Eighth Amendment
The Church should no longer depend upon State funding for pastoral initiatives, even when they seem to coincide with the good of society, writes Bishop Kevin Doran
I awoke last Saturday with a heavy heart because it was already clear that the people of Ireland had voted by a significant majority in favour of abortion. My sadness is not only for the innocent children whose lives will be taken from them, even before they have a chance to draw breath. I am sad because Irish society, with all its creativity, seems to have nothing better to offer women. I am sad because of what this mean for doctors and nurses who are called to be advocates for life.
The abortion lobby has been trying to remove the 8th amendment for over 30 years. Since the 1980s, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has had a pro-abortion policy. Against that background, pro-life women and men, young and old, worked day and night to defend the right to life. They took on the role that the opposition would normally be expected to perform in a democratic society. Though unsuccessful, they gave an extraordinary public service.
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To judge by comments on social media since the referendum, some people still thought they could remove the 8th amendment and then negotiate for a more restrictive abortion regime. The party atmosphere at Dublin Castle and the long-line of self-congratulatory interviews on national media will have made it clear to them by now that this is not going to happen.
In public debate, when the truth is inconvenient, it is often replaced by something which sounds comfortably like the truth. This happened time and time again in the course of the recent campaign, when respectable people engaged in what George Orwell would have described as “doublethink”. They argued that abortion was necessary to save the lives of women. This was not true but, if you say things often enough, people begin to believe you. People these days seem to focus more on their feelings than on the facts. The repeal campaign spoke about care and compassion, and people liked the sound of that. Many failed to notice that there was no hint of compassion for the baby in the womb.
The Catholic bishops did not seek to lead the national campaign, because this is a role more appropriate of the lay faithful. There were plenty of competent lay Catholics among the leaders of the campaign. The bishops, individually and collectively, were sensitive but clear about the teaching of the Church on abortion. We were unambiguous about the need to retain the Constitutional protection of the unborn. Social media was used very effectively to promote the pastoral messages of the bishops and to provide attractive resources on the theme of respect for life. It tends to be forgotten, also, that other Christian traditions, most notably the Presbyterian Church and a number of bishops of the Church of Ireland also strongly advocated a ‘no’ vote.
Today, in many countries where abortion has been legal for years, Christians continue to bear faithful witness to the fact that every human being without exception has an inherent right to life which comes from God, in whose image we are all made. That hope must inspire us now as we proclaim afresh the Gospel of Life, both in the political arena and in the renewal of our pastoral outreach.
As Church, we will need to explore new and effective ways of supporting women and their unborn children, families in difficulty and women who have had an abortion. We should no longer expect or depend upon State funding for pastoral initiatives, even when they seem to coincide with the good of society. If the Church is to be active in the public space, it will have to rely on the generosity of the faithful. In previous generations, when buildings were required, that generosity was never lacking. Today it is about investing in people rather than buildings.
We also need to find new ways of helping Irish women and men in this generation to rediscover the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. The exit polls would suggest that only about 10% of people allowed their religious belief to influence their decision. I accept that some Catholics may be angry with their bishops for a variety of reasons, but that in itself would not be a reason to vote for abortion. I believe it comes down to faith and the difference between faith and religion.
Faith is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and religion is the communal expression of that faith. For many people who would still consider themselves Catholics, religion has become divorced from faith. This is partly because, for far too long, we have tended to rely exclusively on a model of faith formation which depends on the schools and which, apart from the Sunday homily, ends for most people at the age of 17. Serious faith formation must become an integral element of the life of every parish. The outcome of the referendum brings this into sharper focus, as does the fact that the present Government seems intent on weakening the structures of religious education even in Catholic schools.
St John speaks of Jesus as “a light shining in the darkness; a light that the darkness cannot overcome” (John 1). May that the light of Christ now fill our hearts anew, so that we in our turn may be once again “a light to the world” (Matthew 5).
Dr Kevin Doran is Bishop of Elphin.
