Brendan O’ReganThe culture wars were firing on several fronts last week, and it started early.
In the ‘gay cake’ controversy the Ashers bakery decision was announced on Monday of last week in Belfast. The appeal by the McArthur family, owners of Ashers, was rejected by the Court of Appeal, which led to quite a bit of negative comment even from those who would normally be supportive of gay rights campaigns.
On Tuesday morning’s It Says in the Papers Fiona Kelly reported on two articles critical of the judgement by Fionola Merideth (Irish Times) and Suzanne Breen (Irish Independent).
Kelly highlighted the Times headline: ‘If you care about liberty you should be appalled by this decision’.
That evening, on The Last Word (Today FM), prominent gay rights activist Peter Thatchell was critical of the decision. He said he supported same-sex marriage but was also a believer in a “free and open society”, and didn’t think anyone should be compelled to promote “ideas with which they have fundamental disagreement”.
When Shane Boyd of Belfast Rainbow Project supported the decision against Ashers I thought that in a way he undermined his case by pointing out that Ashers had served this customer “a million times before”. Columnist Ian O’Doherty also supported same-sex marriage but thought the judgement smacked of “sliding into authoritarianism”.
In midweek it went from Ashers to Ashes after the Vatican released a document on the appropriate treatment of the ashes of the deceased. The usual suspects rushed immediately to the outrage factory.
One of the better discussions featured on Wednesday’s Today With Seán O’Rourke (RTÉ Radio 1) when Keelin Shanley spoke to Fr Joe McDonald and theologian John Murray. Fr McDonald saw the Vatican document as a clarification and considered it in terms of of respect for the dead and the idea of moving on after the death of a loved one.
Murray put in in the context of the resurrection of the body, concerns that certain practices might imply pantheism or nihilism and the implications of death for the Christian community.
Funeral practices
Last Friday on The Last Word David Quinn stressed the communal way Christians approached treatment of the deceased and broadened the discussion to the funeral practices of other religious traditions. I thought John Hamill of Atheist Ireland threw in a few cheap shots, e.g. about the Inquisition, and saw the new document as the Church opting to ‘chastise the bereaved’!
Back on the Wednesday morning, Jennifer Lahl, an anti-surrogacy campaigner was interviewed on the Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk). It was a tough but courteous interview, though I sensed a bit of an agenda when Kenny asked her if she was involved in other campaigns such as the Pro-Life movement.
I don’t recall similar label-sticking questions being asked of campaigners on other sides of comparable debates. When Lahl outlined some cases where surrogacy had gone disastrously wrong Kenny suggested that “hard cases make bad law”.
Now, couldn’t that be applied just as easily to cases where childlessness was the hard case and surrogacy regulation the bad law? And I don’t recall any interviewer making a similar point when hard cases of babies diagnosed with life limiting conditions are used to promote permissive abortion laws.
On the abortion front the campaign for Repeal of the Eighth Amendment was intensified with the introduction of yet another bill to push for a referendum, this time coming from AAA-PBP group in Dáil Éireann.
On Tuesday’s Morning Ireland Bríd Smith TD was concerned about the delay being caused by the Citizen’s Assembly process with up to 3,000 women ‘having to’ travel abroad for abortions in the time it takes to report. So, is this not the same as saying that it would be better to have these 3,000 babies killed at home instead? How did such a position come to gain any currency or respectability at all? These questions were not put to her.
Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone earned the ire of Bríd Smith and other independents for not supporting the bill (she’s going along with the slower Government process), and she was interviewed on the same day’s News At One (RTÉ), when the discussion concentrated on the political aspects of the issue.
I’m waiting in vain to hear any journalist put it to her that it’s more than incongruous for a Children’s Minister to be supporting a measure that makes it easier to abort children.
Pick of the Week
THE SIMPSONS
Channel 4, Sunday November 6, 12.30 pm
Homer the Heretic: Homer has a vision from God and decides to start his own religion.
SYRIA’S CHRISTIAN EXODUS
EWTN Sunday, November, 6, 5 pm, also Thurdays, November 10, 10am
Filmmaker Elisabetta Valgiusti presents the stories of Syrian Christians who have been forced to flee due to extreme threats from radical Islamic groups.
THE BATTLE WITH SATAN
TG4 Tuesday, November 8, 11.30pm
Fr Radon, a Catholic priest (and a psychotherapist) researches the subject of exorcism in the modern Church.