Massgoers’ vote will be vital in general election

Christians must become more politically mobilised in 2016, writes David Quinn

The big event of the year to come will undoubtedly be the general election. It is likely to take place very soon. Fine Gael is almost certain to be returned, most likely with Labour and possibly with the support of a few Independents.

Fine Gael is riding fairly high in the polls. Labour will suffer a big loss in seats. What is notable is how little part the big social issues seem to playing in the minds of voters in the run-up to the election.

It is possible that Fine Gael lost three or four percent of its support due to the passage of our first abortion law in 2013. What is absolutely certain is that it gained no support because of it.

Nor did Labour. This is especially notable. Labour is proud of the fact that it was so instrumental in getting that abortion law passed. But it has gained nothing electorally from it.

Neither Fine Gael nor Labour appear to have gained or lost any support following the passage of the marriage referendum.

Again, Labour will be disappointed by this. The referendum was carried by a big margin – 62% to 38%. Its supporters were hugely motivated and enthusiastic to the point quite often of fanaticism and militancy. But none of this has given Labour a fillip. Labour will be especially disappointed if many of those who canvassed door-to-door for same-sex marriage don’t do the same for it during the election campaign.

Support

On the other hand, the 38% of people who voted ‘No’ is a big minority. Many of these will have been Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil voters. There is no evidence that they have turned against their parties because of the support of those parties for the referendum.

In other words, bread and butter issues will dominate the election as usual with other issues playing subsidiary parts.

That said, there are many people around the country who are thoroughly disillusioned with the current party system. They do not like the choices on offer. This is why Independents are so popular, even if their popularity has waned a little recently.

Some of those who are disillusioned are Christians for whom issues like the right to life and the definition and welfare of marriage and the family are extremely important.

They have watched as this Government has launched attack after attack against their Church, up to and including the temporary closure of the Irish embassy to the Holy See.

Protestants will have looked on in concern as their schools have become collateral damage in the Government’s crusade against Catholic schools.

These people will be among those tempted to vote for alternatives to the main parties, or maybe to stay at home altogether.

Had Fine Gael adopted a less aggressively ‘liberal’ posture while in Government, would it be a few points higher now in the polls than it is? What did Labour gain by pushing Fine Gael further down a ‘liberal’ path? Certainly society gained nothing from it.

I believe the reason why the Government, and Fine Gael in particular, has not faced a more significant backlash because of its attacks on the right to life, marriage and the family, and denominational education, is because Catholics and Christians are not sufficiently mobilised.

It remains the case that most Catholics when they go into the polling stations vote on the basis of their party affiliation first, and their religious convictions come a distant second. I am referring here to massgoing Catholics.

This is very strange and is the result of poor formation on the part of the Church. How can a Christian think that Christianity has nothing to say about the organisation of society which is the central aim of politics?

Politics must be guided by morality. Perhaps many Christians are persuaded that they must not ‘impose’ their morality on others. But politics is always going to be guided by some form of morality, however poorly defined and followed, and democratic politics is all about persuading voters that your vision of politics (and morality) is best.

Christians used to think in terms of the common good and Church leaders used to talk about the common good. If Christians are to think as Christians when they vote, the Christian vision of the common good needs to be restored. Much work on this should be done in the years to come.

Looking beyond the election, the big social issue on the agenda in 2016 will undoubtedly be abortion. The Government has well and truly flagged this. Labour wants to see the repeal of our pro-life amendment (the Eighth Amendment) and Fine Gael is paving the way for a referendum by saying it supports the holding of another Constitutional Convention which will undoubtedly call for a referendum.

Of the main parties, therefore, only Fianna Fáil does not in practice support the holding of a referendum to repeal the Eighth.

Our media undoubtedly want us to repeal the Eighth Amendment. A campaign to this end is already in full swing. Every newspaper wants to see an end to the Eighth Amendment and current affairs and talk shows never miss an opportunity to highlight the issue of so-called ‘fatal foetal abnormalities’ because they know that hard cases like these are what stand the best chance of persuading the public to repeal the Eighth.

What we are being subjected to, therefore, is conditioning on the sort of scale we saw in the long run-up to the marriage referendum. This is going to carry on right through 2016.

The aim will be to build up such big support for the repeal of the Eighth that pro-life campaigners won’t have time during the four-week referendum campaign itself to properly erode that support.

Much will depend on how massgoers vote. There are still about one million adults who go to Mass each week. In the marriage referendum many of these, with the best of intentions, voted ‘Yes’.

They persuaded themselves that no harm would be done by voting for same-sex marriage. They did not see that by doing so they were totally redefining the family and undermining the rights of children, especially their right to a mother and a father.

On the question of abortion, it will be harder to persuade them that no harm will be done by repealing the Eighth. The danger is, however, that the hard cases will induce some of them to vote with the abortion lobby. This would obviously be a disaster.

Defeated

The job of the Catholic Church, therefore, will be to persuade a very big majority of massgoers to vote in that referendum, and to vote ‘No’. If that happens, it will be defeated. If not, it will pass.

The work of persuading Catholics to vote ‘No’ and to continue supporting the Eighth Amendment must begin this year. The bishops should set up a task force to examine what to do as soon as possible.

This year also sees the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The Irish Catholic has already produced a special supplement on the topic. It was instructive to read the view of Fr Seamus Murphy SJ that the Rising did not fulfil the conditions of a ‘just war’. If that is so, the bravery of some of those who took part in the Rising can be celebrated by the Church, but not the Rising itself.

It would be interesting to see if any Catholic theologians believe the Rising did fulfil the conditions of a just war and to have a proper debate about that.

That would be a useful Catholic contribution to the 1916 commemorations. But would such a debate be popular when so many Irish people believe the Rising was a good thing?

After the upcoming election, the debate about denominational schools will kick off again. Labour seems absolutely determined to do everything it can within the limits of the Constitution to curtail the rights of denominational education, and by extension the rights of parents who want such an education for their children.

Labour wants denominational schools to teach their pupils about religion in a way that is almost bound to be implicitly agnostic.

Groups that want to limit the religious ethos of such schools to a few minutes of each day have the full support of Labour, and Labour wants faith schools to adopt an admissions policy that goes against their primary purpose which is to serve the surrounding faith community.

Catholics must not think this is the bishops’ fight. It is their fight. This is another example of how the political passivity of so many Catholics is so undermining.

In 2016 the issue of the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in other parts of the world ought to receive more attention here.

Christians should not feel at all embarrassed to give particular attention to attacks on  their fellow religious believers. It is natural for Irish people to be especially concerned about Irish people trapped in particular war zones, while also being concerned for others trapped in those areas.

So Christians should feel the same way when other Christians are under attack. Anything else is a terrible failure of solidarity.

Returning to domestic concerns, the year to come will see a continuation of efforts to marginalise religious beliefs and to make them irrelevant to politics and to public debate.

Ireland, in its official ideology, is both liberal (in a manner of speaking) and secular. In its vision, religion must be privatised. Christians must be persuaded that religion per se has no place outside the home or Church.

This is an attempt to reduce freedom of religion to freedom of worship only.

This is why Christians have to become more political and more organised, more aware of the Christian view of the common good.

In its actions, this Government has been aggressively secular. It is pushing a vision of society that is harming the common good.

But it, and our political system more generally, can be persuaded to follow a different path if we Christians have a different vision to offer and can become politically organised and mobilised around that vision instead of continuing in our present passivity.