It’s always hard to go against the grain.
In 1992, Sinéad O’Connor ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in protest at clerical sex abuse.
She was derided by many, some of whom are certainly falling over their feet to praise her now.
What she did at that time was radical.
Two very different stories over the last fortnight involving Irish clerics made me consider Sinéad’s gesture, and whether things have changed since 1992 both in terms of the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s response to clerical sex abuse and how Catholicism is portrayed more broadly today.
Not much has changed in terms of the Catholic Church’s attitude to the sex abuse scandals if the case of Kenneth Grace is anything to go by.
Mr Grace is suing for damages arising from the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a now-retired member of the Christian Brothers.
Over the last four years, the order has reportedly put every obstacle in Mr Grace’s way, including forcing him to sue every Christian Brother rather than nominating the current provincial leader of the order. His claim is denied and there are 120 defendants in the case.
Mr Grace’s lawyers have accused the order of pursuing “a despicable agenda”.
The other story recently in the (note they have the cultural confidence to spotlight a priest) lionized an Irish priest, Fr Dermot Doran.
Dermot Doran, a Meath man who died in May, was a Spiritan.
He was described as “the linchpin of one of the largest civilian humanitarian efforts in history” bringing 60,000 tons of aid to southeastern Nigeria. At the time Father Doran was reportedly one of 1, 000 priests and nuns, mainly Irish, who worked in the area.
Every day in Ireland, Catholic social organisations, priests and nuns shore up the failures of the State. It’s an inconvenient and unfashionable truth because Catholic bashing has replaced a former damaging deference to the hierarchy.
In part, this can be attributed to growing secularization.
But more particularly to the sex abuse scandals and the cover-ups by the Church which have shone a deeply unflattering light on the hierarchy. It was inevitable that disillusionment with Catholicism would enter the mainstream narrative.
Anti-Catholicism now often comes from secular ex-Catholics and many of them are part of my generation.
One thing that marks them out is the alacrity with which they tell you that they’re ex-Catholics.
You don’t find ex-Protestants busting a gut to tell you about their departure from the Church.
To be fair, a lot of my generation was made to go to Mass and all that jazz. They had to toe the line, so now they feel it’s pretty radical to be secular.
But scratch the surface and there’s something else going on too.
A Catholic identity is unacceptable now. If you express any interest in Catholicism even simply as a philosophy you are often pegged as a simpleton, a right-wing conservative, or a hick.
Many ex-Catholics appear to think that they can establish their intellectual bona fides, signal that they’re progressive people of metropolitan tastes by bashing Catholicism and all Catholics.
This lazy conformism often tips over into a thinly disguised sectarianism that has little to do with the searing social criticism displayed by Sinéad O’Connor.
It’s arguably a lot to do with what Janesh Ganesh termed ‘the vibes theory of politics’ in last Saturday’s . Most people, he wrote, “do not work out what they think” they align themselves with a “flock” rather than parse “each issue on its own terms”.
Meanwhile, leaving aside the bottom-up radicalism of Helder Camara and others in the early 1970s in South America, there are plenty of progressive priests, nuns, and brothers plugging away at home.Recently, Piaras Mac Éinrí, a lecturer in migration studies at University of Cork, co-founder of Irish immigrant support centre Nasc, and a former diplomat, told me how the nuns he has encountered are currently among some of the most impressive, most forward-thinking people supporting the migrant community in Ireland.
Sr Stan is a pioneer. A member of the congregation of Religious Sisters of Charity, she established the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) an independent national organisation working to promote the rights of immigrants through information, advocacy, and legal aid. She had spent a life battling social exclusion.
Fr Peter McVerry established The Peter McVerry Trust, Ireland’s largest provider of Housing First services.
Since 2020, the charity has been responsible for 61% of the services delivered under the National Housing First Implementation Plan.
Brother Kevin, formerly of the Capuchin Centre in Smithfield, has been described as ‘a living saint’. A West Cork man, he retired last year after five decades in Dublin serving meals and giving company and compassion to those who badly needed it in Smithfield and weren’t going to get it anywhere else.
And yet, morally speaking the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a busted flush.
Kenneth Grace’s case says it all. It has revictimized Mr Grace, compounding the wrong. It also has arguably sullied those who have devoted their lives to the deprived, the excluded, those in need of a meal, education, shelter or help and who live their vocations daily in the Catholic spirit.
Because that is the thing about faith, it is beyond reason. And faith serves a purpose for so many at different times in their life, perhaps most especially at times of deep trouble.
Sinéad O’Connor understood this, exploring religion at different times in her life. She, like many others, was searching for something.
Despite the hierarchy’s complete lack of credibility, Catholicism is not dead. It lives on in the lives of many ordinary people often in a piecemeal, less-than-perfect way.
And it endures in the lives of many priests and nuns, their positive legacy, and their works.
People like Fr Doran. Sr Stan, Fr McVerry, and Br Kevin will be remembered by so many for having cut through ideology and attended to the suffering and needs of the living.
Sinéad O’Connor was spot on about the Church in 1992.
The critique still holds.
She will be remembered for going against the grain but getting in on the act when “the vibes” are right can never be radical.
Tá sí imithe ar shlí na fírinne.