Preaching arrogance

Connect: What would Pope John Paul II have made of the modern media phenomenon that is the instant text poll? One suspects that such a consummate media practitioner would have found a way of working it to his advantage, although he might have had reservations about the glib facsimile of democracy which it represents.

Earlier this week, various radio shows took it upon themselves to ask their listeners whether the Republic should have a national day of mourning in memory of the late pontiff. The verdict was resoundingly in favour, which may have told us something about the mood of the State. Then again, it may just have told us something about the mood of that part of the nation which listens to daytime radio talkshows and is sufficiently exercised by the issue to bother sending a text.

With all due respect to those texters, and to the numerous correspondents to The Irish Times who saw Bertie Ahern's refusal to declare an official day of mourning as symptomatic of the irreligious, money-grubbing, decadent condition to which this once proud nation has been reduced, the Taoiseach was absolutely right. If private citizens wish to take time off work to mourn the passing of the great man, then let them do so, at their own expense. (Typically, of course, Bertie started backsliding during the week, allowing that civil servants and other State employees could take time off, with the taxpayer, presumably, footing the bill.)

Leave aside for a moment the fact that, back in the days when Catholicism supposedly ruled the roost, we never had days of mourning when popes died. Ignore the reality that, for the great majority of citizens, all this empty gesture would have secured was an otherwise meaningless long weekend (as happened after 9/11).

The entire farrago illustrates the unresolved questions which still remain in this country when it comes to the separation of church and State. The precipitous decline in the power and influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland since Pope John Paul II's visit in 1979 has left an ethical void which has been much remarked upon. But it's the way that power washed away so easily and so quickly that has left us feeling slightly bereft of a compass.

Unlike many of the Catholic nations of Europe, Ireland has never had a vigorous tradition of indigenous anti-clericalism. As in Pope John Paul II's native Poland, the absence of self-government during the 19th century meant we never experienced the growing pains that characterised the emergence of an intellectual movement overtly opposed to church influence on education, health and the law of the land (although at least we never experienced the obverse horrors of Stalinist, atheist totalitarianism). As a result, we don't have a tradition of forthright secularism, as expressed in institutions, political parties or media outlets.

We now find ourselves in an odd position, particularly when it comes to the (now largely secular) media. It would surely not be outrageous to suggest that a majority of the country's prominent media commentators are not practising Catholics. Nothing wrong with that - although some might argue that it misrepresents the span of beliefs in the population as a whole. But we have the slightly absurd spectacle of commentators who clearly are not of the Catholic or Christian faith lecturing the Catholic Church on how it should order its affairs.

On one level, one might argue that that is what commentators are paid to do: you don't have to be a member of Fianna Fáil to write about that party's activities; indeed, we'd rather you weren't.

But writing about matters of religious faith is rather different. The Catholic Church is one of the world's great organisations. Its future direction has not inconsiderable implications - moral, social and cultural - for all of us, whether or not we subscribe to its tenets. And there are tensions within the church itself over many issues. These are legitimate subjects for report and debate across society. But for a non-believer (such as this writer) to write about the manner in which the church should express its faith would be arrant nonsense. Quite frankly, it's none of my business. And, like a large number of people I've talked to over the past week, I'm not really that bothered one way or another.

But paper never refuses ink, and radio abhors a vacuum, so all week we have been subjected to secular voices sermonising about the best direction for the Catholic Church to take. There is an arrogance at work here which recalls nothing so much as the arrogance which used to characterise the Catholic establishment in this country in its heyday.

"People are formed in large part by that which they oppose," wrote Fintan O'Toole on the subject of Pope John Paul II this week. Which, presumably, explains all that pontificating.