It is not good enough for people of faith to be glibly dismissed

Priests officiate at the burial of a man in Fethard earlier this month. Funeral restrictions have been particularly hard on families. Photo: Clodagh Kilcoyne

“Where there is no vision the people perish,” is wisdom attributed to King Solomon in the Old Testament. It came to mind this week reflecting on the poor performance of the southern Government when it comes to charting a realistic and hopeful way out of the current level five Covid-19 restrictions. A succession of high-profile ministers – all with former journalists as media advisers – have been tripping over one another to give ever more pessimistic assessments of the road back to something resembling a normal life.

Monday witnessed the spectacle of several ministers in the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green Party coalition contradicting one another over the space of a couple of hours on an issue as vital as the return to education for vulnerable children.

Contrast

It was a stark contrast with the picture from London where the British prime minister Boris Johnson – for all his many failings – was offering a hopeful message of a complete return to normal life by mid-summer. Perhaps events will overtake him, but with the success of Britain’s roll-out of the vaccine it looks like a realistic goal.

The northern executive is due to publish a comprehensive plan next week giving realistic hopes for a safe return to Mass. The four archbishops met with Taoiseach Micheál Martin on Friday to press the case south of the border, but the short Government statement issued afterwards had all the hallmarks of indicating that they got short shrift.

The archbishops are to be commended for making the case for a safe return to public worship. If evidence exists to suggest that it is unsafe, the Government and the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) should make this evidence available. It is not good enough for people of faith to be glibly dismissed as if their right to freedom of religion is something that can be casually set aside. I have always argued that there can be – at times – credible public health reasons for putting reasonable restrictions on public worship. But, these reasons cannot be arbitrary nor should those affected be met with a wall of silence when asked for the evidence.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) which claims to – at least nominally – represent about a quarter of Irish priests issued a rather confused statement to the media saying it was “concerned” about a possible return to Mass at Easter. The statement never outlined any reasons for this concern, nor did it give even the slightest hint as to what the ACP in its wisdom felt the right conditions were for a return to Mass.

Euphoria

There was much (evidently short-lived) euphoria in the media when a video appeared of members of the gardaí participating in a dance challenge. An RTÉ twitter account even gushed that it “was the lift we had all been waiting for”. Few people now appear to remember it or the supposed lift it gave them. Eaten bread is soon forgotten, it seems. But, we continue to be denied access to the Bread of Life while being bombarded with State-sponsored advertisements asking us to ‘mind our health’. Spiritual health, it would appear, doesn’t factor in the Government plan to keep people well.