Mary Kenny‘Timely reminder: not all men are violent’, writes Mary Kenny
There is a famous Aesop fable about the sun and the wind trying to convince a traveller to remove his coat. The wind blows colder and colder, but the traveller only hugs his coat tighter. Then the sun comes out and shines and the traveller duly removes his garment.
I thought of that when I read of Pope Francis in Turkey. It was a tricky enough assignment for the Pontiff. Turkey’s relationship with the Christian world is, at best, ambiguous: there is the historical baggage of the past when the Ottoman Empire was regarded as Europe’s great enemy. Consider G.K. Chesterton’s poem Lepanto, and its ringing tones about the struggle with the Turk.
In modern times, Turkey is poised between a frighteningly fast-growing Islam and an anxious Europe and America.
It has not always behaved in an encouraging way to its small Christian – mostly Greek Orthodox – minority, and many have fled, or felt banished. In my father’s lifetime, 20% of the Turkish population was Christian: today it is 0.2%.
But Francis didn’t underline any of these negative aspects of Turkish-Christian relations. Instead, like the sun in Aesop’s fable, he emphasised the positive.
He praised Turkey for the good things it has done – for giving shelter to 1.6 million refugees who have fled from Islamic State violence.
President Erdogan had made a rather cold speech just before the visit about the hostility towards Islam of all westerners, but Francis did not reply in kind: he said his door was open, at any time, to those of other faiths, and that he would speak to Isil itself, in peace, if the opportunity occurred.
It was concluded by many observers that Francis was a supreme diplomat. And maybe he is.
But actually, what he accomplished was a perfect act of true Christianity.
Timely reminder: not all men are violent.
There’s a White Ribbon campaign poster in Dublin which bears the slogan “helping end men’s violence against women”. I can predict who this may most irritate: the mothers of sons.
There are some men who behave violently towards women (and indeed towards other men), but does this constituent the majority? Most of us would find this implausible.
The mothers of sons know that there are many males who are kind, good, hard-working, conscientious towards their families and decent Christians. Perhaps most of us like to believe this about our own sons, but there is plenty of objective evidence that many such good men exist. So why tar all men with the same brush of alleged violence?
There are also, be it remembered, many men who are themselves sensitive and vulnerable individuals. We know this from the suicide rates, which overwhelmingly involve men.
There are some violent men – the crime statistics show that. So advise women not to get involved with them as boyfriends, husbands, partners – nobody is forcing women into wedlock these days. And yes, campaign to halt violence – committed by some men. But not all men.
A tribute to Jackie Kyle
Jackie Kyle (pictured), the great rugby cap, who died at the end of last month aged 88, was a legend with my brothers and uncles when I was a youngster. Kyle had not only been the ace player who carried off the famous Grand Slam in 1948 and the Triple Crown in 1951, but he was a Belfast Protestant (and, by the way, a doctor) who was proud to put on the green jersey. At a time when partition was a bitter and contentious subject – the 1950s – Jackie Kyle seemed to be the embodiment of all-Ireland harmony.
Later in life he had some struggles with alcohol, and subsequently took the pledge of total abstinence. He spent some time as a missionary in Zambia. I heard him speak not long ago at the Irish Embassy in London, and he was charming, funny, modest and wise. Just the sort of person who should have been made a senator of the Irish State.
Check-lists are vital for creativity
“Discipline makes daring possible,” says the Harvard professor of medicine Dr Atul Gawande, who is currently giving the Reith Lectures on the BBC. The professor was praising the extraordinary and life-saving virtues of the simple check-list. If a medical team goes through a check-list of what must be done, mistakes and mishaps decline dramatically. In a situation where one nurse forgetting to wash her hands might mean a killer infection, the check-list is vital.
It is such an interesting idea that it is discipline that makes it possible to be daring and creative. If only the nuns had explained, all those years ago, that the rules of discipline were about freeing the individual, some of us bold schoolgirls might have understood better.
We do now: I live by the check-list.