Both sexes equally offended by bishops

The Catholic Church's moral credentials have rested on its willingness to treat all comers as equals before God

The Catholic Church's moral credentials have rested on its willingness to treat all comers as equals before God. This changed last week when the church issued a document based on the propaganda of those representing one side of an argument, and proposed editing scripture to fall in with this analysis. I refer to the document on domestic violence issued by the Irish Commission for Justice and the Pastoral Commission of the Irish Bishops' Conference, signed by two bishops, Dr Laurence Ryan and Dr William Walsh.

The second paragraph contains a figleaf of a sentence which reads: "Women too can be guilty of violence against men". There is, too, a mention of the voluntary group Amen, which provides help for men in violent relationships. The rest is indistinguishable from an extreme feminist analysis. In a section headed "Forms of Violence", the assumption in respect of each category is that the victim will be female. This is followed by a section headed "Some Underlying Causes of Violence Against Women".

The bishops justify this on the basis that "women rather than men are the victims in the great majority of reported cases of domestic violence" (my italics). Having established this criterion, they cite "statistics" of such "reported" abuse, informing us that Euro-barometer, a body which surveys trends in the EU, says violence against women is "increasing" and "widespread". The bishops list "other official statistics" which "indicate" that reported incidents of domestic violence have "continued to rise".

The only hard data are transcribed directly from the handouts of organisations operating in the domestic violence industry. The bishops state that "18,000 women contact women's refuges every year" and 7,991 calls were made to the Women's Aid Helpline during 1999. They do not say how many calls were made to Amen's helpline (9,000 in two years, without public funding).

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The bishops state that "more than nine out of 10 applications for barring orders are by women against violent partners". Thus, "reports" become proof of guilt. They further state that "it is reckoned [they do not say by whom] that in Ireland only 2030 per cent of those women who experience violence will actually report it".

The bishops list the following "forms of violence": physical violence; verbal and emotional abuse; isolation of the woman; threats; economic abuse; social control; rape within marriage; and pornography. In each category, they provide a brief note of elaboration. Verbal and emotional abuse involves "constantly criticising and insulting, threatening to kill, to leave the family home, to throw the mother and children out, etc."

On "threats", the bishops expand: "In the case of some mothers, especially young mothers, their partners threaten to report them to the authorities as being unfit mothers; to leave them or sue for custody of the child." On economic abuse: "Withholding money or forcing a woman to do her partner's will, because he controls the money, depriving her of clothes; harassing her over bills."

Since all their "statistics" arise from "reports" as opposed to convictions or other forms of verification, it is clear that the bishops are happy to include in their proffered total of 18,000 incidents of "violence" an unspecified number of cases in which women have "reported" that a man failed to give them enough money for clothes.

What do the bishops propose as an adequate clothing allowance? They do not say. Is it sufficient for a woman to maintain that an amount is insufficient for this to qualify as a "form of violence"? Since the bishops' figures are based entirely on complaints, this is the implication.

With regard to "threats", do the bishops countenance the possibility that some mothers may be "unfit", or that fathers have any rights to involve the authorities or apply for custody if that is their belief? No. According to the bishops, such a suggestion is always a "form of violence".

Clearly, all criticism of women amounts to "violence". It is important to remember that the criterion is not the man's sense of what he says, but the woman's perception of what she hears. This would appear to limit male-to-female communication to admiration, approval and the less vigorous forms of foreplay, ideally in front of an independent witness.

You might well ask: is it "violence" if a woman criticises a man? Is it a "form of violence" for a woman to threaten to banish a father from the life of his child? Do threats to abort a child amount to "violence"? What about threats to report a man to the authorities as an abuser? What about spurious applications for barring orders?

Every independent study in the Western world surveying men and women has found that domestic violence is roughly a 50-50 phenomenon, and that the issue is not gender but the dynamics of human relationships. This may be "counter-intuitive", but it is true. In making their tokenistic nod in the direction of the other side of the equation, the bishops suggest that the reasons many cases of violence by women against men go unreported are "the same reasons that many cases of violence against women are still not reported".

No: the overwhelming reason why men do not report such abuse is because of the pervasiveness of propaganda such as is contained in the bishops' document. Rampaging males spouting Corinthians following the chastisement of their wives do not exist beyond the pages of some lost novel by Flannery O'Connor.

The bishops seek merely to score a few PC points and divert attention from the genuine misogyny still to be found in many church attitudes and ideologies. Now, with this studied burst of misandry, we may conclude that they are seeking to be equally offensive to both sexes.