those who obstinately persist in those values that would drag the country back into that dark age.
While Bishop Prevost was quite right to observe that his aggressor’s motives were unknown, and are now unknowable, he was also correct to observe that while he could have been a victim of abuse, he could also have been simply one who had “lost faith” in the Church, or in Christianity more broadly. Neither of those potential motives is justification for an assault on a random priest in the street, or anyone for that matter, but, if we’re being honest, the former is a much better excuse than the latter.
And yet it is from those in the latter category that the majority of the verbal bile directed at Christians comes. I would be inclined, and indeed, have been inclined historically, not to take this so seriously, to chalk it up as a load of hot air, but if the last week has taught those who are in any way distant from the liberal-left end of the current political spectrum anything, it’s that a culture brought about by ugly words bears concrete, ugly fruits.
Charlie Kirk’s murder is an example of just such a fruit, and the reaction following it an example of just such ugly words. Not just in the US, but in Ireland, too, after the requisite lip-service was paid to the effect that political violence can’t be justified, a great many ‘respectable’ commentators turned their attention to decrying Kirk’s “bigoted” views on women, the LGBTQ+ community, and whoever else they felt had been wronged by the slain American.
Despite not having been a huge follower of Kirk’s personally, I knew enough about him to know that many of those views were informed by his Christian faith and that, what’s more, many of those views are shared by a not-insignificant number of Catholics and Christians in Ireland. And having seen and heard for the past week Catholic and Christian reactions to the spirit of indifference with which Kirk’s murder was received by so many Irish voices, I know that they’re more worried than ever before.
I’ve seen a couple of people come to the conclusion in recent days that the point of the leftist slogan “speech is violence” was never just to shut down speech they didn’t like, but ultimately was to lay the groundwork for a violent response to the speech they take issue with. I think that analysis is largely correct, and tells us much about the direction politics is taking, both in the US, and further afield.
When old footage of the Pope emerges in which he identifies Ireland as an outlier when it comes to the violence he faced on the basis of his existence as a priest, that’s to be taken seriously. When it comes at the same time as a broader cultural shift that’s seeing violent rhetoric transitioning into actual violence, that’s to be taken even more seriously.