Ireland’s growing tolerance leaves dogmatic religion at a loss

Religion, from the Latin religare, means to bind/bring together. Yet, whatever the religion, no sooner do they bring people together than they prise them apart again, by gender. Sex, you see. Religions find it troubling.

Women bear the brunt of this, of course. For instance, when Fr Seán Sheehy was growing up in Listowel, Co Kerry, women had to have their heads covered in St Mary’s Church and they sat on their own side of the aisle, away from the men. Just in case.

They were expected to be “silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” So said St Paul.

[ Jennifer O’Connell: We owe Fr Seán Sheehy grudging thanks for his repugnant screed ]

Women in St Mary’s back then had their heads covered because “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head — it is the same as having her head shaved”. St Paul again. “As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” Yes, him again.

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Fr Sheehy hardly needs to be reminded. Clearly, as we saw from his sermon in St Mary’s last Sunday, he is still back in the Listowel of his youth. Back then when there was rock-solid religious certainty, God was Catholic and in his Heaven with all Protestants in Hell, John B Keane was an upstart publican with notions, the Rose of Tralee was unheard of and there were only two genders.

At 80 years of age, and having spent so much time in America, how could he be expected to adjust to an Ireland that has undergone such social change? “Lunatic,” he said. And, coming from America, he should know. That he delivered his sermon at Halloween hardly helped, of course.

There is such a chasm between what Fr Sheehy said last weekend and the views of the great majority of practising Irish Catholics today you have to wonder whether there can ever be any religare between them. The people have moved on.

As part of the synodal pathway initiated by Pope Francis last year, tens of thousands of Irish Catholics gathered in all 26 dioceses on the island to discuss the church, its practices and teachings. What they concluded was sent to Rome last August in anticipation of a synod of bishops there next October.

And what did these Irish Catholics tell Rome? They want women priests, marriage for priests who want it and greater inclusion of LGBTQI+ people, the divorced and remarried, as well as of cohabiting couples and single parents. They want to embrace, not exclude all those “sinners”! Did you notice, Fr Sheehy?

[ Priest at centre of controversial Listowel homily stands over remarks ]

[ Listowel priest denounces sex between two men and two women as a mortal sin ]

[ Fr Seán Sheehy and the Listowel sermon ]

Did Fr Sheehy not notice that a survey of those 26 Irish diocesan reports found that 85 per cent of those practising Irish Catholics expressed concern at the church’s exclusion of LGBTIQ+ people, its attitudes and language towards them?

No acceptance there then of Pope Benedict XVI’s (in 1986 as Dean of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) description of homosexuality as “a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder”.

All out of step, then? Not anymore. It is that small cohort of conservative, traditional clergy and lay Catholics who are out of step in the Ireland of today. When it comes to pastoral practice on the ground, the dominant pursuit these days is to “smell of the sheep”, as recommended by Pope Francis. “Woolly thinking,” say the conservatives dismissively, pun intended.

This, however, is no longer the church of edict from on high. It is a get-down-and-dirty church, getting down with the people in their lived, messy lives, sharing their joys and sorrows.

As Fr Gerry O’Connor, of the Association of Catholic Priests leadership team, put it this week when he said that being a Christian or Christian teaching was “about finding authenticity for who we are in life”.

The average Irish Catholic is not having it anymore, and she/he who pays the preacher calls the tune

Asked about a recently bereaved gay man, Jason, who took Fr Sheehy’s words last weekend to mean his late husband was now in hell, Fr O’Connor said “for me, it’s inconceivable if we are made in the image and likeness of God, and Jason found love with his late husband, that God would in any way be negative in generosity, mercy, forgiveness. I think probably God would delight in Jason’s husband being authentic to who he is”.

He felt that for Fr Sheehy “to throw in a word like ‘lunatic’ in there about people who are struggling or searching for happiness and personal fulfilment and understanding of who they are in life is, without a doubt, deeply upsetting”.

In the Irish Catholic Church today the priest on the ground is much more likely to be in the mould of Fr John Joe Duffy, parish priest of Creeslough, Co Donegal, than to be of the hell-raising, fire and brimstone variety. Yes, some younger clergy — “children” of Popes John Paul and Benedict XVI — are attracted to that old mould, as are some priests from abroad now serving in Ireland.

The average Irish Catholic is not having it anymore, and she/he who pays the preacher calls the tune.

This lingering “anti-sexual terrorism”, as Augustinian Fr Iggy O’Donovan put it in reference to Fr Sheehy’s sermon, has had its day. It was a form of Catholicism that was always out of kilter with Catholicism generally, which tended to be more relaxed on issues of sexual morality.

That peculiar 19th-20th century Irish Catholic Church was a creature of Victorian respectability driven, politically, by those puritanical Welsh non-conformists who forced Gladstone to abandon Parnell in the infamous divorce action of 1890. With a finger to the wind, Ireland’s Catholic bishops soon followed suit and helped create that odd sex-obsessed, sentimental hybrid which became Anglophone Catholicism, spread by the Irish throughout the English-speaking world.

But it would be a mistake to think that the only church in Ireland so seemingly obsessed by sexuality is the Catholic Church. The Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches on this island may have long since conceded on women in the ministry but they are riven about homosexuality. Three of the 11 Church of Ireland bishops are supportive of the conservative Gafcon movement within worldwide Anglicanism and which is as opposed to any change in church teaching on homosexuality as Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2018 the Presbyterian Church in Ireland banned gay people from full church membership and banned their children from Baptism

At its worldwide gathering in Canterbury last summer a schism in Anglicanism was avoided by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby reiterating traditional teaching on the issue but by adding that he would not discipline member churches of the Communion which might act in a contrary manner. Clever “cakeism” at its best.

In 2018 the Presbyterian Church in Ireland banned gay people from full church membership and banned their children from Baptism. It also broke links with its mother church in Scotland because of a perception it was becoming too liberal on the gay issue. In 2019, at Sandymount in Dublin, in a bitterly contested decision, it removed Steven Smyrl as an elder when he married his same-sex partner.

And then there is our fastest growing religious minority, Muslims, with by their own estimate more than 100,000 in Ireland at present. As a religion, Islam could hardly be said to have a relaxed approach to gender/sexuality issues. Interviewed by this reporter in the late 1980s at the Islamic Foundation of Ireland mosque on Dublin’s South Circular Road, Ireland’s longest-serving Imam Sheikh Yahya Al Hussein spoke warmly of how living in the Ireland of those times was so compatible with being Muslim.

In general, the majority of Muslims in Ireland are Sunni and would be traditional in outlook. They also have the biggest mosque, at Clonskeagh in Dublin. As with Christianity, Islam has many denominations, many of them also in Ireland, including Shia, Ahmadiyya, and Sufi.

One of the more prominent Muslim leaders in Ireland would be Imam Shaykh Umar al-Qadri of the Sufi mosque in Dublin’s Blanchardstown. He presents the face of a more tolerant Islam in Ireland, as would Waterford-born Imam Ibrahim Noonan at the Ahmadiyya mosque in Galway.

Responding this week to Fr Sheehy’s Listowel sermon Shaykh al-Qadri tweeted: “In Islam, no human can make final judgement on who will enter Paradise or who will enter Hell. This is the domain of God. As far as sins are concerned, even providing water to a dog can be the source of forgiveness and reason for admittance to Paradise.”

In another tweet he said he was “not an expert on Christianity but I know that there are different approaches ppl [people] of faith have to scripture. Some push people away from faith and others pull people to faith. Whatever someone’s religious approach is, we should allow religious freedom and freedom of expression.”

So we should, but it has to be said that because of the growing tolerance and compassion of its laws, Ireland is fast becoming a foreign country for dogmatic religion.