Mary Kenny‘Bonkers’ comment worthy of tabloids
I’m beginning to wonder if Mary McAleese missed her true vocation in life. Rather than graduating as a lawyer, becoming a professor of law, and then twice serving as President of Ireland – perhaps she should have become a tabloid journalist? Because she knows just how to craft a great “splash” headline – that’s one which makes headline news in a pithy word or two.
The success of her catchphrase in describing the forthcoming Papal synod on the family as “completely bonkers” was an ace stroke, worthy of the ‘splash’ sub-editor of The Sun.
(The ‘splash sub’ – he, or she, who devises the front-page ‘splash’ headlines, is usually paid very highly indeed, so it’s a valued position. Catching the public eye with a sensational headline is what sells a tabloid – a famous example being the splash front-page on Margaret Thatcher’s rebuff to the Argentinian dictator General Galtieri: “STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA!”)
And Mrs McAleese’s “completely bonkers” sally achieved what a tabloid aims at: widespread attention and much commentary. Not the language expected from a former Professor of Law at TCD, but it sure did the trick.
Mary McAleese got across her headline-grabbing notion succinctly: that it is “bonkers” to expect a family synod to be composed of single, celibate males, who have probably never changed a nappy in their lives.
She has a point about celibates cogitating upon family life, but in my view, it’s the wrong point.
The problem about celibate men making judgements about marriage and family life is not that they have no experience of it – they’ve usually grown up in families and have plenty of family links. The problem is that celibate or single people often over value and over idealise marriage and family life.
This is evident in the writings of Saint John Paul II about love and marriage. They are beautiful, poetic, romantic and even theatrical – he loved the theatre and wrote plays. But they often over-idealise marriage, and sexual love as something beautiful and perfect. And I’ve seen this in other single people – they can have a much higher standard about couple relationships than those who have the experience.
Indeed, one of the reasons why some single women remain single, and never find Mr Right, is that their standards are too high.
Anyone involved in thinking about marriage or coupledom should watch Edward Albee’s play (also a film) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which a married couple fight, bitch, calumnise each other and generally behave like a couple of hyenas. They love one another, but my, this drama is an antidote against the sweetness-and-light school of conjugality.
Understanding marriage and the family is not just about changing a nappy. A trained chimpanzee could change a nappy. It’s about understanding that the most intimate human relationships can be deeply flawed, or even crazy. Bonkers, if you like.
A painful cycle
Itís been disclosed that over the past seven years, 23,000 babies have been removed by the authorities from 7,000 mothers in England ñ because of drug and alcohol addictions (Dr Karen Broadhurst of Manchester University has led the research.) The family courts find the mother is an addict and removes the baby: the mother promptly has another baby and that too is taken from her. Itís a pitiful cycle.
But it does make me wonder if alcoholism was also a factor in the infant deaths we have recently been examining in the Irish State from the 1920s to the 1960s. Nobody has researched that aspect.
Religion and the Spanish royals
The Spanish king and queen chose to have their coronation on the Feast of Corpus Christi ñ Thursday, June 19. As this is still a public holiday in Spain, the populace was thus free to line the streets and cheer the new monarchs.
Yet King Felipe also chose not to have any religious element in his ceremony – no solemn Mass at the cathedral and no crucifix in the Cortes, the Madrid parliament. (There were also no foreign heads of state invited, to keep costs down.)
You might say the Spanish royals were having their cake and eating it ñ their popularity benefitting from a Catholic holiday, and yet discarding any note of religious sanction.
Divided society
Yet, it was probably wise of the new king not to have a religious dimension to his low-key coronation. Spain is still, to some extent, the divided society it was during the years of the Civil War in 1936-39, and Francoís insistence on public Catholicism did not do faith relations much good with those who resented the dictatorship.
Spanish anti-clericalism was the fiercest in Europe and it is better not to associate the Church with the constitution. Let the Faith speak for itself, and flower within the people, rather than being flagged up as part of the regime.