Archbishop Michael Jackson
Photo: CatholicIreland The greatest threats to Christianity come not from the right but from the left, writes Dr Tom Finegan
A noticeable feature of recent public theological discourse is a readiness to criticise causes of the right. Take two high-profile pronouncements, those of Fr Michael Mullaney and of Anglican Archbishop Michael Jackson.
Shortly before Christmas they criticised the denigration of non-Irish nationals and stated that it conflicts with the moral implications of the Christian faith – a perfectly valid point. And yet their respective statements suggest (though do not propose) a false view of the contemporary political climate: that the primary or even singular public threat to the integrity of the Christian faith emerges from the right of the political spectrum.
Fr Mullaney’s statements were much more implicit in this regard. During his homily for the annual Maynooth carol service, he stated that Christmas “embraces the great public issues of our time”. Of these Fr Mullaney’s homily addresses only one: racism’s denigration of ‘other’ and ‘stranger’. No other issue was given attention.
Dr Jackson’s pronouncement was more explicit. He asserted that Christians and secularists ought to unite against what he labels “the right”, in particular against its hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. For Dr Jackson, human rights are “under increasing pressure from what we ominously call ‘the right’”.
Enforcement
What both Fr Mullaney and Archbishop Jackson share is a concern to protect the socially-vulnerable from the unjust legal enforcement of moralising judgments. Commendable, yet their respective pronouncements were seriously incomplete given the context.
Perhaps because it is socially safe to do so, it is easy to overlook one vulnerable class in particular requiring protection from the unjust legal enforcement of moralising judgments. This class is targeted by the liberal left, not the right. Persons belonging to it are having their rights to freedom of religion, conscience, association and speech increasingly questioned and eroded.
Faithful Christians as a minority face serious legal and social disabilities not faced by the majority with liberal-secular values. Christian medical professionals can be disciplined or worse for refusing to cooperate with provision of abortion and abortifacients.
Christian parents face increasing high-level political pressure against their right to educate their children according to their Christian faith. Christian sole traders and private businesses face fines for refusing to cooperate with same-sex weddings and LGBTQI+ ideology. Christian demonstrators will shortly face the prospect of criminal prosecution for peacefully demonstrating against abortion.
High profile Christians risk employment sanction for voicing Christian moral teaching. Ordinary Christians lose social and employment capital by being public about the moral implications of their faith.
The threat from the social left needs to be called out, not naïvely ignored or passed over for fear of rebuke from socially-powerful liberals. The pressure is suffocating”
Clerics and ministers face suffocating media condemnation over their moral pronouncements even when not uttered in the context of law reform debate. With increasing pressure to conform: legal, political, financial and social, the trend is all in one direction – more pressure, less liberty.
Virtually every major political party, media outlet and NGO opposes Christian teaching on sexual and reproductive ethics. These constitute official Ireland.
So for official Ireland the faithful Christian is often a stranger viewed through the lens of moral opposition. We are now an ‘other’. The expression of hatred towards our beliefs and even ourselves as a class is often proudly advertised.
Many of those on the social left are agitating for total cultural domination. It is not enough that their moral judgments concerning sexual and reproductive ethics are finally legally established. They are now looking to persecute those who dissent from the new liberal-secular orthodoxy. So they are actively organising against faithful Christians’ freedom of conscience, association, religion and speech. These social liberals want to use the law as a sword to strike heretics with.
The new censorious puritans justify legal restrictions on dissenters’ freedom by claiming that Christian morality is often ‘bigoted’ or ‘offensive’ or ‘irrational’ or ‘hateful’ or ‘hurtful’.
Allegations
These terms are nothing more than allegations that Christian morality is wrong. And so their wider argument simply amounts to this: there should be little real legal freedom to be morally wrong. This position, rapidly gaining momentum, ought to alarm anyone concerned to protect the socially-vulnerable from the unjust legal enforcement of moralising judgments. It is grossly unjust for the State to override freedom simply on the basis that those pleading it are, in the eyes of the State, morally mistaken.
If public commitment to important parts of Christian moral teaching is rendered legally or at least socially impracticable on account of being ‘wrong’ then the Christian Faith more generally will tend to be viewed as false and thus irrelevant. This implicit logic will be clear to very many, from young students up. Evidence is already everywhere.
Virtually every major political party, media outlet and NGO opposes Christian teaching on sexual and reproductive ethics. These constitute official Ireland”
The threat from the social left needs to be called out, not naïvely ignored or passed over for fear of rebuke from socially-powerful liberals. The pressure is suffocating and increasingly internalised. Tullamore parish recently appeared to recant of a Christmas message after coming under pressure. The message highlighted the incompatibility of the faith with IVF’s depersonalisation of embryonic children. It was condemned by Minister for Health Simon Harris as “extremely hurtful” and an “inappropriate interference” in others’ decisions.
One wonders whether Mr Harris, whose ministerial tenure has indicated deep discomfort towards freedom of conscience, speech and protest, thinks faithful Christians should have the liberty to offend believers in the new moral orthodoxy. Internally, though, did anyone publicly support the parish? Noli timere.
Christmas has relevance for the freedoms under discussion. St Matthew recounts how the secular ruler at the time of the first Christmas ordered a purge to remove the threat to his authority posed by the incarnation. Herod’s target was not just the Messiah, but also the socio-moral implications of faith in the Messiah.
Clever as he was duplicitous, Herod knew the utility in professing respect for the Messiah even as he plotted against the inbreaking of his kingdom. Joseph and the Magi weren’t naïve. Their interventions allowed the Kingdom to breathe. Nota bene.
Dr Tom Finegan is a lecturer in moral theology at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.