‘New’ Ireland and Pope Francis

Abstract

‘New’ Ireland and Pope Francis Andrew McMahon ‘While Pope Francis expressed contrition for the crimes committed by the clergy, the consensus is that he did not go far enough in terms of outlining the steps he intends to take to ensure that abuse is eradicated from the church’. These words were central to an editorial which appeared in the Irish edition of The Sunday Times on Sunday, 2 September. Entitled ‘The taoiseach was right to put the Catholic church in its place’, it sought to evaluate the previous weekend’s papal visit. The reference to ‘the consensus’ in this context was, arguably, the most revealing aspect of the editorial. Not feeling obliged to offer specific evidence in support of so significant a conclusion, the writer seemed content to merely reference the prevailing ‘consensus’.1 Whilst believing themselves pioneering, and keen to challenge accepted narratives, Ireland’s media offer the public little other than ‘consensus’ journalism around various contemporary issues. A certain ‘consensus’ is reached by opinion formers as to how particular matters will be conveyed to the populace and the parameters of the ‘national conversation’ are thereby carefully circumscribed. A Broadcasting Authority of Ireland report into a defamatory RTE documentary in 2011, on the very theme of clerical abuse, highlighted what it termed ‘group think’ in how programme-makers had approached the subject.2 ‘Groupthink’ in Ireland ‘Groupthink’ affects much more than the portrayal of clergy child abuse in Ireland. It frames public discourse around key subjects, especially those relating to sexual mores, and outside commentators are quick to spot its prevalence. Brendan O’Neill, a social commentator on both sides of the Atlantic, identified its corrosive influence in the campaign for same-sex marriage. He wrote, in April 2015, ‘The run-up to the referendum has been about as far from a fair and open debate as it’s possible to get. One side of the debate – the side that is critical of gay marriage – is demonized daily, treated virtually as heretics, almost as criminals. It’s accused of causing Andrew McMahon Studies • volume 108 • number 430 138 psychological harm, branded as “hate-speakers” and frequently forced to make apologies simply for expressing its belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman’.3 This year’s referendum on the Eighth Amendment proved little better. London-based journalist Melanie McDonagh described ‘the suffocating consensus in print and broadcast media’ in Ireland in favour of deleting the Eighth, where ‘the Yes campaign had all the heavy hitters, the Taoiseach, the minister for health, the leader of the opposition, and they were faithfully followed by television coverage’. Highlighting that ‘about a third of the electorate voted No’, McDonagh concluded that ‘the only surprise was that it was that many, given that this not insignificant minority had nil, zero, nada representation in either politics or media’. She proposes that the referendum exemplified ‘the problem with democracy when the political and media establishment cohere on one side’.4 Given this background, it was unsurprising that the Irish media’s approach to the World Meeting of Families (WMOF) and papal visit in August descended into another exercise in ‘groupthink’. Day in, day out, report after report cast the event against the backdrop of Pope John Paul’s 1979 visit and a commentary on how Catholicism’s influence in Ireland had since declined. The fruits of this decline were invariably recited as being the widespread availability of contraceptives, access to divorce and same-sex marriage, impending provision for abortion and the decriminalisation of homosexual acts – often, misleadingly, described as the decriminalisation of ‘homosexuality’ itself.5 None dared question the worth of these developments, nor scrutinise their impact upon Ireland to date. Their wholesomeness was supposedly self-evident. It didn’t occur to the commentariat that there could be pitfalls in a country moving, within a relatively short space of time, from being the traditional kind of society they widely lamented it as having been. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was frequently proclaimed as the very embodiment ofthistransformedIreland.Atmanylevels,itwasagoodanalogy.MrVaradkar stands out among national leaders in his capacity to perform a volte-face on critical social issues without offering a credible explanation for doing so...