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The Ferns report forces those Catholics who read it to pinch
themselves hard at least twice.
The first pinch is for the startling revelation that, in the words
of the report itself "bishops put the interests of the church
ahead of children". As I pointed out in an earlier article this
is not strictly true - because those children were a vital part of
the church. However, if we rewrite this sentence to read "bishops
put the clerical governing system of the church before children"
this verdict becomes unquestionable - and even more damning.
The second pinch is for the revelation that it is now to the secular
state, and secular society, we must look to realise key Catholic
values, such as the safety of children, the inviolability of the
family, the primacy of truth and the dignity of the unordained.
This second pinch needs to be a really hard one - to make sure we
stay awake and absorb all of the consequences. One of these
consequences is surely that we must seriously consider the
possibility that for lay Catholics - deprived of all direct
influence over their church's clerical governing system - the way
forward is to exploit the opportunities provided by secular society
for the realisation of our gifts and social vision as lay Catholic
Christians.
I don't know the religious affiliation of Judge Murphy and the other
members of the Ferns inquiry team. What I do know is that by acting
with diligence and integrity they have done more to vindicate some
key Christian and Catholic values than most of our bishops. In
particular, acting under an entirely secular remit, they have made
our church a safer place for our own Catholic children than it was
when our bishops had total and unquestioned control of it.
This raises a most serious question over the conventional wisdom
that secularism and Catholicism are incompatible. Two things now
seem clear instead. First, our church as currently organised makes
it very difficult, if not impossible, for Catholic bishops to behave
with complete integrity - and therefore to model Christ. Second,
Catholic lay people have more freedom to act creatively as
Christians in their role as citizens of a secular republic than they
do as members of their own church.
This second revelation will take time to sink in. When it does it
will make us realise that we are now in an entirely new era in the
history of the Irish church. Before Ferns (BF) we were taught to see
secularism as a threat to faith. After Ferns (AF) we must see less
of a threat than an opportunity in the secular world - to exercise
leadership in making our society a safer and happier and more
hopeful place for all children, and to rescue the reputation of our
church.
That is not to say that the old war between secularist intellectuals
and church leaders will come to an end overnight. The secularist
tendency to see religion as a threat to freedom will continue, and
so will the conservative Catholic clerical tendency to see
secularism as a threat to faith. But those secularists who accept
that the secular state does not automatically deliver a caring and
decent society, and needs to find its values wherever it can, and
those Catholics who believe in the timeless validity of Christian
values, can engage in a new and fruitful dialogue.
However, this possibility didn't begin in 2005. The conflict between
secularism and faith has been based from the beginning upon some
fundamental misconceptions - especially the failure to see that some
of secularism's enduring key values were from the beginning derived
from Europe's Christian heritage.
Throughout the world only three centuries ago the state's role was
still confined to keeping order internally and keeping external
threats at bay, by naked force. It wasn't until the 1700s that a new
generation of European thinkers conceived the possibility of
building a perfect society by uniting the power of the state with
the power of the rational human mind, empowered by Newtonian
science. These intellectuals, called in France the philosophes, were
the founders of modern secularism, because they saw Christian
clerical thought as both elitist and defeatist.
That is, they saw in the doctrines of original sin and Christian
salvation after death a pessimistic acceptance of an unjust world
order which placed a landowning social elite in permanent control of
the world. A legally privileged landed aristocracy dominated the
conservative political systems of Europe, while the younger brothers
of that aristocracy ran the established churches of Europe. This was
the 'Old Order' - the Ancien Regime - which needed overthrowing by a
rational secular revolution.
This was the beginning of the clash between secularism and religion
that still continues today. However, as John Paul II himself
remarked in 1980, the key values of the very first secular
revolution in France - liberty, equality and fraternity - were
essentially Christian values.
They were not seen as such in 1789 because the leaders of the
established churches of that era were themselves aristocrats who saw
their world as the best that was possible, given the sinfulness of
our species. Also, secular thinkers who found themselves opposed by
Christian clergy, saw Christianity as focused upon the next world
rather than upon improving this one. The very first intellectuals to
use the term 'secularism' were Englishmen who saw the Anglican
church as the conservative ally of the Tory politicians who opposed
social progress.
The ultimate fall from power of the old landowning classes, and the
decline in the political power of the churches, has made that
original quarrel obsolete. Once the churches became focused upon
issues like poverty and the education of the underclass they
effectively became part of the effort to equalise the benefits of
modern life - part of the original secularist revolution.
The quarrel continued largely because clergies resented the loss of
their role as the dominant thinkers of their societies, and because
the secular revolution moved on to espouse new causes like sexual
liberation, which have become increasingly problematic. But
classical liberals more concerned about economic injustice than the
sexual revolution, and Christian intellectuals focused upon social
justice rather than maintaining clerical control, have a huge amount
in common nowadays.
The Ferns report in Ireland should be a moment of epiphany for
Ireland's Catholic leaders - because it represents a moral victory
for the secular principle of achieving accountability by dividing up
the powers by which society is governed . It was a free media who
began this process by focusing a national spotlight upon victims of
clerical child sex abuse. It was an aroused public opinion that then
forced an elected government to set up the Ferns inquiry team. And
that team was composed of members of Ireland's secular
intelligentsia, including the judiciary. The beneficiaries of this
process are the abused children of Catholic families - the
disempowered members of the church that failed to deliver justice to
them through its own governing system. And that failure clearly had
to do with the lack of structures of downward accountability in the
church itself.
But even if Ireland's Catholic bishops learn nothing from these
events, the attitudes of Irish lay Catholics will be profoundly
affected. They have seen that basic Christian values are not a
monopoly of their clergy, and can be better implemented by secular
means.
Meanwhile across the Irish sea the leaders of Britain's 'New Labour'
secular establishment try to set in motion what they call the
'respect agenda' - an end to 'yobbism' and 'neighbours from hell',
to rampant school and workplace bullying, to teenagers spitting in
the faces of pensioners, to racial and religious insults.
Secularism, it seems, is now casting around for ways of reviving
basic community values and respect for the weak - to save us from
the appalling consequences of a complete breakdown in civil society.
We may well be closer to the same situation in Ireland than we would
wish, and 'equality of respect' is too close to 'equality of
dignity' for us Catholics to miss. The time has come to be fully
Catholic in the secular world, without seeking to restore the
unquestionable power of clergy.
It is time for Christian secularism - because secularism needs to
return to its original aspiration towards a truly just and peaceful
world, and because Christianity remains the greatest source of
inspiration, wisdom and consolation for all who aim at that goal.
(© Reality, March 2006)
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