Increasing intolerance of religion in Irish public life is “an indication of an incipient totalitarianism that would obliterate the most fundamental freedom there is,” according to one of Ireland's leading commentators. Writing in the Irish Times, John Waters said that Irish culture “has decided that the declaration of religious conviction is always offensive.”
And he rejected the idea that religious believers could not assert that their religion had a unique claim on the truth.
Referring to a previous column in which he mentioned another author's belief that “Christianity is the only possibility that offers true meaning to reality,” he said that many of his respondents had expressed that they were offended on behalf of people of other religions.
In fact, Waters says, this supposed solidarity with those of other faiths was a front that would dissolve as soon as those members asserted their own truths as uniquely true.
“The Muslim or Buddhist is merely a rhetorical shield for use in a crusade to create conditions in which no religious beliefs will be tolerated at all,” Waters wrote.
Such sentiments are not really about “pluralism” or “tolerance,” Waters said, “but the banishment from the public arena of any form of absolute certitude or specificity about the total meaning of the mysteries that define us.”
And he pointed out that this view of religion “trips off the lips even of Government ministers who declare themselves democrats.”
This was evidence, he said, that this “potentially dangerous... misunderstanding has acquired the status of objective truth in our culture.”
Waters said, “If I were to write an article saying that quantitative easing offers the only hope of redemption for the economy, people might disagree but they would not question my right to make such an assertion or claim that, for example, it was offensive to followers of Moore McDowell. At worst, someone might outline an alternative proposal and offer reasons why mine was wrong-headed.”
“Yet, it has been rendered obvious in our culture that it is offensive to allow anyone to declare a lucid and total conviction about the religious meaning of reality. Why? Why should there be a suspension of freedom when the question is the biggest one there is?”
Such a trend, he said was not merely unreasonable “but deeply ominous, an indication of an incipient totalitarianism that would obliterate the most fundamental freedom there is.”
SIC: CIN/IE