Position Papers - May 2017

A review of Catholic affairs

The loneliness of the middle-aged man Helena Adeloju

Fatima: one hundred years on Pat Hanratty

Number 509 · May 2017 €3 · £2.50 · $4

Film review: The Promise Joseph McAleer

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Number 509 · May 2017

Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: ‘The Benedict Option’ – terrific for monks, but not for ordinary Christians

by Michael Kirke

The war on intellectual freedom

by Denyse O'Leary

The loneliness of the middle-aged man

by Helena Adeloju

Some thoughts on Tuam

by Rev Patrick G Burke

Leave morality out of lawmaking and you’re left with what?

by Luisón Lassala

Fatima: one hundred years on

by Pat Hanratty

Book review: Abbey Girls

by Rev Conor Donnelly

Film review: The Promise

by Joseph McAleer Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

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Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Eblana Solutions

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Editorial

t a recent priestly ordination here in Dublin, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin made mention of the growing harassment of Catholics in Irish society: There is a sense in Ireland today in which there is a culture of relentless reminding the Church of the sins of its members and at times of painting every individual and every moment in the history of the Church with the same condemnation. I notice a certain justified resentment among priests and religious and committed Catholics at somehow being unfairly under attack as they live out their faith and their ministry generously and with dedication (see www.dublindiocese.ie) He made mention too of a growing sense of the need Irish Catholics feel “to stand up and respond”. While – as the Archbishop pointed out in his ordination homily – a truly Christian response requires acknowledgment of one’s failings as well as the avoidance of polemical quarrels, it could be added that Catholics need to know when the criticisms have moved from the realm of the justifiable and constructive into the realm of the unfair and vindictive – in a word into the realm of bigotry.

The virtue of Christian meekness does not require of the followers of Christ that they allow their civic rights (in this case, the right to a good name) to be trampled on. In fact the opposite is just the case. The Christian is obliged to take his or her place in civil society and demand the same rights – no more and no less – as everyone else. In the words of St Josemaria Escriva: We cannot simply fold our arms when a subtle persecution condemns the Church to die of starvation, putting it outside the sphere of public life, and above all obstructing its part in education, culture and family life.

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These are not our rights; they are God’s rights. He has entrusted them to us Catholics so that we may exercise them! (Furrow, 310)

A case in point here in Ireland is the tenor of a recent debate over the proposed locating of a new National Maternity Hospital on lands owned by the Sisters of Charity. Leading medical practitioners are insisting that the owners of the land – the Sisters – would not be allowed to insist on a Catholic ethos in the new medical facility. While the matter is complicated, and there is nothing to suggest that the Sisters of Charity will in fact insist on a Catholic ethos on their property, what has arisen is a rehearsal of calls for the removal of Catholic institutions from health services in the country at large. A senior obstetrician has called for an absolute separation between church and medicine, especially when it comes to female reproductive healthcare. “No religious organisation”, in the opinion of this particular medic, should be allowed run a hospital which receives public funding, and the Catholic Church receives special mention because of its “chequered history” in female reproductive health.

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Most social comment on the debate follows in the same vein: Catholic charitable institutions were abysmal failures in the past, and the Catholic teaching on reproductive ethics should not be present in publicly funded hospitals.

There are two separate issues which we should find disturbing in such comment. The first is simply its prejudice; what we see here is nothing short of an ugly bigotry against a particular religious group in Ireland.

A person with even the most rudimentary historical awareness could not be unaware of the heroic work of religious orders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in providing education and healthcare to a desperately poor population. The work of multitudes of religious in provision of education and healthcare over decades is not negated by the much vaunted failings of the orphanages and

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Magdalene

laundries. Only iron cast prejudice could ignore this, or even worse, put sinister interpretations on it. Secondly there is a prejudice – almost hysterical at times – against Catholic medical ethics. On what grounds? The arguments advanced against Catholic medical ethics are invariably thin: it is anachronistic (which would be fine as an argument if we had any reason to believe that history is marching towards Valhalla); it offends against a woman’s right to choose (which, granted it is only a slogan, only implies that women, for some reason, have been granted a privileged position beyond good and evil). The hysterical tenor of the assaults on the Catholic ethos unmask a depth of animosity working with paucity of argument. A person has no obligation to be moved by hysteria; yes by historical facts and rational arguments.

The etymology of the word “prejudice” is illuminating: the word comes from the Latin words for “injustice”, and “prior judgment” and so refers to the injustice done when an event or person is approached with an already formed judgement, prior to the facts being established. Normally the facts of the matter are replaced with something much germane to the lazy mind: hearsay, broad generalisation, caricature and the like. We find this at work in all the more infamous instances of large scale bigotry in modern times. And generally, we would have to add, such prejudices are stoked up by opinion makers for their own ends. There is no doubt that here in Ireland this role has been played by elements in the mass media: the Raskolnikovs who stir up the Smerdyakovs of our society.

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Philip Jenkins, the author of the famous 2003 work on antiCatholicism in modern America: The New Anti-Catholicism, The Last Acceptable Prejudice, gave a useful guideline for gauging if something appearing in the public domain should be considered bigoted:

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The issue should not be whether film X or art exhibit Y is deliberately intending to affront Catholics. We should rather ask whether comparable expressions would be allowed if they caused outrage or offense to any other group, whether or not that degree of offense seems reasonable or understandable to outsiders. If the answer is yes, that our society will indeed tolerate controversial or offensive presentations of other groups – of Muslims and Jews, African-Americans and Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans, gays and lesbians – then Catholics should not protest that they are being singled out for unfair treatment. If, however, controversy is out of bounds for these other groups – as it assuredly is – then we certainly should not lighten up, and the Catholic League is going to be in business for a very long time to come (Philip Jenkins “Catholic-Bashing: America’s Last Acceptable Prejudice” May 2003 issue of Catalyst Magazine.)

Applying this to our present situation in Ireland we might ask how we would react if the object of public furore were institutions which followed an Anglican, Jewish or Islamic ethos. Certainly the time has come for Catholics “to stand up and respond”.

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In Passing: ‘The Benedict Option’ – terrific for monks, but not for ordinary Christians

by Michael Kirke

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ear, desperation and pessimism make a dangerous cocktail. American journalist Rod Dreher seems to have imbibed this potion. “The West has lost the golden thread that binds us to God, Creation, and each other,” he writes.

“Unless we find it again, there is no hope of halting our dissolution.”

and the Washington Post – to say nothing of Christian blogs.

So Dreher’s solution is an intriguing one – but is it the right one?

There is no doubt about the truth of much of his analysis.

Dreher notes that many of today’s Christians are perfectly at home in a liberal world: Liberalism has changed them, and they, in turn, have changed their Christianity. We have only to think of the PodestaHillary Clinton emails plotting the subversion of the Catholic faithful. Clinton lost the election, but for Dreher the respite is only temporary.

He outlines his survival strategy in a New York Times best-seller, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. It has been widely reviewed in secular newspapers and magazines like the Think Progress, the National Review, Atlantic, the Huffington Post,

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“We are on the brink of entire areas of commercial and professional life being offlimits to believers whose consciences will not allow them to burn incense to the gods of our age,” he predicts. Fewer and fewer public spaces will be open to faithful. Young Christians who dream of becoming doctors or lawyers may have to abandon their ambitions.

and large, we have coped.

There have been highs and lows, but the overall picture is one of progress.

For the rationalist there is one reason for this – mankind’s ingenuity. For men and women of faith, it is the hand of providence. For Christians, the love and mercy of a Divine Father whose Son redeemed us is the foundation of all our hope for the future. It is a lack of emphasis on hope and a failure to see how it has unfolded in two millennia that are the weaknesses of the Benedict Option.

His pessimism about our future political and cultural life is rooted in the conviction that “we in the modern West are living under barbarism, though we do not recognize it.” This is a world in which “Our scientists, our judges, our princes, our scholars, and our scribes ... are at work demolishing the faith, the family, gender, even what it means to be human.” It’s scary stuff.

First, Dreher misreads the history of early Christianity.

The early Christians took seriously Christ’s command “Go forth and teach all men” and they did it “In spite of dungeon, fire and sword”. They did it in an Empire ruled by Tiberius, Caligula and Nero.

They nurtured their faith within own communities but without separating themselves from their neighbours. They protected themselves with their Faith and the exercise of virtue.

But I would argue that Dreher has good intentions, but the flight from the world which he advocates is misguided. Ever since Cain killed Abel, mankind has grappled with evil. And, by

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There was no flight from the world, in spite of the hostility of the surrounding culture.

by the lax behaviour of his contemporaries, there is no evidence that he regarded his own response to God’s grace as a template for all rightthinking Christians. But Dreher’s option seems to be just that.

In fact, one of the earliest explanations of Christianity, the second century Epistle to Diognetus, says: “Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle.... In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.”

St Benedict’s vocation to the religious state was not a rejection of the world or a solution to the corruption of his age. It was a response to a calling to a life of prayer and contemplation of a very special kind. It was a shining light to mankind, not a torch which all were asked to bear.

Second, he misinterprets monasticism. The early monks who lived in the desert of Egypt did not flee from Alexandria because the secular world was incompatible with Christian life. They simply saw it as their personal vocation, a way which would also fortify and sustain the faith and holiness of all mankind.

Third, Dreher misreads modernity. Not everything about it is evil. Amongst its positive features are esteem for everyday life and the elevation of ordinary things to a level of splendour. It took many centuries to reassert the universal vocation to holiness.

It might be a pity if the Benedict Option set at nought the work of the Holy Spirit which over the last century has revived the early Christians’

Benedict of Nursia was stellar among these monks. While Benedict (480-543), a young Italian nobleman, was appalled

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conviction that they were the soul of the world.

put down roots in separate communities....”

A tireless advocate of this was a twentieth century priest dubbed by John Paul II the “saint of ordinary life,” Josemaría Escrivá. “Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work and your affections are.

There you have your daily encounter with Christ. It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God and all mankind,” he wrote in one of his homilies, “Passionately Loving the World”.

While Dreher insists that “We’re not called to be monks.

Monks are called to be monks,” it is hard to separate his formula from a way modelled on the religious life. “What we have to do is have a limited retreat from the world … into our own institutions and communities,” he says. Well, it may be limited – but it’s still a retreat.

Fifth, by retreating, Dreher eschews politics. We must recognise, he says, that “politics will not save us.” In the context of his own country, he has no time for Christians who have sought defenders and champions in the Republican Party, including President Trump. “Neither party’s program is fully consistent with Christian truth,” he argues. But only to be satisfied with a party of such consistency is surely to long for a kind of theocracy. It also seems to ignore the needs of people who depend on political institutions, the administration

Fourth, the ideal Christian is not a monk and need not live like a monk. In his New York Times column, David Brooks complains about this. “The heroes of Rod’s book are almost all monks. Christians should withdraw inward to deepen, purify and preserve their faith, he says. They should secede from mainstream culture, pull their children from public school,

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of justice, and many more things to enable them to flourish. Doesn’t Christian solidarity demand that we stay engaged in the public square?

The contradictions inherent in all this are suggested in a conversation which Dreher had with a pastor who said: “The moment the Benedict Option becomes about anything other than communion with Christ and dwelling with our neighbours in love, it ceases to be Benedictine…. It can’t be a strategy for self-improvement or for saving the church or the world.” St Benedict’s option was a divine vocation. The Benedict Option is a human solution to a perceived cultural, political and social crisis. They are very different.

The final difficulty with Dreher’s solution to challenges faced by Christians is that it is not fully Christian. Many of his suggestions echo Orthodox Jewish life, like daily prayers, restrictions on diet and work, and extensive educational networks. Bethanay Mandel, an Orthodox Jew, notes this as a

fascinating component of the book. She writes: “The communal makeup of the Orthodox Jewish community was built not in response to cultural upheaval, but from a desire to maintain the continuity of the Jewish people…. Yet the Orthodox Jewish experience provides an exact blueprint for what Dreher is proposing American Christians undertake.”

“We Christians have a lot to learn from Modern Orthodox Jews,” Dreher acknowledged in one interview. “They have had to live in a way that’s powerfully counter-cultural in American life and rooted in thick community and ancient traditions. And yet, they manage to do it.”

But Christians are supposed to do more than preserve continuity; they are supposed to spread the Gospel.

Evangelising is essential for Christians, as the final words of the Gospel of Mark remind us: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and

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is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Where is the spirit of evangelism in The Benedict Option?

westward, look, the land is bright!”

But we must accept the challenge and we must stay the course.

No, The Benedict Option is not the definitive Christian response to secularism. Like the madness of the world's experiment with Communism (RIP 1917-1989), contemporary cultural aberrations bear within them the seeds of their own destruction. They just represent more deceit from an eternal Enemy whose ultimate defeat is certain, however dark things may seem at the moment. As the Victorian poet wrote, “In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Kirke is a freelance writer, a regular contributor to Position Papers, and a widely read blogger at Garvan Hill (www.garvan.wordpress.com). His views can be responded to at mjgkirke@gmail.com.

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The war on intellectual freedom

by Denyse O'Leary

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ifty years is a long time. In 1964 University of California students were barred from distributing flyers about major issues of the day, including the civil rights struggle. The resulting protests kicked off the Free Speech movement, whose anniversary was duly commemorated by National Public Radio in 2014:

says it is still part of Berkeley's brand.”

“This year, the university is hosting a series of events to commemorate the 50th anniversary with concerts, poetry readings and lectures.

There's no doubt that many students today appreciate the activism that came before them.

Freshman Marisa McConnell

But no, free speech is decidedly not still part of “Berkeley’s brand.” Today, even a minimal free speech advocate would scarcely recognize the place. In February, the campus was on lockdown after “protests” broke out against former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, an alt right figure who was scheduled to speak (but the event was cancelled) and “… university police urged students to shelter in place and stay away from the protest area. Videos from campus show fires breaking out, and students

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on the scene say firecrackers were thrown.”

Yiannopoulos, termed improbably by D.D. Guttenplan at left-wing paper, the Nation, the “most hated man on the internet” had earlier told Guttenplan’s readers, “The range of socially acceptable opinions is narrowing.… You can’t keep a newspaper column in this country and say that the wage gap is a myth or that campus rape culture is a myth. We’re reordering society according to myths and conspiracy theories and advocacy research. You cannot deny these things and keep your place in the establishment, even at rightwing newspapers.”

In fact, as we shall see, it is difficult even for dissenting scholars to be safe on campus any more, never mind a flamboyantly comedic provocateur like Yiannopoulos.

So what has changed in the intervening half century?

What has very much changed is how influential thinkers understand the concept of freedom. At Bloomberg, Yale law professor Stephen Carter identifies the thought of American philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) as a driving force. Discussing the recent assault on a professor who had sponsored prominent social scientist Charles Murray at Middlebury College, he explains, “The German-born Herbert Marcuse was a brilliant and controversial philosopher whose writing became almost a sacred text for new-left intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. Nowadays, his bestknown work is the essay “Repressive Tolerance.” There he sets out the argument that the downshouters are putting into practice.

For Marcuse, the fact that liberal democracies made tolerance an absolute virtue posed a problem. If society includes two groups, one powerful and one weak, then tolerating the ideas of both will

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mean that the voice and influence of the strong will always be greater. To treat the arguments of both sides with equal respect “mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society.” That is why, for Marcuse, tolerance is antithetical to genuine democracy and thus “repressive.” … That is why tolerance, unless it discriminates, will always be repressive.

Marcuse is quite clear that the academy must also swallow the tough medicine he prescribes: “Here, too, in the education of those who are not yet maturely integrated, in the mind of the young, the ground for liberating tolerance is still to be created.”

Today’s campus downshouters, whether they have read Marcuse or not, have plainly undertaken his project."

In short, violent outbreaks on campus are not the outcome of kids acting out! Quite the contrary, they are the outcome of kids acting out the values that they have been absorbing over the past fifty years from increasingly illiberal teachers.

Turning freedom of speech on its head, their professors argue that politically incorrect speech is itself an abridgement of liberty. As Tom Knighton explains on PJMedia.com, professors at Wellesley College opined that “controversial speakers were

UC Berkeley riot at Yiannopoulos event in February

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exhausting students with their offensiveness”: “The six faculty on the women’s college commission cited the left-wing historian Jelani Cobb’s theory that certain ideas ‘impose on the liberty of another’ if the person hearing those ideas is ‘relatively disempowered’: ‘There is no doubt that the speakers in question impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley. We are especially concerned with the impact of speakers’ presentations on Wellesley students, who often feel the injury most acutely and invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers’ arguments. Students object in order to affirm their humanity. This work is not optional; students feel they would be unable to carry out their responsibilities as students without standing up for themselves.’

Apparently referring to campus reactions to Kipnis – the subject of a two-month Title IX ‘inquisition’ at Northwestern

University, where she teaches film – the commission members said ‘dozens of students’ have told them ‘they are in distress as a result of a speaker’s words.’”

The campus paper opined, “Shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is not a violation of free speech; it is hate speech. The founding fathers put free speech in the Constitution as a way to protect the disenfranchised and to protect individual citizens from the power of the government.

The spirit of free speech is to protect the suppressed, not to protect a free-for-all where anything is acceptable, no matter how hateful and damaging.”

The Wellesley paper’s claim about the American founding fathers could be branded as false except that the author(s) would not likely know or care what might be true about them.

Intellectual curiosity is not a virtue in their eyes; rather, a threat.

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The war on free speech is, of course, a war on intellectual freedom in general. Samuel J. Abrams tracks the pace of the change in faculty attitudes that fuels the students’ war on alternative viewpoints on theamerican-interest.com:

Similar attitudes are observed among students in Britain and across the Western world. It is certainly convenient for the professors to protect themselves from challenging ideas in this way.

“…the massive leftward shift of our nation’s professors, beginning in 1987 and continuing at a fast clip up to the present. Over the past three decades, the professoriate’s left/ right ratio jumped from a low point of 1.17:1 in 1984 to a high point of 5.27:1 in 2011. While there was a slight decline in 2014 to 4.67, this three-decade jump represents an approximate increase of 350 percent. In 2014, the average American left/right ratio was 0.63:1, and the nation’s college freshman leaned left at 1.51:1.

This means that college freshmen are two-and-a-half times more liberal than the nation as a whole and faculty are seven-and-a-half times more liberal and rising. These facts are simply nowhere to be found in most of the coverage of campus unrest.”

Take note that the new approach to intellectual freedom does not permit anyone to just mind their own business. Even silence can be violence. Bari Weiss quotes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt at the Wall Street Journal: “People older than 30 think that ‘violence’ generally involves some sort of physical threat or harm. But as students are using the word today, ‘violence’ is words that have a negative effect on members of the sacred victim groups. And so even silence can be violence.” It follows that if offensive speech is “violence,” then actual violence can be a form of selfdefense.”

Indeed, self-defense is often the precise justification for the riots: self-defense against a perceived threatening atmosphere.

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The student censors and rioters are generally at peace with themselves, as befits those who follow faithfully in their teachers’ footsteps. Guy Benson advises readers at Townhall.com,

She is a public school teacher and may well turn up writing study guides and curricula.

“Take ten minutes and watch this profoundly creepy conversation between Tucker Carlson and a left-wing fascist named Yvette Felarca, who smirks with pride as she describes the riot she helped foment in order to ‘protect’ her community from the threat of words. Carlson opens the segment by showing another clip of Felarca personally engaging in violence during an anti-fascist rally in California last year, then questions her about her big anti-speech ‘triumph’ at Berkeley earlier this month. She calmly – and almost sociopathically – makes the case that speech she deems to be ‘fascist’ could lead to ‘genocide,’ and ‘rape,’ and therefore must be forcefully suppressed ‘By Any Means Necessary’ (BAMN), which is the name of her radically illiberal organization.”

The campus war on free speech and intellectual freedom is slowly graduating into the mainstream. For example, pop science magazine New Scientist recently offered an article defending more censorship, citing Germany, because free speech itself is censorship (as Marcuse would say): “For people like Cerf and many American companies, who view online speech through the lens of the US First Amendment, Germany’s approach may look like a heavy-handed suppression of the right of free expression. However, it may be a necessary first step in reestablishing a shared moral reality. In the age of bots, misinformation, and anonymity, free speech itself may be used to enact a kind of censorship.”

So free speech is, we are given to understand, old-fashioned and misguided. New Scientist earlier

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supported another popular science publication in no longer allowing comments.

On campuses like Claremont (where a lecture critical of Black Lives Matter was shut down by a mob), even the pursuit of objectivity (vs. subjectivity) when assessing issues as an intellectual benefit has been attacked as “white supremacy”.

This article was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence. If you enjoyed this article, visit MercatorNet.com for more. See the original article at: www.mercatornet.com/info/ copyright_and_syndication.

One of two things will happen if universities continue to make themselves enemies of intellectual freedom and free speech. Either our intellectual life will rot or it will find a home other than the university. In the age of the internet, many are now exploring alternatives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Denyse O’Leary is an Ottawa-based author, blogger, and journalist.

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The loneliness of the middle-aged man

by Helena Adeloju

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t made for a bold headline when the Boston Globe published an article entitled: “The biggest threat facing middle age men isn’t smoking or obesity.

It’s loneliness.” Globe reporter Billy Baker’s article exploring how men let friendships lapse as they grow older – leading to loneliness induced health risks – struck a chord around the world, and prompted a follow-up article published just two weeks later.

He wrote specifically about his experience as a husband and father, which he described as somewhat “typical” of the male experience: During the week, much of my waking life revolves around

work. Or getting ready for work.

Or driving to work. Or driving home from work. Or texting my wife to tell her I’m going to be late getting home from work.

Much of everything else revolves around my kids. I spend a lot of time asking them where their shoes are, and they spend a lot of time asking me when they can have some “dada time.” It is the world’s cutest phrase, and it makes me feel guilty every time I hear it, because they are asking it in moments when they know I cannot give it to them – when I am distracted by an e-mail on my phone or I’m dealing with the constant, boring logistics of running a home.

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We can usually squeeze in an hour of “dada time” before bed – mostly wrestling or reading books – and so the real “dada time” happens on weekends.

That’s my promise. “I have to go to work, but this weekend,” I tell them, “we can have ‘dada time.’ ” Dr Richard S. Schwartz, a Cambridge psychiatrist and author quoted in the Globe article, believes the overscheduled modern lifestyle is the main cause of current or eventual loneliness: “When people with children become overscheduled, they don’t short change their children, they short change their friendships. “And the public health dangers of that are incredibly clear,” he said.

According to research, he said, this trend can have dire outcomes: … those who were more socially isolated were much more likely to die during a given period than their socially connected neighbours, even after you corrected for age, gender, and lifestyle choices like exercising and eating right. Loneliness has

been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke and the progression of Alzheimer’s. One study found that it can be as much of a longterm risk factor as smoking.

Baker’s article also points to research carried out in 2015: [A] huge study out of Brigham Young University, using data from 3.5 million people collected over 35 years, found that those who fall into the categories of loneliness, isolation, or even simply living on their own see their risk of premature death rise 26 to 32 percent.

Baker’s first article on the subject prompted him to reflect on his own situation. His second, in answer to the worldwide response from men who had let friendships fail and were on the way to or already experiencing profound loneliness, made him realise that friendship is something men in general need to work on.

His personal revelation hit the nail on the head:

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My issue is not making new friends. It’s caring for the relationships I already have. I have many great friends from school and sports and work and wherever...“I’m not being a good friend. And now that I realize how important that is to my health, there’s no excuse for not doing better.”

I’m not lonely. Not yet. Maybe a bit sad that I don’t get to see my friends. But what this [article] did was force me to recognise that I was putting myself on a path where loneliness would be inevitable.

friendship with their sons: “Men who were not close to their fathers growing up were more likely to feel isolated in later life.”

Add to that the fact that children mimic their parents’ habits and behaviours and one quickly realised how important good example in fostering and cultivating friendships really is.

Why not encourage the men you know to jump on the band wagon and make some positive changes regarding their friendships? They and their families will thank you for it.

Another article on the same topic pointed out some key things for men, especially husbands and fathers, to be aware of. One man realised that in the short term his own loneliness made life harder for the person he loved most: “I think it [not having friends] was causing a strain on my marriage because I needed friend time…”.

This article first appeared on www.mercatornet.com.

It has also been found that there are long-term effects when men fail to cultivate friendships outside the home as well as

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Helena Adeloju is editor of Family Edge. She writes from Melbourne, Australia.

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Some thoughts on Tuam

by Rev Patrick G Burke Introduction The controversy that has erupted over the Tuam mother and baby home is an interesting one. The recent statement from the Mother and Babies Homes Commission of Investigation makes it clear that we know very little by way of hard facts about this case; and certainly almost nothing more since when it first made headlines in 2014. And yet this statement has been treated as if contained fresh and startling information.

Leaving that to one side, the ongoing public conversation about the matter has raised some points I would like to consider. I have no particular thesis to put

forward or case to argue. I simply wish to put forward some thoughts concerning it that I have had as the debate rages in the media and across the kitchen tables of the nation.

It was the Catholic Church’s fault such homes existed The first is the notion, commonly made, that it is the Church’s fault such homes existed in the first place. Yes, they admit, it was society at large who put pregnant and unmarried girls into them.

And yes without them the girls would have nowhere to go. But the reason they were considered social pariahs in the first place was because of the influence of Catholic morality on Irish society.

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Families only cast their daughters out, and communities only drove these vulnerable residents out from among them, because of the toxic effect Catholic morality had had upon them. Without the Church no one would have cared about these girls having sex outside of marriage and getting pregnant.

However, the theory, inconveniently for those who propose it, does not fit with the facts. The main fact it deliberately ignores is that homes such as these were common throughout many jurisdictions throughout the world at this time – many of whom were not Catholic countries. Our nearest neighbour England would be one such country. And the last time the Catholic Church and her teachings were treated with much esteem in that nation was during the reign of Mary Tudor.

Nobody really knew how bad things were in there This has to be considered patent nonsense. It was known to the authorities of the time that the child mortality rate in the general

population was approximately 8 per 100 live births, that in mother and baby homes in general the rate was about 17 per 100, and that in Tuam it was around 31 per 100. The state, on whose behalf these institutions were run and who were responsible for inspecting them, most certainly knew the conditions that prevailed within them. And the idea that the average person on the street had no idea of what went on within is simply not plausible. Most may not have known the details, but everyone knew they were awful places.

The part poverty played in all this has been ignored Girls finding themselves “in trouble”, to use the euphemism of the day, was not unusual. But the economic circumstances of a girl’s family made a big difference as to how that difficulty would be handled. A young woman whose family had resources was in a position to deal with the matter quietly and discretely. The girl might be shipped off to some private institution far away from her home. Once delivered of her

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child, the infant was quickly adopted out. The young mother returned home from her “holiday” with no one the wiser.

Or she might go off on a long trip with her mother. On their return – surprise! – her mother had a new baby and all the world was presented with the story that the actual mother had a new sister.

But as for the girls from families with no money – well, we all know where they ended up. Some were turfed out by their families and found their way to such homes in desperation; others were deposited in them by their own relatives. But however they ended up there, the sad truth is that they had nowhere else to turn. And they were surely wretched places – how could they be otherwise, funded by the miserable pittance the state gave them? A pittance the state thought more than generous given that these girls were “fallen” women who had brought disgrace upon themselves and their families? With no thought at all, of course, for the “fallen” men who helped put them there.

Another even more sinister point is not being discussed There have been many accounts in the newspapers and on radio and television from people who were born in these institutions who were taken from their mothers and later tried to reconnect with their families. I have been startled to notice how many of these stories have a common feature that I find rather disturbing: and that is that many of them have discovered that they have siblings who were also born in these institutions also.

The reason that I find this feature so remarkable is that one would have presumed that a young woman having once spent time in such a place would have done everything with her power to avoid going back. The logic being that once bitten is twice shy. And yet many, it seems, found themselves pregnant again and were forced to return – some more than once. This seems to defy rational sense and makes me wonder if a significant number of these women were in some way vulnerable and their pregnancies

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were not as a result of consensual sexual activity but as a result of some form of abuse. The commonality of such stories is suggestive of a dark underbelly to Irish society of past days the full truth about which may never be known.

Conclusion These homes were appalling places by today’s standards – and woeful ones by the standards of their own time. It is regrettable that the narrative of these places is being used by some to engage in useless craw-thumping along the lines of how terrible the past was and how much more enlightened we are today; or, worse, is being hijacked to further various agenda in today’s society that have no relevance to these institutions, such as the repeal of the Eighth Amendment or the further weakening of the denominational educational system. The truth is that most of the people involved in the running of those institutions no doubt saw themselves as decent and honourable people who were doing what was best for the

residents in them. If we truly wish to honour the memories of those who suffered within them, and particularly those who died within them, we might do better to consider what aspects of our own society future generations may regard with the same horror with which we now look back on these homes. We can do nothing to change what happened in places like Tuam. But if we learn from it and similar cases we may well put ourselves in a position to do something about the wrongs that we are now committing today ourselves.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR The Rev Patrick G Burke is the Church of Ireland rector of the Castlecomer Union of Parishes, Co Kilkenny. A regular contributor to Position Papers, he was formerly a broadcast journalist with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. He blogs at thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie

Leave morality out of lawmaking and you’re left with what?

by Luisón Lassala

A

t a recent debate on abortion in NUIG, a professor of Law in the university wrapped up the debate with the concession that, even if the humanity of the unborn could be accepted, as proposed by the pro-life speakers, as far as she was concerned, the autonomous decision (free choice) of the mother trumped any right to life of her child. I was left dumbfounded: a “free decision” can legitimately terminate a life?

Few will deny that human freedom exists, but also that it needs to be regulated. “My freedom ends where another’s begins” is a moral axiom learnt by children from the earliest age.

Yet, we in the West have seen in recent years how, in the name of absolute freedom (“autonomy of self-determination” and the “right to privacy”), morality has been inverted and what’s always been morally evil, dehumanising and despicable, is now accepted, normalised, celebrated and even encouraged. Are we heading for the social catastrophe foreseen by the nineteenth century French political philosopher Frederic Bastiat?: “When misguided public opinion honours what is despicable and despises what is honourable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is beneficial, applauds falsehood

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and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.”1 The last five or six decades have seen a drive towards a rationalisation of misbehaviour which has led to the legalisation of several immoral and antifamily practices in areas of social and reproductive behaviour.

Here the dynamic runs: after I have convinced myself that something wrong is right, I need you to accept that the wrong that I do is OK. There is a growing clamour to a “right” to do wrong, or more accurately, that the wrong I do (sodomy, abortion, contraception, assisted suicide, etc.) is my right.2 We’re moving from tolerating immoral behaviour to accepting it as normal and good, to celebrating it and institutionalising it legally and officially, and even to enforcing its acceptance through prosecution.

Enacted laws shape moral behaviour: people assume a law has been enacted to prevent evil actions and foster the common good. If a human action is protected by law it is assumed to be a good law; law is meant to derive from morality. For example, slavery was once legal in many jurisdictions but nowadays, with our clearer understanding of the dignity of man, we have come to see it as a social and human evil and therefore made it illegal in the West.

The problem with our civilization is that the moral convictions underlying its public order (legality) have been undermined to the point of near collapse. The reason is that morality has been disassociated from reality. Things and actions no longer recognised as having a clear purpose, given to them by nature (i.e. their Maker), and therefore they are bereft of meaning. Juridical positivism reigns supreme in Western liberal democracies; laws are

1

Frederic Bastiat, Economic Harmonies

2

cf. Robert R Reilly, Making Gay Okay, Ignatius 2014, p. 207

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judged to derive their validity from the power of the legislators, without recourse to any moral code (other than their own subjective reading of reality and preferences): the elected representatives in a democratic political system come up with laws, which when approved by due processes, are indisputable and owe their validity to the process from which they emanate, regardless of the morality of the enacted law. As a consequence, not all enacted laws are actually moral.

So if new laws that legalise and justify behaviours that were seen as immoral for millennia are not based on a moral code shaped by nature, where do they come from? On what basis do Supreme Court judges in many Western jurisdictions justify their validity and propose their enforcement? According to several authors3 , these laws source their justification from two related overriding principles. The first is the

autonomy of self or the right to self-determination: the ability to make my own choices and ultimately create my own laws (hence slogans like “my body, my choice”, “bodily autonomy” and “What do we want? The right to choose”). The second is the right to privacy; the freedom of (autonomous) consenting adults from interference by the State or other institutions.

According to US Supreme Court Justice A. Kennedy, “at the heart of liberty is the unassailable private conduct between consenting adults made under the inviolable autonomy of self: the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, and of the mystery of human life.”4 So what’s wrong with this?

“Autonomy” (the freedom to choose) in a vacuum, without parameters guiding us to what is best for us (“the good” for man), is meaning-less and point-less. If actions have no purpose or

3

R. Reilly, R. George, J. Smith, R. Hittinger, M.A. Glendon, etc. Cf. also John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae 4

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 (1992), Justice Kennedy (quoted in J.E. Smith, The Right to Privacy, xiii)

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meaning from which their goodness derives, morality is empty and has to be based on arbitrary human decisions. In practice, it is power which arbitrates (whether legislative or judicial). Autonomous actions without a moral framework are meaningless.

advanced the “right to privacy” as a fundamental, inviolable right. Furthermore, if their justification rests on the private actions of autonomous, consenting adults, where do you draw the line: why would you not legalise the likes of polygamy, bestiality and incest?

The implications coming from this understanding of morality and law are obvious: if we are not able to legislate against acts that are morally wrong, so as to encourage behaviour towards the good of the individual and the common good, because we cannot agree as a society what is morally wrong, then on what basis do we agree what should be legalised and what should be illegal? who decides what is legal or ilegal, and why?

Ultimately, Western societies’ adoption of a legal framework bereft of any moral bedrock is based on a misunderstanding of freedom and what it is to be human. So much talk of “rights” has obscured the concept of civic responsibility. As Mary Anne Glendon puts it: “… so much rights talk … in its relentless individualism, fosters a climate that is inhospitable to society’s losers…. In its neglect of civic society, it undermines the principles seedbeds of civic and personal virtue.”5 We become so concerned with securing our own rights that we exhibit little interest in the well-being of others. In fact, others are seen as potential rivals for the goods to which we believe we have rights.

Our passage through this life becomes less one of community

We’re left with the “dictatorship of relativism” that Pope Benedict XVI spoke about. There are no objective, universal moral norms on which to base a morally sound legal framework. Yet, it is ironic that the very courts that deny the existence of objective, universal moral norms have 5

Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoversishment of Political Discourse, 1991

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and social engagement in the pursuit of a common good for all, especially the most vulnerable, and more one of pursuing our own selfish goals (as ‘rights’) at the expense of others.

At the heart of this reinterpretation of what it is to be human is an absolute ignorance about the teachings of Aristotle (and of his many followers since antiquity), who saw man as a social and political animal, and who explained the good life as the pursuit of virtue.

The keystone for democracy and good social living is not Justice Kennedy’s version of freedom: autonomous free choice. It is virtue: the pursuit of a common

welfare of man by way of personal strife to do battle against our selfish and base instincts. Often, the more we turn away from what we (at first sight) hold dear for the sake of the good of others, the more society will thrive and people live in happy harmony.

The laws of the land need to support and encourage such pursuits of a common good and communal happiness, by way of facilitating virtuous living and discouraging (punishing) vice.

Sadly, “our culture no longer corners us into virtue, but impels us into vice.”6 6

Robert R Reilly, Making Gay Okay, Ignatius 2014, p. 213

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luisón Lassala is Philosophy graduate from UCD (1987) and co-founder of Philosophy Ireland.

6

Robert R Reilly, Making Gay Okay, Ignatius 2014, p. 213

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Fatima: one hundred years on

by Pat Hanratty

T

his month sees the centenary of the first of the apparitions of Our Lady to the three children of Fatima. As I reflect on the event in this period after the Resurrection, I find myself marveling at divine logic, so different from what one might call the spirit of the age we live in.

I mean why would the Creator and Lord of the Universe subject himself to the horrors of the Passion as described in the various Gospel scenes we meditated on so recently? Why did He choose the time and place He did for His intervention in human history and that most marvellous miracle, the Resurrection – one thinks of the

lines in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar which go: “Why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land? …

Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication…”.

Fast forward to the Marian apparitions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as those at Lourdes, Knock and Fatima – these were in pretty out of the way places too, and to people far from high on the social ladder. Yet like the Gospel story, news of the extraordinary events filtered out in each case and we have, in those three places Basilicas which are permanent reminders to us of what happened and why they are

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relevant to us today and will always be.

In the particular case of Fatima, the first apparition of Our Lady was preceded by a vision the three shepherd children Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco had of the Angel of Peace who prepared the children for the Marian apparitions that would follow.

He taught them several prayers, and, in his final apparition in autumn 1916, he gave the children holy Communion. Then on 13 May 1917 the children were tending their sheep near the Cova da Iria in Fatima, a few miles from their home. A beautiful young woman dressed in white appeared to them. The Lady said she was from heaven and wanted the children to return to the same place at the same hour on the 13th of each month for six months. She asked the children to pray the Rosary every day.

tried to force the children to deny the apparitions had taken place, and even imprisoned them, though they were release on 15th August, the Feast of the Assumption and Our Lady appeared to them again on 19th August at the Cova da Iria. She asked them to come to the Cova da Iria on the 13th of each month and to pray the Rosary every day. She told them that she would perform a miracle on the 13th October. And what a miracle it was! Despite terrible weather and the cynicism and disapproval of the authorities, thousands descended on the locality and while the three visionaries saw Our Lady, all those who gathered saw something very spectacular:

The children did as Our Lady asked them, but did miss one appointment in August. Why? Because as news had travelled throughout their region and beyond, the civil authorities

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The sun stood forth in the clear zenith like a great silver disk which, though bright as any sun they had ever seen, they could look straight at without blinking, and with a unique and delightful satisfaction. This lasted but a moment. While they gazed, the huge ball began to “dance� – that was the word all the beholders applied to it.

Now it was whirling rapidly like a gigantic fire-wheel.

After doing this for some time, it stopped. Then it rotated again, with dizzy, sickening speed. Finally there appeared on the rim a border of crimson, which flung across the sky, as from a hellish vortex, blood-red streamers of flame, reflecting to the earth, to the trees and shrubs, to the upturned faces and the clothes all sorts of brilliant colors in succession: green, red, orange, blue, violet, the whole spectrum in fact. Madly gyrating in this manner three times, the fiery orb seemed to tremble, to shudder, and then to plunge precipitately, in a mighty

zigzag, toward the crowd (William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima, Image Books, New York, 1954, p.

145-6).

An extraordinary occasion. But, just like those who saw the apparition at Knock in 1879, doubters suggested mass hallucination among other explanations, but they could hardly explain away the fact that what happened was seen in various parts of Portugal.

More important than the spectacular event was the message Our Lady was bringing to the children, and by extension to the world. The so-called secret of Fatima contained three parts

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– the first and second of which referred to the vision of hell which the three children were granted and to the second world war and the spreading of the errors of Communism from Russia (the October revolution in Russia took place in 1917).

The envelope containing the third “secret” of Fatima was opened by Pope John XXIII in 1960, but he and his successor Pope Paul VI chose not to reveal it to the world. After the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul in 1981 (on the sixtyfourth anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima) and the fall of Communism and the break up of the Soviet Union near the end of the twentieth century, Pope John Paul chose to speak of it.

Again, one could say that the world was not listening, as if anything, it would appear that in many ways the world is moving further away from God.

to us a hundred years on. It should be noted that at that stage, Sr. Lucia was still alive – she died in 2005 aged 97.

The following lines from an Osservatore Romano article in 2000 by the then Cardinal Ratzinger helps us understand the core purpose of the Fatima apparitions and their relevance

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Thus we come finally to the third part of the “secret” of Fatima which for the first time is being published in its entirety. …[T]he interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano in his statement of 13 May was first put personally to Sister Lucia.

Sister Lucia responded by pointing out that she had received the vision but not its interpretation. The interpretation, she said, belonged not to the visionary but to the Church. After reading the text, however, she said that this interpretation corresponded to what she had experienced and that on her part she thought the interpretation correct. In what follows, therefore, we can only attempt to provide a deeper foundation for this interpretation, on the basis of the criteria already considered.

“To save souls” has emerged as the key word of the first and second parts of the “secret”, and the key word of this third part is the threefold cry: “Penance, Penance, Penance!” The beginning of the Gospel comes to mind: “Repent and believe the Good News” (Mk 1:15). To understand the signs of the times means to accept the urgency of penance – of conversion – of faith. This is the correct response to this moment of history, characterized by the grave perils outlined in the images that follow. Allow me to add here a personal recollection: in a conversation with me Sister Lucia said that it

appeared ever more clearly to her that the purpose of all the apparitions was to help people to grow more and more in faith, hope and love— everything else was intended to lead to this.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Pat Hanratty is a retired Science/Chemistry teacher and lives in Dublin.

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Book review Abbey Girls

A book review by Rev Conor Donnelly

T

he authors are both scientists. Valerie has a PhD from McGill and spent most of her career as a research scientist with Agriculture Canada. Mary has a PhD from University College Dublin and spent her career as a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin.

They spent their lives with students and, now retired, look back on their own education at a Dublin boarding school run by the Loreto Nuns, The Abbey in Rathfarnham, Dublin, in the years 1959-’67.

Like a million or so fellow pupils attending similar institutions throughout Ireland at the time

Valerie and Mary Behan Laurence Gate Press 2015 183 pages

there were many things they did not like at school but now when they look back they discover the treasures and understand the wisdom.

“We owe the teachers and students we met not just for an excellent education but for many other qualities that have served us well: discipline , efficiency, collegiality, responsibility, competitiveness”.

Their memoir is an interesting account and tribute to Irish education from a student perspective. It may not have been perfect but perhaps was the best available on the planet. The things they hated are probably hated by anyone who plays for

36

Manchester United today. They were made to run around the hockey pitch after breakfast each morning even in the snow (but not barefoot). The diet was not exactly five star but they realise now there was someone behind the scenes cooking for 300 mouths. Some nuns were angels, others had different gifts but all had their role to play. “Our teachers were cultured women”.

These secular, reasonably liberated ladies were constantly taught that after school they could do anything, the world was at their feet, and they did. They were prepared for it. They had a principled, backbone education.

This “no material frills” education was made available by Irish women to Irish parents at an affordable cost. This happened long before governments got their act together in Ireland and in other countries. Like so many other congregations, Loreto had 23 schools throughout the country, making quality education available to all and sundry.

Through inter schools sport connectivity the students had

contact with others from all parts. An international dimension was added, on the side, by news of similar networks of other Loreto school in Calcutta, Mauritius and Kenya. Irish women leading the diaspora and having an impact.

The previous President of Sri Lanka was educated by Irish nuns and orphanages in Burma during World War II were run by a Limerick lady.

Many prominent ladies in Kenya today were schooled at Loreto, this includes a Nobel Prize winner and patriot. In 2013 on the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence four awards were given to educational institutions. The Loreto sisters received one for their network of schools which includes the first school for African Girls in East Africa (started by an ex Cumann na mBán revolutionary). One of the Irish pioneers was there, at 95, to receive it with her Kenyan protégé. It is an incredible story but as yet unsung.

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You can detect these historic realities in the background of the memoir.

There was an all round education through music, drama, debating and an encouragement to read.

Probably every Irish student at the time could tell similar stories so this work has interesting historical significance. It is a tribute to those other Irish women who made it possible.

They are largely silent and unnamed.

that the “teacher is the curriculum” and here there were committed women bursting with professionalism with centuries of experience giving their best to the next generation.

They have set the bar high for future educationalists and families and the country will always be in their debt. The authors imply that this is how civilisations are built.

One of the things the authors seem to be saying is that you cannot argue with quality and there was plenty of it. It is said

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Fr Conor Donnelly qualified as a medical doctor in University College Dublin in 1977 and worked as a house physician and surgeon for one year at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. He was ordained a priest in 1981 for the Prelature of Opus Dei. He obtained a doctorate in Theology from the University of Navarre, Spain in 1982. He is at present the chaplain of Kianda School for Girls, Kenya.

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Film review The Promise

Director Terry George Stars Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, Christian Bale

by Joseph McAleer

T

he relatively little-known genocide of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Turks one hundred years ago is brought into sharp focus by The Promise (Open Road).

Taking his cue from epics like Doctor Zhivago, director Terry George (Hotel Rwanda), who cowrote the screenplay with Robin Swicord, melds an important history lesson with a tender love story. Viewers will emerge with newfound knowledge of the enormity of the holocaust (1.5 million people killed between 1915 and 1922) while appreciating its profound impact on individuals and families.

The story begins in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1914. World War I is on the horizon, and the formerly mighty Ottoman Empire, which once controlled vast areas of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, is crumbling.

Michael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), an idealistic medical student from a small Armenian village in southern Turkey, is entranced by the cosmopolitan city, and especially by Ana Khesarian (Charlotte Le Bon), a vivacious artist and fellow Armenian.

Never mind that Michael has made a promise of marriage to Maral (Angela Sarafyan), who awaits him back home. Nor that

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Bale), who is in Turkey to document the war.

survive, Ana tells Michael.

Michael and Ana fall in love. But their plans for the future are spoiled when Turkey joins the war on the German side, and decides to embark on a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Up to this point, Muslim Turks and Armenian Christians have long lived together in relative harmony. All that changes, surreptitiously at first, as Turkish soldiers force Armenians from their homes. Most are shot outright; some are marched into the desert to prison labor camps.

As Armenians, Michael and Ana are targeted. Chris attempts to report on the killings and inform the world, but is arrested.

Despite the warnings below, given its potential to raise awareness of a historical tragedy – one that the Turkish government, to this day, has never acknowledged – The Promise is probably acceptable for mature adolescents.

The film contains scenes of wartime atrocities and violence, a nongraphic, nonmarital sexual encounter and brief crude language.

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

The Promise follows the travails of each character as the slaughter intensifies. Chris’ plight attracts the attention of the real-life American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau (James Cromwell), who sounds the alarm.

Remarkable courage, perseverance and their unwavering Christian faith sustain the victims against all odds. Our revenge will be to

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph McAleer is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service. Copyright (c) 2017 Catholic News Service.

Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com

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