Spying

Governments always spy. They have traditionally used  , among others ,  ambassadors  and business people  as spies, even though they were guests in other peoples’ countries. The excuse is that everybody does it and therefore….Which in  turn means that their morality is governed by business and politics ( which often is another name for business).

What still surprises us though is the amount of spying governments do. Not content with scraping in  rubbish bins on the ground, they send spies into space. And the result  is sixty million emails spied on per month in one country alone. What other spying is done we can imagine judging by  the technology available .

However there is no  use in  throwing up hands and lamenting. After all we did bring it on ourselves. We did it by saying nothing as one invasion after another was made into our personal privacy. We did not object when the cameras went up in  hotel lobbies, in the streets, even in the washrooms. We did not object when a sacred moment in human life, the moment of birth  began to be  portrayed in television  programmes not to show the sacredness of it but to give a thrill to watchers  of soap operas. There were  a few shudders of apprehensiveness when we saw the first portrayal of someone in  a  confessional box, another of those private moments in life which somebody decided should be private no longer, thus causing us no surprise when the spies bugged the boxes.

There seemed to be a grim determination  to seek out and destroy every moment which  centuries of  human delicacy  had  declared sacred,  to eliminate privacy and the  dignity of having one’s own space. We allowed it all to be invaded. And said nothing

We were told, of course , If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear. Nonsense. Those who do nothing wrong probably have more to fear than anyone  else.  

Nobody seems to see the connection between the depersonalising of soldiers by giving them no privacy even in the privy – a strange perversion – and having them watched and noted and recorded on their own  approach to  warehouse, witness box or washroom. We did not object to  millions being able to  zoom in to the exact spot where we lived, did not wonder why we should allow this to be done on  us,  or on a villager in Afghanistan seconds before the drones explode. But then we did not object when the technological advance of splitting the atom  was used to eliminate Hiroshima. Now we have allowed the president of a country  to use our technology – our technology – to enable  his henchmen – and  henchwomen , sad to say – to eliminate someone thousands of miles away whom the  droning president has decided without trial is an enemy of his state. Is it really possible for the  United States of America to  stay united in their  desire to let  this abomination  continue ?

Yes, it is.  Until eventually  the united states  disintegrate just as every empire on the face of the earth disintegrates. To forecast that disintegration , or to wish it for the world’s safety is not being un-American.  It is being so pro-American as to believe that no Washington government for decades has been worthy of the American people.

When Mr Obama was elected we all hoped  the  people would have  a  renewed life in which what we called the American dream would be fulfilled for everybody.  

Our thoughts  are different now. More modest . Thoughts about  curbing this  lust for power rather than  giving more authority to the same people for more of the same.

With a mixture of horror and hope we remember the childhood fable of the Frog that proudly swelled  up so much  that………………..   

Standards

Standards of  international political behaviour are not just falling, they are being deliberately lowered in the interest of those  strong enough to benefit by it..

For many years there has been an honourable  struggle to make war and politics and economics endurable or at least  less  cruel .    

Now we are accepting , even praising, universal spying on person  and nation.

Now we are accepting that a government can fire  explosives  from the safety of its own territory into the territory of another nation with no more justification than saying it needs to.

Now we are accepting  that a government can send armed forces into another nation’s territory to seize whomever it wishes to seize and all the offended nation can do  is “demand an explanation” .  

We are accepting that governments may torture  as a normal way of getting information.

We are giving our consent to the demolition of a whole system of safeguards which  took centuries  and  millions of  lives to make even debatable , let alone effective in law. 

And  while we are doing this we are piously asking :  Why are so many of our people taking their own lives?

How can we ask such a question when we are building up a society in which , for all our pious talk , might really does mean right,  death is  our chosen  acceptable solution for  problems and  international bodies set up to protect our lives  are cynically used by the strongest to allow more of their killings to be protected by law?

Why should any of us  complain ? Most of us  have accepted every bit of it, the drones, the invasions, the torture, the packed prisons, the economic systems which do not just tolerate poverty but deliberately create it because without poverty the systems will not work,  without poverty the wars will  not be waged – although there is a strong push now to make  war using  fewer and fewer people  just as we have invented   trade with fewer and fewer people  to work in  it, trade with less workers and more consumers, war  waged without  masses of people walking to be slaughtered.  But  the nuclear weapons are waiting in the wings ready for  use as soon as the really important people find a safe refuge for themselves, whether on this earth or beyond it. , and so the masses of people can disappear anyway.

Shame on us for  allowing it  to happen.

Right of Conquest

One of the ideas that  helped to shape history but  we could usefully get rid of is The Right of Conquest.

It was believed – or people professed to believe – that when you conquer another people’s land you  own it  by Right of Conquest. It was  a way of  justifying theft and the receipt of stolen goods. It was accepted by Christians in whose Bible  the right of conquest is  glorified, however ruthless it might be. Right of conquest is still with us, but it takes different forms nowadays. Sometimes it is disguised as opening up the way for democracy  for people who are suffering from dictatorships whose badness we , and not they, define.

Historically the theft of other people’s land has been glorified even to the extent of attaching sacred names to stolen territory. Corpus Christi was never meant to be used that way. With a Bible firmly  in hand , or  stored in a locker ready for action when required, it was easy for invading Christians not only to steal territory but even to say God was the reason for it. And God was praised for it too.

One of  our  neighbours in West Belfast , Mr. Gowdy  who in his own words was educated in the university of the Universe – and often showed us great wisdom as a result – used to  sum up a segment of Irish history neatly. When  told that one of the awful things done  in Ireland was that invaders came and stole the land of the O Neills, the great Northern family, he had an immediate and devastating answer : “Yes. And who did the O Neills steal it from ?”

They must have taken it partly by armed strength and partly by craft because in Ireland the land used to belong to the people who walked on it  for the very first time, and then by their tribes and  then when  one or more families became powerful gradually  control of the land became concentrated  in them. One of  many  interesting places in Ireland is Newry, Co Down where land was thus brought into the control of local princes, who donated some of it to a monastery ( coming in from outside)and when invaders were stealing monastery lands everywhere ,  the Newry land was stolen. As usual in those days of enlightenment when monasteries were destroyed, their hospital services, their rest and refuge houses were destroyed with them, in the first massive privatisation of medical services ever to happen . Stones of the monastery buildings were used to build fine houses for the new possessors.

What they had done was justified partly by saying they were  civilising natives and partly because God wished such things to happen and largely because  the Right of Conquest was believed and acted upon with vigour in those Christian times. Happily, a lot of the stolen land in Ireland kept its old names and did not have the miserable experience other peoples had of being re-named by the thieves in honour of  St Dominic or the Blessed Virgin once the blood had dried.

It seems  now that this ancient idea of the Right of Conquest is slowly giving place to a more modern  idea, the Right of World Policing. But it is much as usual. The aims are the same, theft of other people’s wealth , the methods are the same and , not surprisingly,  the excuses are the same.  After all, they say, powerful nations have  to civilise the world somehow .And that costs money. And lives. Other people’s  most of the time.  

No Trouble

One trouble about Ireland is that we never get to describing properly what is happening in and to it. We talk about The Troubles when what we  really mean is revolution. We talk about inter- religion hatred when what we mean is antagonism used as an instrument of government. Put it all together and what you get is that  in the northeast corner of Ireland  bad government using racism as an instrument of control led to a revolution.

With that  as a starting point we may reasonably hope to get somewhere , but it is doubtful if Dr Haass will even be directed towards it. He will be told, and will accept that the Irish problem is one of Protestant versus Catholic hatred. It is nothing of the kind. The problem is thoroughly bad government and has been  for centuries. Indeed the Protestant and Catholic populations were so successful in integrating and burying hatchets and living together that artificial antagonisms and pogroms had to be arranged on average every 12 years for a couple of centuries, as one of our perceptive friends, Andrew Boyd has pointed out.

Commentators on most conflicts  tell us  who benefits militarily , financially, socially, culturally from a particular situation . Not so about Ireland, where commentators  lazily or with intent declare that inter-community hatred is the cause of  the problems.  Ireland, particularly the northeast, has suffered  always from that false description . The world was told about the great Protestant-Catholic  blocs wrapt in struggle as if the Jewish people , the Muslims, the Humanists and about 60 different religious groups did not even exist. The result has been an interpretation of Ireland which has very efficiently prevented rational thought about it internationally.

It is time for that nonsense to cease but there is not the slightest possibility that Dr Haass will cause it to cease. From what he has said in public it seems he is locked into the old tired, inefficient model  of sectarian conflict in which what we have to do is get Mrs Mac Awilly to agree with her next street neighbour Mrs O Filigan and all will be well. No word of bad government leading to revolution, as any American commentator would be glad to notice if it were in a  Latin American country. No word of how the Humanists and the Jewish people and so many others have been left out of the thinking as blocs were petrified or if necessary created to suit the only model of  description allowed by government and press.

Control of flags and emblems can be dealt with locally in any society by clear laws and honest policing. Without those all the talking in the world is in vain. The past will be dealt with in time as it has been in other European countries , given  people’s need to survive with dignity and with an adequate sense of the realities of their life but the best way to ensure that happens is to guarantee good government and if good government is not possible in a Irish six county context which was  specially designed to create undemocratic  government then that context has to be changed. The shape of an ungovernable area may have to  be changed to suit modern  reality, rather than imperial needs of the past.

All that needs thinking – and doing – something rational about, but  is a matter not for  a visiting monitor but for a local and international  process of rational analysis and politics.   It is high time we had it.

New York Stops

Do cities ever  get so cluttered they just stop ?  A friend in New York foretold  that  would happen  – “One fine day”, he said, New York will just stop. Dead” . He imagined  a  policeman standing  lonely at a corner in  Fifth Avenue  patiently disentangling car after car in a city which had at last given in,    getting fatter and slower and finally giving up.

Could  cities really stop ? Get so big  they become unmanageable?  A “garbage” strike or even a garbage glitch in New York  now can  be not only inconvenient but disastrous. Or   a  power failure, freezing elevators, machines, traffic lights, when   for a few frightening hours citizens  realise how much they depend on electric current  and  make frantic resolutions never to let it happen again, wondering  what kind of shop  sells generators cheap, then remembering  that unless you keep a tankful of gas ready for action, which most people don’t,  dead pumps will not help much.

A city grows  , so it needs more money to look after more people, so more people are encouraged to come in and pay more rates and taxes . People need shops and cinemas and theatres and  sports arenas and then they need  more people to fill them  because of rising costs and profits and they all need trams and roads,underpasses and overpasses, roundabouts and swings .  That means frayed nerves and irritable complaints that you can’t even get a road mended without a traffic pile-up  half a mile long, appointments are missed and road rage is no longer an affection of speeders but one afflicting those who can only move slow metre by agonising metre. Cities  get  over-crowded,some  thrive on it for a while ,  thrive in spite of it  – and some seize up from it. That has always been the way ,we human beings just must have cities, crowded cities, and yet  no people on earth have found the secret of managing the growth of cities so that they don’t seize up on them.

The Roman emperor Nero, nearly 2000 years ago,  was blamed for solving the problem of over-crowding, pollution, traffic congestion , bad housing , refuse pile-up and much else in Rome in his time – by sending out his slaves one day to burn down about half the city. Guilty of arson or not,  he blamed the Christians for the fire  , played a tune on his lyre, recited a poem or two  and rebuilt the city to a fine plan which would have done credit to a sane man but  was miraculous for an irrational  one like him. 

So when crawling along in slow moving tailback queue  on a city approach road , let’s be glad and rejoice – if we lived in ancient times, things could be a lot worse.

Wise President

If Mr Obama is wise

and if  the pressure groups behind him are not overpowering,

and if those  in the USA who really want  the  world not to disintegrate will now stand up and say so

and if the United States really wants to  survive for this century as a real union,

then there will  be no military intervention in Syria.

                      But perhaps

                          all that is asking too much.

Earth Renewal

Why are there so many public pronouncements and so much public argument about the morality of what we do in private life  and so few about  the morality of what governments and big business and  armies do ? A lot of talk about gay marriage – or gay people – and little about drones and invasions, and banks tempting us to spend beyond our means ?

There is one explanation that Christians might  find unwelcome .  Jesus Christ  made clear what his followers should do – renew the face of the earth, change its habits, obey law but don’t let law overcome generosity; the world needs changing and you can change it – it will need  vigour and wisdom that are superhuman, even  divine, certainly,  but it can be done just because that superhuman , divine vigour and wisdom are  available. So these Christians set out into the broad world happy and willing, full of confidence in the  divine power they had inherited. And  some of them believed the world as they knew it was going to end soon and therefore their task was to make sure it was renewed soon and  fit to end gloriously.

Then they got a taste of Corinth. And Rome. And Athens ;  of sailors in  Mediterranean harbours wary not to be caught in the cargo investment scams or lost in leaky boats, Athenians who said, We must talk to you again sometime, but declined to talk now, Galatians who still fought with each other  even after they became Christians, the power of emperors and kings who could kill with a word not because people were bad but because they were good. These Christians  did their best to renew the face of the earth, but did many of them  lose courage and narrow their view not of what should be done but of what could be done with such a world plagued as it was with so many things going wrong,   and worse,  so many things wilfully made to go wrong?

If the conversion of the world in so short a time was too daunting , though, the ideal of personal perfection was still there and Christians held on to it. Some went to desert places to achieve personal holiness – it was as if they had taken a long sad look at the world and said, All I can do for you is go away  and pray for you. For them the concept of retreating from the world took the place  of staying in with the world , to become  holy apart rather than  with common effort. The scholar Jerome looked for a deserted place, translated scriptures and urged intense personal holiness, he was one  retiring Christian genius among many.

Looking at what is happening today one can understand their dilemma. And in any case , conversion of the world begins with the conversion of oneself.  That might explain why some Christians  seem to be afraid of  what they call a “social gospel” and who sometimes rebuke their fellow Christians with being more concerned with  social action than with individual beliefs. Right through the history of Christianity there runs   the idea  not only that there is  a struggle between good and evil out there in the markets and  harbours and even  in homes, but there is a struggle inside each person and perhaps that should be dealt with first. Or only. Whether early on with Manichaeism or later with Jansenism or now with the idea of the world, the flesh and the devil winning , this war between good and evil has to be waged, it is said,  between the spirit and the flesh in each person . And therefore….where do we start? Perhaps, though,if  the war starts  there it may end there  too, and the face of the earth may stay unrenewed. Maybe. Maybe.

On the other hand, it is an old lesson in old Scriptures that even an angry God will spare a whole city if there is even a handful of good people in it. And that thought must have made many a tired Christian heave a sigh of relief and leave off despairing.  

Clearly it still does.

Feile

One of the events in Féile an Phobail ( The West Belfast People’s Festival) was a discussion open to anyone wishing to speak.

About God. Or about No God if they so wished.

The Reason?

To get step by step to the point where people can speak their minds and be treated with courtesy at all times , in all places, about anything and everything.

And also, although people are sceptical about this, because neither those who believe God exists nor  those who believe God does not exist are using their best arguments in public discussion. But they should. A look at the books shows it, and listening to radio and television discussion about religion underlines it to the point of exasperation.

Why the fuss about best arguments? Flabby arguments do nobody any good.  There are strong – and dignified – arguments to be made for so many things but if we discuss only the flabbiest of them our  intelligence and mental work get flabby too, because we don’t  need anything better. But given a strong, dignified and able opposition or questioning , the strength and validity of our own arguments get sharper and sharper. Without  questioning and objection, we  may get away with a lot but some day when faced with a really questioning mind and someone who really wants to know what we are on about, we may have nothing to offer, whichever side we are on.

It was a mistake for political parties and churches – and even, unhappily, universities – to try to ignore or get rid of  inquiring minds. Human beings are inquiring beings, it is part of our nature , whatever is there we want to know about it, and whatever is not there we don’t want to pretend is there. Nobody in his or her senses wants to believe in something or someone that  doesn’t exist.

However, we have a problem. Every time  people get to the point of discussing real issues, in politics, economics, religion for instance, somebody else creates a diversion. it may be a parade here, a false crisis there, a diversion into a side issue or a side street, a tactic  the ancient Romans knew about and used cunningly, just enough bread and more than enough   circuses to keep  people occupied and not too serious.  We too have had  all that on an international scale. The Cold War and the War Against Terror were and still are part of that scene. We think ruefully how much intellectual vigour , how much worldly wealth , how many lives we   spent  at the behest of leaders who brought   us on such crusades. As if  wrongdoing  in one system meant an  opposing  system just had to be good, or as if like a modern Don Quixote, you  could wage war  against an Ism and make believe it was not against  people .

Maybe we  don’t like the idea of “giving a platform” to our opponents, but we may  be doing both them and ourselves a favour. One of the many good things Féile an Phobail has done is show we have nothing to be afraid of  from listening to other people’s ideas.

In this as in most things we need each othe

Children's President?

One can question the wisdom of bringing hundreds of children into the Waterfront Hall in Belfast to celebrate President Obama.

One should question it.

However,  those of us who believe in  the principle that “Parents are the first and principal teachers of  their children” have to bow to the decision of parents to do it. But because there are plenty of examples of children being shielded off from politicians who were the elected representatives of the people and  were trying to bring a peaceful settlement to our politics,   now we have to work out the reason why children should be brought out of school and into a gathering where praise would be given without question to a man who has more power than he needs and, many people believe, less responsibility than  needed to use it wisely.

At present  torture is  being used not just secretly, shamefacedly, but as a normal part of information gathering by governments. We have abandoned the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt. We have approved the principle that if anyone anywhere  is deemed a threat to  another state’s  security – not by what he or she has done but by what he or she may do – a government making that judgement  without public trial and proof, can send in a missile controlled from a thousand miles away and destroy  a neighbourhood. In Beirut ? Belfast ?  Larne?   Tubbercurry ?

What we have agreed to would have been beyond belief only a few short years ago. But that we have assented to all this and much more is undeniable after the Waterfront scandal. A new and sinister word to make people  forget  Watergate : Waterfront.

From now on they  can say , We have Waterfronted our children………….

We have been lectured about integrating our schools. Religiously of course. Washington governments racially integrated their schools because they had to, not because they coolly decided that was the humane thing to do. Washington governments have created more wars than  even a British administration could do  in so  short a time. The fact that they lost  the wars did not deter them from creating more. Meanwhile  we do not know how many of their  own people are hungry and even starving , because they will not tell us. They will however send a President here to tell us  how the world should work – or whether it should work - and how we should create peace by the simple means of changing our own way of life , not  uttering even a word about how governments work. The presidential speech could well have been made in a world in which all governments, except one, do  wrong and in which it is the duty of children to make a new world out of one that  adults have already ruined and show all the signs of ruining again.

A new meaning for the Biblical saying  “And a child shall lead them…”, now according to the Waterfront bible children are  expected to lead them because the adults have given over  responsibility t o them. Without power of course. That  is sacred and strictly controlled.

Greater  reason for wonder than the event  itself -  a Pied Piper event - in the Waterfront Hall  was the approval of it by educators and parents. We may be depressed by much of what governments do, but even more can we be depressed by how many people approve of it.

Schools can hardly complain though if  educationalists cease to be recognised as  teachers of political reality. Or moral politics.   

CELIBACY OF CLERGY

If a priest wants to marry, the church cannot forbid him, it is a human right recognised  by the church. What it can do, and does, is forbid him to act as a priest if he marries. This could be challenged in ecclesiastical courts but  then in civil court because church courts if these exist for such a purpose would give an unfavourable judgement He could then go ahead and marry with whatever civil formality is available. The church’s own principle is that if any humanly made law can be obeyed  only at the cost of serious inconvenience or hardship it ceases to apply so a  priest  can marry civilly or with the help of sympathetic other priests. No church law has been broken. If objection is made that no cleric can proceed against church officials in civil courts without episcopal consent, this also is a humanly made law and should be governed by the same principle.

The real issue is one of unjust discrimination.

As the  Church laws now stand, if a priest marries he stands to lose his chosen way of life which has been recognised as a special vocation by the Church, he loses also social standing  and livelihood. 

Whatever about Irish courts, if  the case of a church forbidding priests to marry or forbidding priests to minister if they do marry were to go  to European courts  this could probably result in a declaration that such discrimination is against human rights. British people and the British Catholic Church may find this difficult  because  religious discrimination  is licensed at the highest level of government in Britain, affecting members of the British royal family who if they become Catholic  lose their positions. That is, treating  legally enforced clerical celibacy as a matter of discrimination and civil rights has political repercussions. On the other hand, it is hardly likely that Catholic Church authorities would be willing to risk creating such political problems and this might induce them to move towards changing  the enforced celibacy rule.

The issue of discrimination becomes  clearer in  England where some priests are deprived of ministry if they are married, others are not  if they have come via the Anglican priesthood. Two parishes side by side, one with a married priest, the other with a priest forbidden to marry is easily seen as not only unjust but illogical.

All this underlines the need for priests who wish to marry to act courageously, openly  - and carefully – having assessed the possible reaction of their parishioners etc , and the support or opposition to be expected from fellow  clergy. Open discussion then is  necessary and helpful. There is a precedent for it in discussions which happened in Holland for instance   while Vat 2 was in session ; these   even questioned whether the Church could annul marriages or create invalidating impediments- as far as such discussion is concerned, what has been done manifestly can be done!

Probably there was never  a time when  so many inducements to sexual intercourse were not just available but were imposed on people – through film, T.V., plays, books etc.,etc. St Paul wrote that if we wanted to avoid “evil” or temptation we should have to leave the world altogether and this is true now more than in his time. We  tried to avoid a lot of , not only sin, but sexual attractions by putting up a barrier, physical, intellectual or spiritual, between them and priests but that is becoming less and less possible.  Irrespective of whether such things  are right or wrong, moral or otherwise,  it means greater stress than ever on priests  who are bound to celibacy by law. This is not a compassionate situation; this  law was made in circumstances dramatically different from ours . So the original obligation imposed by this law is very different now from the obligation imposed in past times. The law is the same, but  present circumstances make keeping the  law quite different. Demanding a change in the law is then not only  logical but  even required in order to make law operate justly. We are in danger of imposing  morally impossible  burdens on priests which grow rather than diminish in time and this is expressly condemned by Jesus Christ.  The number of priests becoming smaller means that more and more priests are required to live lonely lives. We recognise  a  divine principle that it is not good for a person to be alone unless there is an overwhelming reason otherwise.  Priests  lonely  in an increasingly antagonistic or indifferent world are in a danger which grows with  time. Refuge in a priestly community or in any community does not solve the difficulties which are deeply spiritual and personal. It is easy to say such difficulties should be and can be sublimated – but   we have  not yet devised a real theology for “secular” priests, as our seminary programmes have shown, and we have to create a fresh theology of the vows of “poverty” and obedience” as well as that of “chastity”.

It is  difficult to defend the present discrimination as between RC and Anglican priests in English parishes.Clearly there is no  inability inherent in  the married state of priests, so it is absolutely and alone a matter of church law. And this church law allows one set of married men to minister as priests but not another who may be living in the adjoining parishes ! Every law should  be positively justified; unnecessary laws should not be passed or continued. They should not be passed for the sake of control but should deal with and reflect a serious threat to a community or a serious good to be achieved. It could be argued that neither of these  applies – if a great good can be achieved by celibacy that great good can be more greatly achieved by voluntary rather then imposed celibacy  in modern circumstances.   Can abstinence be imposed on people and keep its potency or worth?  Under law it becomes  a matter of obedience rather than of self-giving. And if law oppresses any of our people then it should be changed unless it serves some other very good purpose. Legally imposed celibacy is not necessary for priests, it is discriminatory and in modern circumstances dangerous. 

In some future time we shall have to face not only the effects of  changing   the celibacy law -  including  financing families,pensions etc. -  but also the effects of the law as it is at present.  For example at present we  refuse  to  allow priests to acknowledge women as their wives with whom they have a loving relationship. The church recognises its  duty to “regularise” sexual situations among  others , why should it have difficulty doing so for priests ?

But that is another day’s work.

Choices

The debate about abortion in Ireland has  often been angry but not as bitter as some people feared. We seem to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s  position.

A strong argument comes from our  tradition of recognising the dignity of human life and the age old belief that human life should not be destroyed. Indeed that argument should be enough because it is a dignified statement of dignified belief which need not be proved, because a person has a right to  belief without being required to prove it is valid .  It is not easy though to go on from that and say we have a right or  obligation to stop others doing what we think is wrong. A moral principle accepted by many Christians, Catholics included, is that in moral matters we are bound to use ordinary persuasive means to get something good done or something bad avoided,we are not bound to take extraordinary means , simply ordinary prudent measures are enough. That leaves the  question  though, can we agree to   abortion in hospitals which are our responsibility as members of the public or the community ? That  question  faces people now and there is a strong body of opinion that  we should not, because we would be cooperating, however remotely,  in something we believe is wrong .There should  be provision for a conscientious decision not to take part in or  encourage it, but how do you register a conscientious decision not to pay for it when other people do it ?

 It is not a new dilemma - we pay for the divorce courts even if we disagree with divorce. But  again, normal means are what conscience requires and if decisions go against us we have done what is morally required by helping in whatever way we can to lessen the incidence of abortion in the future. Some  years ago there was controversy about whether people could in conscience take part in courts in which divorce was managed. Nowadays that moral problem is scarcely heard of. Also, the use of contraceptives was a cause of moral worry but nowadays that moral dilemma seems not to cause much worry any more . Times change and for churches the practice and decision of the Faithful come into play; in  church,  decision makers    decide whether these are  a valid expression of the wisdom of the Faithful or not and they act accordingly. In this way laws are made and changed in  church. However  dealing with life and death of a human being is a much more serious and troubling matter than preventing conception.

In this it would help if a church were to go to the defence of all life more vigorously, for example by being more outspoken against war and more forceful in demanding that everything be done to prevent or stop it; making mother and child life and care  a priority in social policy. The  rules governing the morality of  taking part in war are already there so this is largely a matter of being more vigorous in using them.

Also, since  church attitudes to the use of conrtraceptives have altered in practice,  partly because of circumstances, it would help if it were to look closely at the  arguments it used against them. If use of contraceptives would lessen the possibility of abortions, the moral rule about using the lesser of two wrong things applies. Often in life our choice is not between  something good and something bad, it is between two things both of which are good or  both bad ! And  moralists have wisely made provision for all those possibilities.

It would be wise also for pro-life campaigners to look closely at the arguments they use. For instance  they cannot say the  Catholic Church   has always accepted that a human person begins with conception. This was not always agreed in the history of that church, there was even dispute about how many months would probably elapse before a human person is present. This was in  the days when belief in the infusion by God of  a human soul was generally accepted , so the question, When does it happen ? was discussed but never definitely answered.

Nowadays most people will have to be convinced by arguments other than those of divine law or revelation , and if  arguments based on these are used  one has to be very careful not to use them beyond their strict meaning,. Thou shalt not kill for instance is weakened if human life is not protected in all its phases, and  while  the Bible contains instructions to people not to kill it  not only allows killing in wars of occupation but even commands it ,  sometimes in very strong terms. The Catholic Church would benefit then from  a thorough examination of what it is saying about  life taking and life saving  and state   precisely  the meaning  of what  it believes and teaches,  in present circumstances   about abortion and war especially.  

No matter what the laws of a state say about what is allowable , people have their own principles, privately and perhaps as members of a church and these principles will guide their lives. Obeying the law but not being guided by  what state laws say about morality.  That remains a  church’s strongest argument   or plea in discussion of war and abortion.

The  Irish constitutional  idea of a mother’s right to life being equal to that of the foetus is strange – one would have thought  it would  be more appropriate to express things the other way round if one dares  to express human rights in either of these ways.   

In  future, people will possibly find themselves emphasising the need and  the possibility of reducing the incidence of performed abortions rather than eliminating them since eliminating them could seem  a   probably impossible task. A church’s best plea then could be  respect for human dignity and life  and for a disciplined way of life to protect   what we believe is our God given mandate to manage and cherish all life on the planet.

Human Rights

Human rights organisations are sometimes challenged: You say plenty about  abuses in other countries, why don’t you condemn human rights abuses in your own country too?

Usually two answers are given : one is that human rights organisations can only deal with other countries’ abuses , otherwise they lose the support,material or other, of their own governments.  Governments can  control criticism of what they themselves do. But human rights organisations say all is not lost because if you struggle for human rights anywhere it has an effect everywhere ,and furthermore, if an organisation is prepared to say in all cases  that “ any government guilty of this abuse, no matter who or where , is to be condemned” this  helps. So, if there are abuses at home then they make sure to condemn these abuses when they happen in other places. Often, they say, this is the only way.

But as well as this,some organisations have said that reporting and condemning abuses in countries other than their own means  people will join in condemnation of them  and  perhaps this may be the only way  to create a public revulsion against  the abuses at  home.

It is all very true. Still, the most dignified aim must surely be to make it possible  for every  person and  organisation to speak freely and publicly about human rights use and abuse at home or abroad.  Otherwise we are conniving at abuse. And furthermore, it is inconsistent of government to insist on bringing to light abuses by it own citizens if it is unwilling to shed the light of day on what it does itself, especially if it is abuse of people it is paid to protect.  

All the time the meaning of human rights is being re-defined . The meaning of homelessness was  re-defined . Homelessness used to mean really not having a place to shelter. The meaning became wider and people could  be reckoned homeless for less than that. Such re-defining  broadens the scope of what we understand by human right and dignity, and present day governments seem intent on making sure the re-defining if benevolent should go no further and should even be reversed.

Sometimes re-defining  is not so benevolent. Definition of what torture means and how governments  sanction it has been re-defined, to the great loss of human dignity and loss of centuries of patient work to abolish it.   

In the past the use of children for work,  amusement or sexual gratification was treated with remarkable indifference, remarkable because nowadays people have swung over to a different concept which seems not to have existed during long periods of our history , that of the rights of children. It took a long  time to  get acceptance of the rights of all men, then the rights of all women, then the rights of all children. It  has all been a long and tortuous struggle which is by no means over and indeed judging by  actions and propaganda by present governments , the struggle is being, if not lost, certainly and deliberately weakened   Re-defining  problems and  solutions can be helpful or hurtful depending upon who is doing it. Governments are extremely bad at it. Citizens will have to define their own dignity by the way they insist on re-defining being benevolent , not vicious. And that is a monumental and increasing problem.

The rights of people imply the duties of people. Balancing   these two is so difficult that it deters a lot of us  from even trying to solve problems of human suffering, or human happiness , we may settle for doing our  own private best in our  own circumstances.But we are all in a severe crisis if death and forceful domination and lessening of dignity are  more honourably treated by governments and public opinion than  life and freedom.  

COMPASSIONATE LAW, LAWFUL COMPASSION?

One more extraordinary decision was made in a law court recently. A woman suffering from an illness which cannot be cured and will become progressively worse wanted to make sure that if she decided to end her life her loving husband would not be prosecuted for helping her  to do that..  This is a heart breaking situation that commands all the sympathy, and uderstanding we can express. A heart breaking situation  and a  reminder that we have the duty and the privilege of easing our human burdens and making our laws minister to  that easement.

It was  an extraordinary decision because there must be few if any – are there any ?- laws penalising people for helping someone to do something that is legal. Of course lawmakers  understand that when you make – or unmake – one law you may have to make  – or unmake – other laws to deal with the consequences of what you have done.  The law which made it illegal to help a person taking his or her own life while in distress was made when   attempting to end one’s own life was illegal. One could see the meaning of that. But when it was no longer an illegal act , must  it be illegal to help ? One could see the meaning of  that as well, but one could see inconsistency too. Judges can say there is no constitutional or other right for anyone  to take his or her own life and this is true – there is a difference between saying an action  is without harm to others and not punishable, and saying a right is conferred to do it. There are many things we disapprove of or are regretful about  and  they are not punishable by law. Some people then are afraid that if you allow active help to someone in distress who wants to end life then you open the way to abuse  both of  law and of helpless people. All that adds to the sorrow and fear which is terrible enough in a grieving family. We would never want to add to that.

Lawmakers are facing a problem also in the laws about abortion. Making something acceptable or at least non-punishable by law always creates worry about abuse of law and of people. That is one of the many problems  of the human condition which we as rational and sympathetic beings have a duty –  a privilege – of solving. That is what  creating a dignified and potentially happy human life is about and it is difficult and cannot be done without  fellow feeling, compassion, realising another person’s pain so acutely that you suffer with them .

We have removed what  used to be called the “stigma” of taking away our own life . And we remember that there have been times in history when ending one’s own life for the sake of others – not losing it but actively ending it – has been publicly called heroic, although we never admitted that it could be other than an exception to the most stringent of human or superhuman rules.

The present state of law  regarding the awful dilemma of a grieving husband and a suffering wife seems to be that there are times when  grief and suffering will dictate certain irresistible measures and those who take them will have to put themselves at the mercy of the courts in the hope that , as the founder of the Christian philosophy of life said , sympathy and compassion will govern law and not the other way about.

Ambition

It is a strange irony. A women dies who quoted  St Francis on the steps of 10 Downing Street and then went and made  war,  a man becomes Pope who  takes the name of Francis so everyone hopes he will make peace. As if two worlds were in conflict  and either one   might just possibly be more likely to win. There has not been a public figure so heartily condemned as Margaret Thatcher or a public figure of whom more is expected than the new pope. Whose work and legacy will be most significant for the world remains  to be seen.

Prime ministers and  popes have  similar problems. Both are surrounded by ambitious people. Either of them  may be ambitious himself or herself. Most of the historical problems of church and state are about ambition. And greed. And the awful struggle between resulting good and ill. Similar problem for both institutions. For instance, massive privatisation  took place when Catholics rebelled against their religious leadership centuries ago and created what became known as the Protestant Reformation, when monasteries  along with their places of refuge, medical facilities and schools were taken over for private profit, even the very stones being used for what became known as “great houses”; present day governments are selling  off what could be, and often are, national possessions to private owners for private profit, so  history is always, as they say, like history. It never happens just once. Church and state and everything else can be, have been,  are being, will be  used for private gain, power or pleasure. The wonder is not that it happens – it would be  a wonder if it didn’t – but that we always seem surprised when it does. Like being surprised if it rains.

One thing we are entitled to be surprised about though is that our universities, media, churches and suchlike seem  so complacent about it ; we may make the excuse – or give as reason- that  the universities have lost their independence, depending for funds too much on government and big business, that the churches  have lost their power to think and speak in realistic moral terms  because they accepted that private and communal obedience are   the  overwhelming  virtues , that the media are advertising media rather than informing media  because they have to survive on money from somewhere and are more likely to get it from those who sell everything than from those who want to know something.  All of this is sadly true but there were  times in our history  when penalties for speaking your mind were much more severe than they are now. Yet some people did it.  And now there are more ways of saying your piece than ever before. For some reason we have not got round to thinking of the communications media  as means for us to say  what we want  to say to the world at large; we seem still to think of the communications media as ways in which “they” will speak to “us”.  We can  think out, write out , arrange, edit , set up books of our own, but many people who have realised this have set about communicating so many trivial – or hurtful – things that many sensible people stand aghast at the frivolity of it all. Nero still plays and sings while Rome burns but our  Nero may live just down the road from us. And in face not just of danger but of such triviality one is tempted to turn away and think of something else.

But the great questions of the world , about good and bad, about happiness and sadness, about sickness and health, about redistributing  the world’s goods not just among the already rich but among us all, these questions are ready and waiting. And we would make a mistake of we are simply waiting also,  for someone else to give us the answers. If Margaret Thatcher ruined some lives and  enhanced some , that is a matter of fact; if a new Pope can make a new Sacred Deal, that’s a  possibility.  But we can  decide what effect if any that has on our lives and do something about it , however small that may seem . The man who wrote , The great appear great because we are on our knees looking up at them, was shot dead for his trouble, but we are still remembering there was great   sense in what he said.

22.4.13