Mary Kenny
Participating in a feminist conversation in Northern Ireland last weekend (held at the stunning Mount Stewart stately home in Newtownards), I listened to a distinguished Oxford historian express her hopes that the coming Irish referendum on the Eighth Amendment “would give feminism a unified focus”.
I very much hope that the abortion referendum will not give feminism a unified focus in the manner intended: that all feminists should line up behind the campaign to “repeal the Eighth”.
I hope that it may be borne in mind that there are many feminists who are pro-life – indeed, in the United States, there’s a growing movement of ‘Feminists for Life’.
Movements
American pro-life feminists rightly emphasise that the roots of feminism were essentially Christian – and anti-abortion.
The founding mothers of the feminist movements, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were Christian women with a deep commitment to anti-slavery and a parallel commitment to women’s entitlement to dignity and respect as the bearers of life.
On this side of the Atlantic, the early feminists – such as the great Josephine Butler, campaigner against the sexual exploitation of young girls, were often strongly Christian. Many of the early British suffragists were the daughters of clergymen.
The demand for abortion rights arose in the 1930s, when Stella Browne, a sexual radical and a Communist, coined the (very clever) phrase “the right to choose”. The World League for Sexual Reform, a group advancing sexual revolution, first put abortion rights on the agenda – not feminism.
Debate
I hope the debate over the Eighth Amendment will be respectful of all points of view, and will genuinely allow all women their voices and their reflections on what is, by any measure, a complex issue. Maternity care and women’s health should indeed be to the fore in this debate.
But it is very much worth pointing out that pro-life feminists are entitled to call themselves feminists, and that they have a historic legitimacy in such a position.
Mary’s book Am I a Feminist? Are you? will be published on October 23 by New Island.
Warm atmosphere of St Colmcille’s
The Newtownards Road in Belfast is known as a stronghold of Ulster Unionism and the Orange tradition, but I was directed, all the same, to a Catholic church on the Upper Newtownards Road called St Colmcille [pictured]. A Catholic church in the North is always called ‘a chapel’, but St Colmcille’s is a beautiful church of quite generous dimensions.
It’s decorated with an intricate Celtic filigree design (also seen at the Cathedral in Armagh), with a gold-leaf effect on the dome. The Stations of the Cross are modern, but not abstract, and there’s a nice mixture of modern and traditional in the stained glass windows.
Mass attendance was impressively multi-ethnic and the guitar added a touch of gospel sound. Fr Tony Fitzsimons presides over a warm family atmosphere.
l Ireland coped valiantly – and efficiently – with storm Ophelia, but there are always some victims of a great natural force, and so it was. Always I come back to that passage in the New Testament about the unexpectedness of death in some circumstances: “One shall be taken, and one shall be left.” It’s a great sorrow for the bereaved, but this is indeed, sadly, how it occurs.
Something alluring about the EU flag
Jean-Luc Mélanchon is a hard-left French politician – and, by the way, a gifted orator who mounted an impressive presidential opposition to the charismatic Emanuel Macron earlier this year.
Mélanchon is anti-EU and vociferously objects to the EU flag being flown in preference to the tricolour of the French republic.
Last week, he made a most astonishing claim – which was a revelation to me. He ranted against the EU flag because, he said, it was based on the symbols of the Blessed Virgin – the blue background and gold stars drawn on the design of the Miraculous Medal. This religious symbolism, he railed, had no place in the institutions of the French republic.
Mélanchon’s point puts the EU flag into an entirely new light. Apparently the flag’s main designer, the late Arsène Heitz, was a committed Catholic – converted from Judaism – and devoted to Our Lady and the image of the Miraculous Medal, which features twelve stars.
It is vividly presented at the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in the Rue du Bac in Paris.
Twelve is a significant number in both the Old and New Testaments, and, by the way, psychologists say that 12 is an almost ideal number for any group – big enough for diversity, but compact enough for effective bonding and communication.
Gisela Stuart, the German-born Labour MP for Birmingham, was in favour of the EU when it consisted of 12 members. She became critical of the European Union when it more than doubled to 28. Interesting. The flag, all the same, is rather lovely.