David QuinnDo the Church scandals justify the attack on Bishop Bill Murphy, asks David Quinn
Last month there was a very unfortunate incident on a train involving the retired Bishop of Kerry, Bill Murphy, who is now 79.
He was travelling on the train to Dublin with his brother, Michael Murphy, who is 90. They were approached on the train by a man in his thirties who was apparently angry at the way Kerry diocese had dealt with allegations of child abuse by priests.
The man punched Bishop Murphy in the face. Another man then intervened and the alleged assailant was escorted off the train by staff. It is unclear whether charges will be pressed. For the record, Bishop Murphy dealt with the scandals far better than some of his colleagues.
What are we to make of this incident? Certainly it has attracted remarkably little attention. If it was a prominent member of a minority group presumably it would have been far better covered and far more widely analysed.
Verbal abuse
I have personally spoken to priests down the years who have been verbally assaulted by members of the public, usually over the abuse scandals. A nun I know of had her veil torn from her head.
The late Fr Benedict Groeschel, the founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal based in the US, was a fairly frequent visitor to Ireland as well as many other countries and every part of America.
He told me that only here had he ever received verbal abuse for being a priest.
I have been verbally abused myself on the street once or twice. A couple of Christmases ago, a man spotted me and shouted in my face that I was a “f***ing Catholic toe-rag”.
Online abuse directed at the Catholic Church and high profile Catholics is obviously rampant. It erupts in particular during certain periods, for example, when the Cloyne report came out, when Savita Halappanavar died and during the recent marriage referendum.
Harry McGee of The Irish Times acknowledged that the overwhelming amount of the online abuse that went back and forth during the last abortion debate was directed at the likes of myself, Rónán Mullen and Breda O’Brien.
Shortly after the publication of the Cloyne report, the Iona Institute (which I head) commissioned a survey to determine attitudes towards the Catholic Church.
The Cloyne report was published in July 2011. The survey was conducted by Amarach Research in September 2011. Public anger at the Church was still running quite strong. (It would be interesting to repeat the survey today and see what the results would be.)
The 2011 survey showed that 47% of respondents had an unfavourable attitude towards the Church. Only 24% had a favourable view while the rest had no view.
It is possible, of course, to be a practising Catholic and have an unfavourable view of your Church at a given point of time over a given issue, or issues, not least the scandals.
More pointedly, however, almost a quarter of respondents said they agreed with the statement that Ireland would be better off if the Catholic Church vanished from Ireland completely. If that does not qualify as anti-Catholicism then the term has no meaning.
Imagine if we discovered that a quarter of Irish people believed Ireland would be better off if every African left the country; we would all instantly recognise this as racism.
The Jewish academic, Professor Joseph Weiler, seems to have been one of the first prominent individuals to use the phrase ‘Christophobia’ to describe what often amounts to hatred of Christianity.
He believes ‘Christophobia’ is widespread in Europe, but we don’t acknowledge it and are barely aware of it. Either that or we excuse it in a way we would never excuse ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘homophobia’ or racism.
Why is that? I think a large part of it comes down to what group is considered to be a minority and which is not. Gays and lesbians are very obviously a minority and historically have been badly persecuted and still are in many parts of the world.
The Jews are the most persecuted minority in all of history but anti-Semitism is growing again and is finding new justifications. It sometimes hides under the cloak of being anti-Israeli, although the two are not always the same by any means.
Anti-Muslim feeling is widespread in many parts of Europe. A report published in Britain this week says “hate crimes” against Muslims in London have risen 70% in the past year.
The police in London define ‘Islamophobic’ crime as any offence intended to affect those known or perceived to be Muslim. Incidents range from cyber-bulling and assaults to extreme violence.
Bishop Bill Murphy was assaulted. Using the definition offered by the London police force, the assault has to have been an example of “Christophobia”. It seems clear he was assaulted because of anger at the Catholic Church and because he is a senior representative of that Church.
Do the scandals justify this attack? Does the fact that the Church was once so powerful and therefore cannot claim ‘minority’ (and by extension victim status) in the same way Muslims can, justify it?
The answer is obviously not. The scandals help to explain why there is anger towards the Church – so does its previously authoritarian behaviour – but these do not justify punching a 79-year-old man on a train, whether he is a bishop or not.
Does the fact that Islamist extremism exists justify attacks on Muslims? Does it justify attacks on Muslim leaders? Again, obviously not.
There has been a lot of talk lately of strengthening anti-hate crime legislation in Ireland. I have mixed feelings about this to be honest. Bishop Murphy’s alleged assailant can be prosecuted if need be under current laws against assault without the need for further hate crime legislation.
But if we are to strengthen such laws then we need to be willing to recognise that Christians too can be targets of hatred and that the past crimes of the Church no more justify attacks on Christians than Islamist extremism justifies attacks on Muslims.
