Jill Stephenso
Plus Bob Smith’s cartoon
Drawing by Bob Smith
Another chance to see that lovely picture
I am not entirely clear about what Tom Gallagher was getting at (19 March), although who he was getting at is perfectly clear: principally, my friend and colleague Tom Devine. At least it gave the editor yet another opportunity to publish that rather nice photograph of Professor Devine.
Tom Gallagher seems unhappy with the Scottish ‘Catholic elite’, or Scottish ‘middle-class Catholics’, who – unlike the hierarchy of the Catholic church – have tried to compromise with the modern world. It would be unfair to suggest that the Catholic church had not accommodated itself in any way to the modern world. It was, after all, in 1856 that Pope Pius IX approved plans for the construction of railways in the (then) papal states. Twenty-first century prelates are generally only too pleased to avail themselves of modern facilities, not least those affording them the ability to travel to be admired by the faithful around the world. I think I’m right in saying that Benedict XVI had a Twitter account.
Tom Gallagher’s preoccupation is with attempts to accommodate the church to ‘secular Scotland’. If only there were such a thing. Judging by the acres of newsprint (not least, virtually, in SR) and air-time that have been devoted to the travails of the Catholic Church, bickering within the Church of Scotland and the transition from one pope to another, to say nothing of an obsession with ‘sectarianism’, associated particularly with football, this is a society greatly in thrall to religion. Those of us who wish to see the churches consigned to the status and influence of private organisations, such as the Rotary Club or the Boy Scouts, are sorely disappointed. ‘Secular Scotland’, to my regret, remains a mirage.
What is it that Tom Gallagher wants? Perhaps I’ll have to read his forthcoming book to find out. But if he is so ill-at-ease with ‘secular Scotland’, does he wish Scotland to become as priest-ridden as Ireland? In Ireland, 90% of ‘state’ schools are run by the Catholic Church, and the church continues to exert a very strong influence on matters that should be beyond its reach, above all those concerning women’s reproductive capacity and rights.
In recent months, a young woman died from septicaemia in an Irish hospital because doctors would not violate a church-imposed rule that her pregnancy (which was already doomed) should not be terminated in order to save her life. The integrity of an unborn child who was not going to survive under any circumstances was given priority over the life of the mother. I regard that as scandalous, but perhaps imposing that decision is what Tom Gallagher means by ‘making Christian ethics a guide for meaningful living’.
Also in Ireland, children who have not been baptised into the ‘right’ faith – whether Roman Catholic or Church of Ireland – can have difficulty in finding a school to take them. And all this has happened at a time when new scandals, those involving the notorious ‘Magdalene laundries’ are being exposed, with the unconscionable human misery that they have involved over decades. Not much sign of a loving God there. Is that what we want in Scotland?
And another thing: I am sick and tired of commenters of various kinds, including some in the Scottish Review, using ‘middle-class’ as a pejorative term. What’s wrong with being ‘middle-class’? Tom Gallagher makes his own contribution in this regard: according to him, as I read it, the ‘middle-class Catholics’, such as Tom Devine, want to detoxify the Catholic brand of those things that make non-Catholics suspicious of Catholicism.
Opposition to gay marriage is the subject he regards as currently most prominent in this regard. I have to admit to being agnostic on this, as on matters of faith. I am not opposed to it, but I don’t really understand why a civil partnership isn’t sufficient, unless it be either to seek a confrontation with the churches or to receive the blessing of institutions that are, for the most part, unwilling to give it. If I were gay, I’d want nothing to do with the churches.
But the issues that have tended to inspire suspicion among non-Catholics over the longer term have perhaps had less to do with gay concerns – marriage, adoption – than with other reproductive matters. The hierarchy had a golden opportunity at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to resolve the then major sexual issue confronting it: that of contraception. It blew it, with Paul VI reaffirming the primacy and reliability of what is (un)popularly known as ‘Vatican roulette’, the ‘rhythm method’.
I remember a German newspaper, in a Catholic area of the Rhineland in 1968, displaying the headline ‘Wie sicher als die Pille’ – ‘as safe as the pill’. If it was, why not simply approve the use of the pill to achieve the same result? Many of the faithful were in torment after that, although most have now voted with…well, perhaps not their feet.
Other issues that generate suspicion among non-Catholics include the church’s influence over denominational schools. A friend tells of how she applied, at the start of her career, for a job in a Catholic school in Edinburgh. When she learned that she would need to be interviewed by the bishop before she could be appointed, she withdrew her application. Her subject was not religious or moral education but maths. Non-Catholics can also feel uncomfortable when confronted with manifestations of the cult of Mary, something of which John Paul II was a devotee.
But it is sexual issues, Tom Gallagher seems to be saying, that are the core issues of the Catholic faith that ‘middle-class Catholics’ in Scotland have tried to airbrush, thus betraying their faith. Perhaps he includes the insistence on ‘celibacy’, in theory, at least, for Catholic clergy. When did that become a doctrinal issue? How did the Orthodox church, which sprang from the same roots as the Catholic church, take the opposite view and welcome married clergy?
When did opposition to birth control become an essential part of the Catholic faith? Certainly, the College of Cardinals in 1830 deplored the practice of coitus interruptus, much used by French peasants to try to avoid the large families that would, under the law of partible inheritance, lead to the fragmentation of family farms. But when did this become a matter of dogma?
According to Angus McLaren, the Catholic Church became especially concerned about reproductive issues after the French birth rate fell below 30 per thousand of the population in 1830. This does not suggest that fertility control – the single biggest factor in improving women’s health and life chances – was a historic doctrinal issue that needs to be opposed tooth and nail to maintain the purity of Catholic dogma. Yet that is how it has been treated by the hierarchy.
Perhaps what the Catholic Church needs – and it may be rash of me as an unbeliever to say this, as I would also say it about Islam – is to strip its doctrines down to their essentials, to get rid of the ballast that has been acquired in recent decades or centuries but has no foundation in the basic Christian purpose of propagating the idea of a loving and merciful God, and no value for spreading the gospel to the faithful. Oh, wait – isn’t that what Martin Luther, originally a reformer inside the Catholic Church, was trying to do?
Jill Stephenson is former professor of modern German history at the University of Edinburgh
