Maria Steen
The View
With one election over, we await another: the Seanad election. Of the 60 seats in the senate, six are allocated to the university panel. The other 54 are filled by the Taoiseach’s nominees and those nominated by the Vocational Panels. The university panel electorate is small, at only 175,000 between Trinity and NUI. It is a real privilege for a relatively small fraction of the population to be able to elect senators, and deserves due attention.
Last month, Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin Diocese, issued a pre-election statement which read: “No seriously committed Catholic can simply accept that human life is disposable, at any stage.
If we are to reverse the 2018 legislation, which may take many years, and if we are to prevent the legalisation of euthanasia, our first step must be to ensure that we elect public representatives who are committed to the right to life, from conception to natural death. For that reason, irrespective of traditional party loyalties, it seems to go completely against the common good for any committed Catholic to vote for a public representative who, in the outgoing Oireachtas, voted for abortion.”
While not as susceptible to tribal party loyalties as the Dáil election, the Seanad election displays – perhaps more vividly – a real cultural battle between candidates, many of whom are not affiliated to any political party but have very definite views, particularly on social issues, such as the right to life – including euthanasia – marriage, religious liberty and the education of children (particularly relating to religious education and sex education) that must be of interest to any Catholic.
To what extent should a Catholic be concerned about politics and the implications of his or her vote? After all, politics will always fall short, governments come and go, regimes change, nothing stays the same forever – as we saw with the repeal of the Eighth Amendment that had protected so many lives for so long. Does it really matter? Do we have to wear our Catholic hat into the voting booth?
I agree with Bishop Doran that it is essential that we do so, or else stop pretending that we are Catholic in any real sense.
What is demanded of us, as Jesus himself confirmed, is that we obey the first and greatest Commandment: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind (Matthew 22:36-40). In essence, this means acting with integrity in all we do.
Integrity doesn’t just mean being truthful and of high moral character, it also means being whole and undivided. We have respect for those who practise what they preach: they demonstrate integrity because they try to live up to the ideals they espouse. Equally, we quickly lose respect for someone who does the opposite: who says one thing and does another.
When it comes to voting, we must see to it that our reason is directed towards God, as well as our hearts.
It is no good loving God in your heart if you continue to vote for candidates who, to your knowledge, will seek to implement policies that contravene God’s laws, and seek to influence the culture in a manner that will shut God out. Often, politics is a question of choosing the lesser evil, but this too requires the exercise of reason and intellect.
There is a wonderful tradition of devotional Catholicism in Ireland. This should be cherished. But, from time to time, it is combined with disengagement of the intellect from the Faith. We saw this most clearly in the abortion referendum, in which Massgoing Catholics voted in their thousands for a measure that is unambiguously condemned by the Church as a grave moral wrong.
There is no integrity for a Catholic in such a vote. While the Seanad election is a less acute moral issue, in this too those of us with a vote to cast are called to do so with integrity.
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In our society, for the last number of decades, we have seen a strong anti-intellectual streak develop with the elevation of emotions and feelings over reason and faith. This is sometimes called ‘emotivism’.
Our education system too has for many years exhibited a strong anti-intellectual streak – where students are encouraged to regurgitate stock answers, without really having to think things through for themselves.
It seems to me that many students have been discouraged from memorising facts (such as maths facts, spellings and grammar, historical facts, etc.), and instead are encouraged to memorise opinions – often not their own, whether it be on repeal, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ politics or modern atheism. Dissent is not encouraged.
Desensitised
It’s not just the children and teenagers. We consume junk food every day in the form of print, broadcast, and social media. These dull our minds as well as our senses. We become desensitised to their effects on us, the chief one being that we stop questioning the message.
We outsource our responsibility to exercise our intellect and proper judgment to organisations that generally hold us and what we hold dear in contempt.
We are instead swept away by our feelings, influenced only by personal stories that tug at the heart strings as presented to us by media outlets that are either explicitly or surreptitiously anti-Catholic.
Compassion
An anti-Christian culture has adopted what are Christian values, namely compassion and care for others. But there is no integrity in a position that elevates these virtues over all others, that elevates feelings over reason.
After all, compassion comes from the head as well as the heart: how can one administer justice or act fairly without making a rational decision? Is justice really served by making decisions based only on one’s feelings (which are subjective for each of us, depending on our personality and life experience)?
The remedy, then, is an integrated approach that gives due place to the intellect. Due place. This is not to imply that the intellect is supreme, or that it should be elevated above all other aspects of our personhood.
That too is incompatible with true integrity, as it diminishes and undervalues the significance of the heart and the soul. It is a question of giving the intellect its proper place.
For those who have a vote, the forthcoming election is an opportunity to engage the intellect as well as the heart. If we call ourselves Catholic and truly believe in Christ then let us proclaim it in how we vote, by choosing a candidate who upholds the dignity of every human being, who will not join the mob seeking to take religious liberties from us or impose ideologies on our children. Let us act with integrity by voting for a candidate who will do the same.