RTE right to retain its Angelus bell

The Angelus hasn't gone away, you know! The debate may have fizzled out now that RTE has changed the graphics during the broadcast, but things have remained essentially the same.

Last summer the Angelus debate got its annual airing on the national airwaves and in the letters pages of this newspaper, with some impassioned arguments for its removal. Personally, I failed to understand at the time why more people were not getting agitated and demanding RTE remove it from our sight, permanently, seeing it was such a diabolical abhorrence painful to the senses, as some implied.

Vociferous in his denouncement, Mr Gary Byrne launched a vigorous campaign for its removal, while also attending to the numerous demands and stresses that are part and parcel of launching a new magazine.

He felt so strongly about it that he described it as a "sectarian religious service that has no place on a State-owned broadcasting service". In the weeks that followed it became evident that the majority, if not all, of Christian leaders on this island found no offence whatsoever in the Angelus, which is a pre-Reformation practice and hence not the sole property of the Roman Catholic Church.

An impassioned plea to RTE was also made by Mr Byrne that it reflect modern Ireland by treating all religions equally. To suggest that RTE has neglected its statutory obligation under the Broadcasting Acts is a serious charge.

Recent historical research has shown, however, that since its inception RTE has jealously guarded its independence from organised religion in this State and has been very careful to be, and to be seen to be, evenhanded to all creeds. It has arrangements with all the Christian churches and other non-Christian faiths so that they may have access and representation on our national service. Indeed, if RTE was to be accused of bias of any sort in this matter, it might be said that minority religions/denominations often receive far more airtime and exposure than their numbers warrant. Many of the arguments and the rationale put forward for the removal of the Angelus were ill-considered and often had no real substance. But they caused sufficient stir within RTE for it to change the format.

I am not seeking to defend the Angelus nor am I suggesting that it should not have been changed, but I feel that those who campaigned for its removal lacked a certain intellectual honesty when they articulated the case for its removal by resorting to wild tales of religious intolerance in broadcasting and by reciting litanies of historical inaccuracies.

Buoyed up by the change of format, Mr Byrne, in a letter to The Irish Times recently, congratulated RTE for changing the "graphics" of the Angelus. The mind boggles in trying to understand how anybody could have taken a dislike to the previously-used religious art backdrops for the Angelus. Included were that native American Indian painting of a woman and child, rare icons, frescos from some of the most renowned Renaissance painters, such as Fra Angelico's depiction of the Annunciation painted in 1450. Mr Byrne also wrongly casts the Angelus as a "specific prayer to a specific Catholic icon". Not so, as I have already said. And icons go back to the earliest Christian times. They are central to the Orthodox tradition, where they are esteemed as sacred and holy and are not seen as art objects.

The Angelus now changed, Mr Byrne feels "the argument for the complete removal of RTE's promotion of organised religion . . . still stands". The removal of all organised religion from RTE is for Mr Byrne part of a process "towards a more pluralist Ireland".

Once again, that much maligned concept of pluralism is dragged out of a narrow, insular tunnel vision to stand chained and muted in defence of somebody else's intolerance and personal agenda.

It is like the genie in the bottle. It is invoked whenever an axe needs to be ground, regardless of the fact that often the actions of those "invokers" are anything but pluralist in nature or even tolerant of the legitimate views of others.

Would the sick and house-bound vote for the removal of their Sunday-morning service or Mass from RTE? Would every Jew, Christian and Muslim willingly forgo any treatment of his or her religious beliefs by the national broadcaster in order to comply with this new hybrid of pluralism?

It may come as something of a surprise to Mr Byrne but the national broadcaster does not "promote" organised religion, as he states so dogmatically, but rather provides a public service to its viewers, which is its statutory obligation.

Religious programming is not a lucrative commercial exercise on RTE's part. But, fortunately, public-service broadcasting aspires to being a mechanism for delivering a pluralist agenda, and religious broadcasting is viewed by RTE as an intrinsic part of its overall public service.

There is an irony in the fact that the Pope, often castigated for his conservative approach, has in his latest encyclical, Fides et Ratio, encouraged and indeed challenged Catholics to be open to the seminal insights of those outside Christianity.

Pluralism allows a space and a voice for all in our society, even when we may not agree with their beliefs and opinions. Any infringement of this space is fascist in origin and intolerable in any democracy.

Religious broadcasting has played a small but significant role in the development of what is now "modern Ireland", and it continues to pose the difficult questions to which we as a society are constantly seeking answers.

Organised religion is part of many people's vision of a more open and inclusive society. So, before any more dishonest campaigns take root and fester, let all private visionaries, crusaders, and false prophets of pluralism take note: "Tread softly, because you tread on our dreams".

Garry O'Sullivan is a communications student at Dublin City University.