Speaking up in challenging times

How to defend the Faith without raising your voice: Conference

Silence is not an option for Catholics in the public sphere, papal biographer Austen Ivereigh told a packed room in the Red Cow Hotel at this year’s The Irish Catholic national conference.

Quoting Pope Francis’ observation that the cemetery is only place where there is no disagreement, the Catholic Voices- co-founder [see also Page 27]  maintained that civil disagreement is part of life, and that society has to learn to disagree in better ways.

Frank Hurl of Catholic Voices Ireland had introduced Dr Ivereigh, who joined with The Irish Catholic editor Michael Kelly to launch a new co-written Irish edition of the Catholic Voices book How to Defend the Faith, intended to help Irish Catholics engage in better disagreement and to address the kind of ‘hot-button’ issues where heat rather than light tends to define debate. Given the huge crowds at the hotel, it was no surprise that Columba Press sold out of all the copies of the book they had brought with them.

Acknowledging that today’s debates can lead to all kinds of tensions, Dr Ivereigh advised the crowds that Catholics should not be afraid to live in that tension and allow the Holy Spirit to work.

Maria Steen of the Iona Institute took the stage after Dr Ivereigh, and spoke on the importance of vigorously defending the right to speak. Maintaining that the common idea that secularism is a neutral phenomenon is a myth, she recalled how G.K. Chesterton had once observed that “Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion,” and had then added: “In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.”

Teacher and columnist Breda O’Brien then detailed just how countercultural voices – whether religious or simply pro-life – can be shut down in our society, relating in a talk entitled ‘The Oxford Blockers’ how she had been shouted down by ‘pro-choice’ students at an Oxford Students for Life briefing she had been invited to address.

One small silver lining to the affair, however, was that one of the students involved in the barracking had contacted Ms O’Brien’s son Ben afterwards, and admitted that what had taken place there was utterly wrong and should never have happened.

After lunch, Senator Rónán Mullen kicked things back off in distinctively lively style before stressing the importance of “articulating the alternative view”, with challenges facing those who would speak up, whether publicly or around the dinner table or in the bar, in the upcoming referendum naturally flavouring his speech.

MC Wendy Grace followed Senator Mullen and led an open forum on themes and topics raised on the day, before Cora Sherlock of the Pro Life Campaign – and nowadays Love Both – wrapped the day up with a brief presentation headed ‘Tackling the Twitter Trolls’.