Sarah Harte: The Catholic Church can still act as a lifeboat to the disenchanted

The international image of the Roman Catholic Church remains one of a powerful, authoritarian, conservative, patriarchal, wealthy, and corrupt organisation that has presided over systematic sexual abuse, covered it up and sought to avoid paying for redress.

The international image of the Roman Catholic Church remains one of a powerful, authoritarian, conservative, patriarchal, wealthy and corrupt organisation that has presided over systematic sexual abuse, covered it up and sought to avoid paying for redress.

Sally Rooney has a new book out. The Church, whose attendance is way down, might do well to read Rooney’s novels where the flame of Catholic religious curiosity flickers strongly in the millennial characters. In some ways, she reminds me of a contemporary Graham Greene preoccupied with men and women’s inner struggle and search for meaning. Both have entertained Marxism, criticised American foreign policy, and recognise the pull of questions that are larger than us.

Reading Rooney’s latest offering Intermezzo, it strikes me that there might be an opportunity for the Church to proselytise to a new generation of young people among the Church of Rooney fans. Her characters flirt with Catholicism or explore their faith while essentially setting into the supposedly protective enclave of traditional heteronormative relationships (older women who have walked the walk may have a different view). There’s even a strong element of gender roles with a side-serving of elective sexual submission from females. Men get to be dominant, and women get to be women. Sound familiar? Atomised and fragmented family structures have long been a preoccupation of the Church.

With dropping vocations and a lack of bums on seats there are worse ideas. 

Where the Catholic Church stands in the public square is complicated. We have a schizophrenic relationship with Catholicism

It was once brave to stand up against the Church because when the institution poked its nose into every corner of Irish society the consequences could be severe. Now critiquing Catholicism is not standing outside the zeitgeist, in some sort of anti-establishment iconoclasm, it is the zeitgeist unless Rooney changes the zeitgeist, and I wouldn’t put it past her.

Yet, the international image of the Roman Catholic Church remains one of a powerful, authoritarian, conservative, patriarchal, wealthy and corrupt organisation that has presided over systematic sexual abuse, covered it up and, where possible, sought to avoid paying for redress for what Pope Francis referred to as “atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons.” 

Sadly, there is a strong evidence-based basis for this view. To take one current example, although the Department of Children appointed a religious body negotiator to encourage orders to contribute to the mother and baby home redress scheme, this has resulted in only one out of six religious orders offering compensation with the state paying out €800,000.

Now with the issue of redress for those affected by historical child sexual abuse looming with costs potentially set to run into the billions, the question of who will pay for this redress looms large.

Taoiseach Simon Harris said recently that the Church can no longer be “let off the hook” when it comes to redress for survivors. However, submissive governments have, if not facilitated religious power, then limited their liability. This goes right back to 2002 when former Fianna Fáil  TD for Dublin Northeast Michael Woods capped the religious orders' liability in redress payments with the State picking up the tab for the over €1.3bn cost of a child abuse compensation scheme. Many politicians, including former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, later said that they stood by the flawed deal.

We need to introduce legislation so that the state can compel the church to contribute to the redress scheme with no indemnity given by the state which would once more leave the taxpayer open to unlimited exposure. It should no longer be about encouragement to pay their moral debts but clear-cut compulsion

It is far from clear how many Irish people, and men in particular, were abused in our schools. I recently met a man in his seventies and struck up an interesting conversation with him and his wife while waiting for a flight. We spoke about the scoping inquiry led by Mary O’Toole which received 2,395 allegations of historical sexual abuse involving 884 alleged abusers in 308 schools across 22 counties, and which points to systematic sexual abuse.

He had attended a Christian Brothers school in rural Ireland and initially said there had been no sexual abuse in his school. However, when the conversation developed, he revealed that one priest had openly fondled (his word) boys while in class. That behaviour was so normalised that it didn’t qualify in his mind for being described as sexual abuse. The strong suspicion is that what the scoping inquiry has thrown up is the tip of the iceberg.

And yet despite everything that went on in relation to child abuse we continue to turn to the church at key moments in life, like birth, marriage and death because at some fundamental level, people recognise the element of community that the church provides 

At some fundamental level, people recognise that truth on an emotional level. We retain our Irish cultural Catholic heritage in part because sometimes we need to lean on it.

This realisation crystallised for me on a personal level a decade ago at an exceptionally sad funeral of a beloved young man who had taken his own life. The level of emotion in the graveyard affected everyone, including grown men who were crying. The assumption must be that many people in that graveyard were lapsed Catholics, but the priest led us in the rosary. We intoned the prayers bound together by some instinct. The murmuration served to still the slight hysteria. Shades of a foxhole conversion you might say, but I believe it arose from some deeper human need to understand.

There are many progressive things about this country as we freed ourselves of the more restrictive aspects of Catholicism, but we live in ‘a property, not people’ Ireland because as Catholicism faded capitalism triumphed and filled the vacuum. With the sort of obscene ‘companies, not countries’ motto espoused by tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg who are carving up the world’s wealth for themselves.

As the wealth gap grows social injustices abound including around the issue of housing with modern-day evictions now a feature of Irish life. It is younger generations who have suffered disproportionately. Hence, debatably there’s a readily exploitable thirst for economic and social justice.

For other reasons too, the cultural conditions could be ripe for the Church to capitalise on a hunger in a younger Western generation for meaning and belonging in a porn-saturated, social media-addled late-stage capitalist world that feels increasingly fragmented. I’m thinking of the Zoomers here and the generation below who, if studies are to be believed, long for community and the solidarity it brings if not explicitly a sense of moral purpose.

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As Father Iggy O’Donovan, a member of the Augustinian order with a suitably cool name, said on The Hard Shoulder last week: “The Lord can be served by those who have no overt religious motivations.” 

The same man has a remarkably practical take on Catholicism which includes the cheering notion that there’s a seat on the lifeboat for everyone including for the hangers-on.

If there was any innovative thinking in the current church, they would buck up and construct a leaner more responsive church. Pay for the historical abuse rather than wait to be compelled, modernise, involve women in the church, and rid itself of its narrow, primitive and patriarchal view of women, offering people a stronger sense of not only spirituality but a Catholicism based around community. Fat chance you imagine on current evidence. They should listen to Father Iggy.