Sir, The headline in The Irish Times of December 16th "78 per cent of Catholics follow own consciences in making moral decisions, survey shows - prompted me to do something very much out of character - to pick up a pen and attempt to exercise the right of reply. I read the article and I reread it. I couldn't hut wonder what headlines other commentators working with similar information might have produced.
Unfortunately for me and people like me, i.e. customers, the article exhibited a failing all too often exhibited (and expected) in other secular publications - namely, headlines and articles on Catholic religious matters that are either agenda-led or bereft of any real Catholic religious knowledge, sympathy or tolerance.
In what many are quite rightly promoting as a pluralist society, it is very striking how few religious articles in the modern press are actually much more than slapdash commentaries on polls or practice patterns, opinions or perceived trends. Not many (if any) are the journalists who make any genuine attempt to dialogue with the modern Catholic believer, or to understand anything of the substance of Catholic beliefs.
Many articles (in fact, the vast majority) show poor understanding of Catholic theology or teaching. The Catholic Church has always stressed the primacy of conscience in the making of moral decisions. I refer to chapters (1776-1802) in the recently published Catechism of the Catholic Church (Veritas 1994). In simple, easy-to-read terms the primacy of conscience it is stated: "A human being must obey the certain judgement of his conscience. If he were to act against it, he would condemn himself" (op cit 1790). Traditionally, this was described as operating "according to one's lights."
Mr Pollak's article begins:
"Only 21 per cent of Catholics follow the teaching of their Church when it comes to making serious moral decisions compared to 78 per cent who follow their own conscience, according to the latest Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll." At the very outset, the tone is set and the misrepresentation existent. Mr Pollak never instances any of the "serious moral decisions" put in the poll. Does he mean murder? Perhaps he is referring to social justice, the plight of the poor, the right to work? Is Mr Pollak referring to theft, the taking of character, the instruction of the young in crime, drug abuse or sexual abuse?
I would invite journalists to try to understand a little more, by engaging the reality of live Catholicism and not just its perceived demons. I do understand how many might he tempted to lose heart and cry hall empty. Yet in day-to-day life it is the shared perspective of me, and many of my colleagues, that together with the good and genuine people who practise Catholicism in the Ireland of the 1990s, the glass is still very much half-full. Indeed, to quote Mr Pollak, it is still two-thirds full - 66 per cent. - Yours, etc.,
St Aidan's Cathedral, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.