Mary Kenny“…not to re-examine an original analysis of a situation is to perpetuate it”, writes Mary Kenny
Our President, Michael D. Higgins, has faced some robust criticism for his swift and seemingly over-effusive words of praise for the late Fidel Castro. Personally, I’d be inclined to give An Uachtarán the benefit of the doubt: when a person dies, the charitable principle of ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’ (‘do not speak ill of the dead’) is often the decent reflex. And in fairness, some members of the Irish public have echoed his sentiments.
A more apt criticism, I would say, of President Higgins’ political thinking, is his seeming reluctance to revisit any past pronouncements on the state of Venezuela and its late leader Hugo Chavez.
A devastating and detailed report appeared in the New Yorker (usually politically left-liberal) last month chronicling the appalling poverty, hunger, cruelty, injustice and crime which are the lot of everyday Venezuelans – and largely the political legacy of the late Mr Chavez, and his like-minded current successor Nicolas Maduro. The plight of the country is atrocious, and the shortage of food heartbreaking.
Pope Francis has expressed his distress at the suffering of the people. Cuban doctors working in Venezuela are shocked at the dreadful rise in crime – Fidel, they say, would never have allowed such disorder to prevail.
Yet Michael D. has never – so far as I know – reassessed his original unstinting enthusiasm for Chavez socialism.
This can be a sign of a rigid mindset. That fine (left-leaning) economist John Maynard Keynes once said: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”
It can be commendable to say kind things about a leader who has just died. It is less admirable to maintain a political ideology, without re-examination, which has been proved to inflict cruelty and even famine on ordinary people. And not to re-examine an original analysis of a situation is to perpetuate it.
A Catholic in the Elysee
If the centre-right political candidate, Francois Fillon wins the French Presidential election next April, France will have an observant Catholic in the Elysee Palace, probably for the first time since the administration of the late General de Gaulle. (Mitterand had a certain nostalgic attachment to his childhood faith, but for most of his career didn’t declare it.)
And, if I may say so, Fillon’s could be the first Presidential administration for some time which doesn’t involve a mistress or extra-mural paramour.
M. Fillon is married to a Welshwoman, Penelope, and they have five children. He was educated by the Jesuits, and remains loyal to his formation. (The same is true, incidentally, of Fidel Castro: faithful, or faithless, he remained a Jesuit boy.)
If Fillon leads France, Europe might be more inclined to recognise its Christian roots, and stand in greater solidarity with the besieged Christians of the Middle East.
Ordeals in childbirth
I remember sitting next to an older Irish grandmother on an Aer Lingus flight some years ago, and as we conversed about babies she recalled how long and painful childbirth could be when she was a young mother back in the 1950s and ‘60s.
She had endured an excruciating three-day labour, which was imprinted on her memory. (Nowadays, obstetricians and midwives will intervene to speed up birth, or perform a Caesarean, if labour is extended – prolonged labours involve stress for mother and baby.)
And I now wonder if some of the older women who claimed to suffer from the effects of symphysiotomies (a radical cutting procedure during childbirth) were simply remembering hard labours.
Judge Maureen Harding Clark has concluded that in many cases, symphysiotomies did not occur, but we can be sure that many mothers did go through prolonged labours, which were not unusual before the era of modern pain relief, epidurals and emergency caesareans.
Acceptance
In the Book of Genesis, Eve is told: “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children”, and that acceptance was sometimes taken too literally. (When Queen Victoria first used anaesthetic ether during childbirth in the 1840s, some Protestant clergymen said it contravened Genesis.)
Pain in childbirth can seldom be wholly avoided, but pain relief has been greatly ameliorated. Still, some older women will recall the ordeals, and sometimes, the complications, which arose in the delivery room. Overseas physicians and medical students used to visit maternity hospitals in Dublin to observe deliveries which could be complicated by extreme poverty: because of under-nourishment, mothers in inner city parts of Dublin sometimes suffered from rickets, which rendered childbirth more hazardous.
Thankfully, those days are gone. But remembering how it was, it’s understandable if the suggestion was made to some older women that what they had undergone was a symphysiotomy.
Come and meet Mary at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin 1, at 6.30 on Wednesday 7 December. She’ll be signing copies of her book of reflections – A Day and a Time – and speaking on the theme: “Does age bring wisdom?”