Chai Brady
Photo: The Irish Sun Despite calls to scrap the Angelus the Head of Religious Content at RTÉ has said the majority of the public want to keep it, with most of complaints coming from “secular quarters”.
Renewed criticism of RTÉ’s daily Angelus broadcasts surfaced after the findings related to mother and baby homes investigation were published on January 12. A petition to ‘Take the Angelus off the RTÉ’, published last week, received 4,200 signatures.
RTÉ’s Roger Childs cited recent polls regarding the Angelus. A poll conducted by Amárach in 2017 found 62% wanted to keep it and an exit poll taken during the 2018 general election put it at 68%.
A poll conducted online of more than 31,000 readers by The Journal.ie last week found that 70.3% of people didn’t want the Angelus to be scrapped.
“None of that suggests to me or to RTÉ that there’s any great public clamour to scrap the Angelus in light of reports,” Mr Childs said, “People can distinguish between disillusionment with institutional Churches and with Government and what we put on at 6pm and 12pm on RTÉ.”
Muslims
He said he is yet to receive a complaint from a member of another faith community. For that reason he says “it’s interesting that the people who defend the Angelus very often speak as if they’re defending it against a tide of onslaught from Muslims”.
“I don’t know why they think that about Muslims but they say ‘we go to their country and we don’t mind them having a call to prayer’, as if it’s Muslims calling to scrap it, actually it’s not, the Muslims I have spoken to respect the fact that RTÉ create space for prayer and reflection within its schedules and they value that, nobody is expressing a view that we should be scrapping it from those communities it tends to come from secular elements of the community who remain a minority, albeit a significant one.
“The few complaints, and there are very few complaints, seem to come from secular quarters and insofar as they’re ever organised then they’re from lobbies like Atheist Ireland and the Humanists Association of Ireland who see it, perceive it, as a Catholic imposition and an anachronism. Sensitive to those complaints I’ve tried to update the treatment of it on television at least so that it’s more visibility all-inclusive, that it’s for people of all faiths and none.”
He added that the Angelus is not specifically Catholic but that the Angelus prayer is – which RTÉ has never broadcast.
“If you wish to say the Angelus prayer, good luck to you and you are facilitated in doing so, if you choose to have a different form of meditation or none whatsoever, or just turn over, that’s all fine as well,” said Mr Childs.