Will we have to wait as long as Galileo before Rome finally relents?
This time 10 years ago I was asked on to a special extended Christmas edition of Vincent Browne’s radio show. We broadcast from a pub off Merrion Square in Dublin and there was a panel of perhaps 20 that night. Child sex abuse came up as a topic, not least because Eamonn McCann, another panellist, had just published his book, Dear God.
As usual on these occasions, I tried to avoid the host’s eye by staring at the table. A bit of me thinks, there but by the grace of God go the other denominations. But another part of me thinks the problem is systemic in the Catholic Church because priestly celibacy is unnatural.
The discussion, without the benefit of what we have learned over the past decade, was somewhat guarded and had begun to flag when Vincent chimed up: “I’ve just looked around and noticed that there is only one person on this panel who isn’t a Catholic and he has kept very quiet. Steven, what are your thoughts?”
I really hadn’t wanted to be drawn in but I gulped and blurted out: “All I want to know is: does the Catholic priesthood attract perverts, or does it turn them into perverts?” It was a slightly blunt way of expressing my feelings — but only slightly.
Well, you can imagine the reaction. Back then Brendan Smyth was seen as a bad apple. I distinctly recall minister Dick Roche at the other end of the table from me roaring: “How dare Steven King come down here and say these things about our church?”
I was tempted to remind him that the “special position” of the Catholic Church had been deleted from the constitution years ago but couldn’t get a word in edgeways as condemnation rained down on me.
Only Eamonn McCann — not usually an ideological soulmate — stuck up for me: “Leave Steven King alone. He has just dared to say what everyone out there thinks.”
Ten years on, we still don’t have an answer to my question, though. The church hierarchy ritually apologises until it is blue in the face but never faces up to why such widescale abuse took place in the first place.
What process is there to check out the tiny number who go into the seminaries these days? Moreover, now that married Anglicans who decide to switch sides can become Catholic priests, why isn’t the whole issue of celibacy up for debate in Rome? Will we have to wait 360 years, as Galileo did, before the church admits it might have got this issue wrong? If marriage was good enough for Jesus’s disciples, surely it’s good enough for a humble PP.
That was a necessary diversion from what I had intended to write about, namely the coming into force yesterday of the Lisbon Treaty. Much has been written, mainly of a critical nature, about the appointment of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn (MGQ), forgetting how much European experience she has and how capably she handled some very sensitive security issues in the early stages of the peace process. Yes, she is Fianna Fáil but why did anyone imagine the Taoiseach was anything but tribal?
Because most people in the EU still have more feeling for their own country than they do for the wider community, each of the 27 governments has to argue it did fantastically well in the share-out of commissioners’ briefs, even when their man or woman lands a complete non-job. But in MGQ’s case, she really has landed a plum portfolio.
The speculation had been that she would get Budgets – important, but only to the Eurocrat class. The Research job might sound dull but now that it includes responsibility for innovation, it has become rather sought after. Was it a tribute to her or to the Government, or payback for the belated Yes vote? Take your pick.
In every other respect, though, the new commission counts as a massive disappointment. The agony of Lisbon was for what, precisely? We were told it was all about enabling Europe to punch its weight around the world. Instead, it succeeded in shooting itself in the right foot by picking a colourless self-confessed federalist as its ‘President’ and then shooting itself in the left by picking an almost complete nobody as its ‘Foreign Minister’.
I say “almost” because Catherine Ashton might have painfully little foreign policy experience but she does have one minor claim to fame — as British CND’s erstwhile treasurer. CND had noble aims, but don’t pretend it wasn’t substantially funded by the Soviets. Presumably, the noble baroness knew as much. Next time Moscow feels like swatting one of the weaker democratic countries in its “near abroad”, which side will she instinctively be on?
Her appointment came at a very high price for her champion, Gordon Brown. She was, in fact, only his third or fourth choice for the job, having been unable to convince his fellow socialists that Tony Blair was one of them. The fact that there were dozens of better qualified people for the job didn’t matter: Brown had to save some face, even if it meant losing the policy battle on financial regulation.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. For all the grand titles — of which The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy is the grandest — Europe doesn’t have a real foreign policy because there is no collective European view and little will to project European power around the world either.
Even the idea of extending Europe’s blessings to fellow-Europeans to the east and south encounters growing resistance. When the going gets tough — in the Balkans, in Afghanistan — everyone still looks to Washington to give a lead.
SADLY, the EU has chosen to make itself a baroque irrelevance, a continent of glittering palaces and generous welfare benefits which lacks the basic survival instinct. Even on the economic front, where the union has a more creditable record, protectionists and regulation junkies have landed all the prime posts in the new commission. The one woman with a keen impulse for free markets and consumers’ rights in the last commission, Neelie Kroes from The Netherlands, has been shoved aside.
But should we really have expected anything else? People like Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton only emerge because anyone with any real talent falls foul of objections from one leader or another.
Instead, inoffensiveness, inexperience, nationality, party background and gender — in fact, anything apart from ability — are the criteria by which candidates are judged. This whole sordid process takes place free of any public scrutiny.
It is a behind-closed-doors sham designed to disguise the reality that while all states are equal, some are more equal than others. The result is a caste of bland technocrats — nobodies and unaccountable nobodies at that.
It’s lowest common denominator politics at its worst. Against that backdrop, can Brian Cowen really be blamed for choosing a fellow Soldier of Destiny? When in Europe, do as the Europeans do, right?
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