Sledge hammered or airbrushed – getting rid of ‘beautiful things’­

A few weeks ago, when Michael Longley, the poet, was conferred with the freedom of Belfast city, he commented, ‘Without the beautiful things our society will die’, explaining that the arts ­ especially in troubled times ­ must be kept at the heart of civic life.
When I read Longley’s words, I thought of the Isis militants in Iraq, who took a hammer to civilisation in the museum in Mosul, destroying in a matter of minutes priceless 3,000-year-old artworks. The graphic pictures on television, coming days after thousands of books at Mosul Public Library were destroyed, showed ‘the freedom-fighters’ using sledge-hammers and power drills to smash ancient artworks as they rampaged through the museum. In Longley’s words, getting rid of ‘beautiful things’­ and at a time when they were most needed.
We can’t point the finger, of course. W. B. Yeats wrote about a time in Irish history when
‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity’.
In crisis situations when emotions run high, decisions are made on the run that can pay undue regard to the implications for future generations.
I ask the question: could something of the same be happening now to religion in Irish society, albeit in a more subtle, oblique, almost nonchalant way?
Nothing as dramatic or direct as the actions of the Isis militants but a gradual, insistent airbrushing of religion out of Irish life.
You see it in the small things.
Soccer players from all over the world in the English Premiership casually bless themselves on entering the field of play or drop to their knees in prayer if they happen to score, and you wonder when was the last time a Gaelic footballer or hurler gave any public indication that they even believe in God, not to speak of the embarrassment of blessing themselves on the field of play.
You sense it in a national newspaper, dumbing down its standards to protect its commercial interests, running a feature on recent weddings, when reports on three ceremonies covered in a specific issue, laud the services of a humanist solemniser.
Or a national television service, with clear public service obligations, demonstrating an unapologetic imbalance, even bias not so much in content but in an underlying sneer about adherents of particular religious faiths.
Or ambitious politicians and journalists holding up a wet finger in the breeze and deciding that to gain media credibility they need to surf the emerging populist resentment against Catholicism by savaging the equivalent of a dead sheep.
Or the growing campaign to present Catholic schools as medieval centres of bigotry and mass indoctrination and secular schools as models of civilisation, good taste and modernity.
The creeping consensus in Irish society, often knee-jerk and unexamined, is that religion is at best foolish and at worse a kind of infection that we need to be inoculated against. And that if we could escape from the clutches of religion, a new more benign dawn would reveal a brave, new world of tolerance, respect and equanimity.
It’s nonsense, of course, though it’s virtually impossible in the present climate to argue against it. Religion, and more specifically Catholicism, are presented as oppressive and antediluvian, out of sync with modern life ­ a caricature which in truth Catholics themselves have often conspired to underline in our focus on control rather than on service, on the needs of the institution rather than the message of love Jesus preached.
It’s impossible too to argue for what should be obvious to any fair-minded person, the dividend that religion has delivered in Irish society ­ in the care of the poor, education, health, in social cohesion and so forth.
Even to hint at the fuller, deeper and richer personal life that religion represents and aspires to can reek of special pleading. And to refer to the challenge and comfort of a lived faith in a God of love and compassion is almost to speak a language that so many now either refuse to speak or don’t really understand. For many, Catholicism, its practices and its rituals, are now neatly ware-housed, out of sight and out of mind.
Part of the difficulty is that the Catholic Church (and Catholics) are still shell-shocked by the extraordinary turn-around in our fortunes in the space of a few decades, the social acceptance of values and standards at odds with traditional religion and the failures associated with the clerical child abuse scandals ­ seared, it would seem forever, into public consciousness.
We’ve lost our courage and our confidence and those who oppose us, even with fewer arguments and thinner portfolios, are given a clear, cheer-leading run by the media in the battle for the minds and hearts of Ireland. Peculiarly, we’re reluctant to engage with the arguments, even when there’s little substance to them. And even when levels of religious practice in Ireland are still, by European standards, exceptionally high.
There’s a case to be made that Ireland, despite our relative prosperity and individual achievements, is becoming for many a waste-land of despair: suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, drug abuse, anxiety, unhappiness, a pervasive sadness, a loss of self-worth, breakdown in its many forms and so on. It is as if something of the soul of Ireland is being hollowed out and there’s nothing of substance replacing it ­ apart from wanting more and giving less.
Catholics (and adherents of other faiths) need to find their bearings and voice in the present quicksand of Irish life, to present unapologetically the dividend of religion for individuals, family and society and to argue for the traditions of spirituality that will help to give meaning and purpose to our people.
Some of the ‘beautiful things’ Michael Longley talked about. When we dismiss them, we lose more than we know.