It seems like something out of history, the story of Eileen Flynn, who died this week at the age of 53.She was the unwed teacher who, in 1982, was fired by the Holy Faith sisters after she had a baby.
Couldn't happen now, we tell each other. Times have changed.
We're right. And we're wrong.
Times have changed beyond belief.
But a version of the Eileen Flynn case could -- and probably will -- happen in the Ireland of the 21st century.
The case feels like distant history because it evokes an Ireland where single pregnancy was a source of shame. In fact, by the time Eileen went to court to defend her employment rights, that shame culture was in full retreat. Instead of bundling pregnant daughters onto the boat for England to have their babies in secret and give them up for adoption, parents -- and their pregnant daughters -- were beginning to realise they had other options.
The situation was a little like a comedy gig. The job of a really good stand-up comedian is to find the thing everybody does but believes they're unique in doing and make them laugh at it. There's relief in the laughter -- and in the realisation that you're not on your own. Much the same happened nationally, in the 1970s and 1980s, about single pregnancy.
People who would have felt their social status was destroyed, just a decade earlier, by the revelation of an unwed pregnancy in their family, found that they weren't unique. You could, in fact, survive this reality.
Acknowledgement
Each of us knows parents from that time who came through the cataclysm of facing up to a daughter's pregnancy and became better people through making the decision to acknowledge it and publicly support her. Better, and less isolated people, because more people were doing it.
Today, single pregnancy is a fact of life and we expect teachers, in common with every other profession, to live with each other without benefit of clergy. So much so that if anyone talks of "living in sin," the reference is ironic.
Most people, at the time of the Eileen Flynn case, could not understand how a famously liberal and progressive judge could have ruled against her. They misunderstood the judgement, the reason the Holy Faith congregation took the case against her -- and the factor which may lead to a version of it happening again in the future.
The judge vindicated the right of a religious order providing specifically Catholic education in a Catholic ethos, to remove a teacher whose lifestyle did not support that ethos.
The nuns didn't want rid of Eileen because she'd had a baby. They just didn't believe they could credibly promulgate explicit Catholic values like chastity and no sex before marriage, if all the pupils knew that one of their teachers was openly living a life that contradicted that.
In an Ireland increasingly sceptical, not just about those values, but about the credibility of a Church troubled by clerical child sex abuse to preach and protect those values, the Eileen Flynn case was seen as nuns punishing a sexually active women and ignoring the fact that she was a good teacher.
Issues
Nobody heard what the nuns were trying to say, which was: "We're a Catholic school, therefore our teachers should live Catholic lives."
Transpose the issue to Islam, and it makes immediate sense. Nobody would expect a Muslim school to employ a female teacher who (a) didn't cover her head in public, (b) drank alcohol,(c) went around with a man to whom she wasn't married.
The issue of whether people who believe in a particular religion should be entitled to have their children educated in a school which demonstrates that religion in every aspect of its operation has not gone away.
Which is why a version of the Eileen Flynn case may happen again.
Even in these changed times. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Sotto Voce
(Source: EH)