Press Releases
Patsy McGarry's address to the 'Church, Society and the Media' conference to celebrate 150 years of the 'Gazette'.
'Church, Society and the Media'
ALL HALLOWS COLLEGE, DUBLIN
Friday, 6th October 2006
Marking 150 years of the Church of Ireland Gazette
Address by Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent for The Irish Times
Those who look askance at niche religious newspapers, as worthy - even wordy - but dull publications are not regular readers of the Church of Ireland Gazette. With a circulation of about 5,000, an estimated readership of 20,000 and now 150 years old, it is not the polite, diffident observer of events some might expect.
When edited by Canon Houston McKelvey in the 1970s and early 1980s his no-holds-barred Protestantism allied to an overt unionism annoyed not only the then Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, and later Catholic primate, Cardinal Cahal Daly but also then Taoiseach Charles Haughey.
His successor from 1982 to 2001, Canon Cecil Cooper, a Southerner who has lived in the North since 1965, took what some felt was a more balanced approach ? he offended all sides. New editor Canon Ian Ellis has not been found wanting either when it comes to...shall we say?pertinent - if well reasoned - comment.
Invaluable in all of this has been the Gazette's continued independence, an extraordinary achievement given the limited resources it has available to it. And although it received monies from Church funds in the past these have been used to help with the logistics of distribution, not for editorial purposes. It is beholden to no Church body, not even the House of Bishops, and has been firmly backed by its board through many controversies, even when it has annoyed bishops.
Let us look at some examples of Gazette bite. In, what my predecessor in this job Andy Pollak once described as ``the blunt language of plain-speaking Ulstermen??, it castigated then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds for the selective way he released the Beef Tribunal report in August 1994, yet went on to condemn what it described as the "shameful" events surrounding his resignation later that year.
In the North - in the mid 90s also - it proposed that either Ken Maginnis or John Taylor lead the Unionist party, as they were more likely to open dialogue than David Trimble. It criticised President Bill Clinton, as Northern peacemaker, describing him as a mediocrity and a showman.
In July 1996 it, courageously, called on the Church of Ireland to rethink the longstanding relationship between many of its Northern parishes and the Orange Order, in the wake of Drumcree clashes.
In June 1997 it ruffled many ecclesiastical feathers, North and South and across the denominations, when it criticised the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, for showing what it described as an "almost naive innocence" in his then highly publicised comments about inter-Church marriages. Praising Bishop Walsh for his "generous and typically candid remarks", it went on to accuse him of wrongly implying that inter-church marriage problems were a thing of the past.
In August 1997 it opposed a possibility that John Hume might a candidate in the Republic?s presidential election that year as he would not be seen in Northern Ireland as "a non-partisan President".
In January 1998 it accused the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, now Cardinal Desmond Connell, of "muddled thinking" and of making "the most hurtful comments" in a debate about inter-Church communion. It in turn was criticised by Dean John Paterson of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin who said it had been "insensitive, not to say crass" in its comments on Cardinal Connell.
In December 1998 the Gazette said it was "astonishing" that Ms Celia Larkin should accompany Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at home and abroad as he went about State business. "Mr Ahern is a married man and he is not married to Miss Larkin," it said. All hell broke loose.
In February 1999 it called on EU commissioner Padraig Flynn to resign because of his refusal to answer questions concerning an allegation that, while he was Minister for the Environment, he received £50,000 from property developer Mr Tom Gilmartin.
In July 1999 it suggested the then impasse in the North was due to the inclination of then Northern Secretary Mo Mowlam to favour a nationalist rather than a unionist solution to the Northern Ireland problem.
In November 2000 it came out forcefully in support of Unionist party leader David Trimble, describing Jeffrey Donaldson as "a dangerous alternative" to him. It also accused Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen of then recently sounding "almost like spokesmen for Sinn Fein".
In December 2000 it accused the Republic?s Government of being "irresponsible" for introducing a give-away Budget at a time of rising inflation.
In January 2001 it criticised what it described as the increasing polarity between official teaching and general practice in the Roman Catholic Church. It referred to the "extremely restrictive" Catholic regulations on sharing communion with other Christians but which "clearly are being mainly ignored by the faithful".
Then in September 2001 Canon Cecil retired and all the wrong people released deep sighs of relief.
But under new editor Canon Ian Ellis the Gazette was soon ruffling feathers again.
At the Church of Ireland General Synod of May 2002 the principal of the Theological College, Canon Adrian Empey, spoke forcefully about "scurrilous attacks" on the College by letter-writers to the Gazette. Hitler believed that if you repeated a big lie often enough people would believe it, he said. "To hear the College pilloried like that is just not good enough." There was no basis for the attacks. They were "unfounded and contemptible", he said.
In the summer of 2002 and, no doubt anticipating the crisis ahead in 2003, an article in the Gazette noted that homosexuality had not been discussed at General Synod since 1976. There was reference to that article at General Synod the following year.
In May 2003 the Gazette described the papal encyclical Ecclesi de Eucharista as "most disappointing?? and said it was "once again denigrating the sacrament of Holy Communion in Protestant churches". The Roman Catholic Church "possesses no exclusive rights to Christian truth or 'ecclesialness'," it said
Later in 2003 and since then the Gazette has provided excellent coverage of the great chasm that has emerged in Anglicanism over the gay clergy issue.
In May 2004 it took a somewhat more critical line on the ARCIC Mary document than did Church of Ireland authorities.
And last March, in our own newspaper Canon Ian marked the 150th anniversary of the Gazette in an article. He quoted the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams on "surprise" as a central task of journalism.
One would have to say that the Gazette has honoured that task with determined commitment. Canon Ian wrote that ?while it is often decried, because of perceived intrusiveness in certain quarters of the press, the profession of journalism - whether ecclesiastical or secular - is a truly noble calling. Its purpose ranks among the highest in life - the building up of human freedom through communication of the truth.?
Now, I like that, and not least in the weeks we have just had at The Irish Times!
Then last month we had the death at 91 of Canon John Barry, an institution at the Gazette. In his 50 years writing for the paper he became one of the longest-serving writers in religious journalism in these islands. As Cromlyn he managed, as Archbishop Robin Eames observed, to be controversially critical and well-loved at the same time, - a remarkable achievement.
May he rest in peace.
The Gazette first appeared as a monthly in March 1856 under the title the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, when the Church of Ireland was the established Church. Representing approximately a quarter of the people on the island it was supported financially by all, which was wrong.
That ended with disestablishment in 1869 and plunged the Church, particularly outside the province of Ulster, into a period of deep uncertainty and insecurity. As before, it was members of the Church who spearheaded much of the political change then taking place ? men like Isaac Butt, who in 1873 founded the Home Rule League, later known as the Irish Parliamentary Party, and became its first leader. In 1877 he was succeeded as leader by another member of the Church, Charles Stewart Parnell.
In 1893 Church member Douglas Hyde founded the Gaelic League, a hugely influential cultural organization while the Gaelic Literary revival of the following years was dominated by Lady Augusta Gregory and William Butler Yeats, also members of the Church.
Without dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' suffice to say that the role Church of Ireland members played through the 19th and early 20th centuries in creating an Irish nationalist sense of identity was monumental. Meanwhile in Northern Ireland early in the last century another southern Church member, Edward Carson, was helping to galvanise and lead the Unionist/Orange sense of identity.
With partition this island and its peoples were polarized as never before. And although sectarianism ? religious and political -, and its ugly offspring paramilitarism, preceded partition, the division of the island allowed it thrive on a scale we had not seen before.
The most obvious tragic consequences of partition were the creation of a Protestant State for a Protestant people in Northern Ireland and what was effectively a Catholic State for a Catholic people in the South, and an island where for so over 40 years never the twain did meet. It was an island where in both of its parts minorities suffered at the hands of a dominant majority.
Following 30 years of violence and the uneasy peace since it would be difficult not to be aware of the consequences of partition for the approximately 40 per cent Catholic/nationalist population north of the border.
What we were less familiar with is the consequences partition had for the 10 times smaller minority of Protestants in the Southern State.
In 1911, at the last census before partition, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, and Methodist members in the 26 county area numbered approximately 10 per cent of the population. By 1981 that was down to 3.13 per cent. By 1991 it was down to 3.04 per cent.
What was the cause of this catastrophic drop in numbers, which saw whole communities disappear, not least 10,000 working class Protestants in Dublin, - those I like to refer to as `O?Casey?s people?, as playwright Sean O?Casey was one of them?
The main reason after 1922 was emigration, but often because of alienation from the ethos of the new State. Some were driven out, and there was the polite `genocide? engendered by the Catholic Church?s 1908 Ne Temere decree, which ordained that all children of a mixed marriage must be brought up Catholic.
The single biggest drop in Protestant numbers in the 26 county area took place in the 15-year period between 1911 and 1926, when the Protestant population of the new State dropped by a third.
A great many had been killed in World War I. Many who had served the British Government in Ireland, whether in the civil service or the military, also left and many were burnt out in a form of ethnic cleansing, particularly during the War of Independence.
Such was the gravity of the situation that in May 1922 the then Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Dr Gregg led a deputation to Government to inquire whether Protestants were to be permitted to live in Ireland or whether it was desired they should leave. They were assured they were welcome to stay.
In the main those who did stay were unionist in allegiance. They did not engage with the new State and lived apart, tending to their farms and businesses. As Jack White put it in his book `Minority Report? (1973) ??they had been a privileged minority: they were left a minority without privilege.??
They had been reduced from a situation where they had been a quarter of the island?s population to one where they were a 10th of the population of part of the island.
They were also marginalized by the new State. Its decision that knowledge of the Irish language must be a qualification for every public service job automatically ruled out the great majority of Protestants, as they didn?t have Irish. This was extended to the legal profession in 1929, where there had been a good number of Protestant solicitors.
In 1925 an attempt was made to outlaw divorce. The measure failed when it was discovered to be unconstitutional. WB Yeats, then a Senator, was furious. "I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly offensive.?? And divorce was banned under a new Constitution, 12 years later.
In 1929 a Censorship of Publications Act became law, against Protestant resistance, and contraceptives were banned in 1935.
A type of social apartheid emerged with Protestants increasingly retreating to their own communities, schools, places of work, and clubs. For identity they looked to Britain, while considering themselves Irish. Many, again, enlisted in the British army during World War II.
By the time that War had ended a new Catholic middle class had emerged in this State, whether through the public service or semi-state sector and agriculture. Also a newer generation of Irish Protestant was emerging, more southern Irish in identity.
Barriers began to break down and mixed marriages became more frequent, at great cost to the Protestant community - because of Ne Temere. But Catholic teaching still kept Catholics away from all things Protestant under pain of mortal sin, even from attending Trinity College.
It was considered a mortal sin, for instance, to enter a Protestant church. So when Ireland?s first president, Church of Ireland member Douglas Hyde, died in 1949 his successor as President Sean T O?Kelly, the Taoiseach of the day John A Costello, and his Government, sat in their State cars outside St Patrick?s Cathedral in Dublin while the funeral service went ahead inside.
Also, and what is rarely recognized, is that the Catholic Church?s teaching on mixed marriage was given the backing of the Irish Courts in 1950.
A Church of Ireland father , a man called Tilson, removed his children to a Church of Ireland home so they could be raised Church of Ireland. His Catholic wife brought a case to the High Court where it was ruled that as the father had given a written promise ? as then required ? to raise the children Catholic he was obliged to do so. Further, Article 44 of the Constitution, which recognized the special position of the Catholic Church in Ireland, was quoted as backing for the judgement.
This decision was appealed to the Supreme Court which ruled three to one upholding the High Court judgement. The dissenting judge, a Justice Black, was the only Church of Ireland member among the four judges hearing the case. He asked afterwards whether if Mr Tilson was Catholic the Court?s finding would have been different.
At a debate in Trinity College last year barrister Gerard Hogan disputed that interpretation of the decision pointing out its consistency in terms of law. Regardless, it was seen in just one light by Church of Ireland and other Reformed Church members in the Republic.
In 1957 we had the much better-known Fethard case where Protestant businesses were boycotted in that small town with the support of the Catholic clergy and local bishop, in the belief local Protestants had assisted a Protestant woman take her children to Belfast away from her Catholic husband. Rumours spread that there was a plot to kidnap Catholic children and bring them to the North where they would be raised as Protestants.
An indication of the effect the Ne Temere decree had on Protestants in this State can be gleaned from what a senior Church of Ireland clergyman once told me. He spoke of four large Church oif Ireland families in a part of the south-west during the 1930s. Each had 13 children. Not one of their descendants today is Church of Ireland.
But things did begin to change. In 1970 and again in 1983 the Catholic Church relaxed its requirements where mixed marriage was concerned. In 1970 also the ban on Catholics attending Trinity College was lifted.
Censorship laws had been relaxed in 1967 and in 1972 Article 44 was removed from the Constitution. In the 1970s also we had the beginnings of the `Moral Civil Wars? in the Republic on issues of sexuality, involving primarily liberal Catholics against their Church.
From 1979 artificial means of contraception began to become available as did divorce, finally, in 1996. And there have been three bitter tussles to date over abortion, an issue still unresolved satisfactorily where either those who oppose it or agree with it in circumstances are concerned.
It is also the case that Protestants generally have become much more visible and engaged where the life of the State is concerned though, apart from such exceptional souls as Dean Victor Griffin, formerly of St Patrick?s Cathedral, this has really only become a feature of more recent years.
In recent years too the Protestant population of the State has increased. According to the 2002 census, and for the first time in the history of this State, the Protestant population was shown to have risen. It stood at 3.73 per cent of the population, or 146,226, up from 3.04 per cent in 1991, when there was last a religion question in a census form.
The reasons for the recent increase have been attributed mainly to immigration. Another significant factor has been the number of Catholics and lapsed Catholics in mixed marriages who prefer to see their children raised Protestant, mainly Church of Ireland.
In summary then, looking at how Protestants generally have been treated in this State, there is little to be proud of. Some might suggest that it was inevitable and understandable, if still unacceptable, they should be so treated as, at least in the early decades of the new State, many Protestants held on to their British allegiance.
However, people of that view might reflect that the same understanding could be extended to the treatment of Catholics in the North by the majority there, and for similar reasons where allegiance to another State was concerned.
In truth in this State we approached our fellow Protestant Irish not as politically secular Republicans should have but as reconstructed Catholics of a peculiarly Irish kind. And we shouldn?t just point the finger at the Catholic Church in all of this.
At the Child Abuse Commission in September 2004 the provincial of the Rosminian congregation in Ireland, Father Joe O?Reilly, was explaining how the issue of child sex abuse had for so long been seen in Ireland as, "almost exclusively, a moral one".
He continued "Ireland was an extremely Catholic State after foundation in the 1920s, and wanted to shove aside all things regarded as British, Protestant and worldly. It wanted to embrace all things Catholic and freedom, which was seen in all things as Catholic. Reasoning in the Department (of Education) was close enough to theology with a religious sense of morals, which had an influence on our people."
In other words he was saying that, in instances, senior civil servants were even more fervently Catholic than members of the religious congregations with which they dealt.
This shouldn?t surprise us. During the 1951 Mother and Child, Catholic Church-State crisis then Taoiseach John A Costello declared in the Dail, in reply to an Irish Times editorial, "I, as a good Catholic, obey my Church authorities and will continue to do so in spite of the Irish Times or anything else.?? And he did, bringing down his government.
It is not difficult to understand that our southern Protestants suffered in such a climate.
We of the larger culture in this State should be ashamed at how we treated the people who brought us republicanism, and nationalism, who forged the sense of Irish identity, revived our language, saved and treasured our music, gave us such rich poetry and drama, - gave us Swift, Congreve, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Grattan, Edward Fitzgerald, Tone, Napper Tandy, Davis, Mitchel, Butt, Parnell, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge, Hyde, Shaw, Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, William Trevor and, forgive me, Graham Norton. No petty people!
That at our first taste of freedom we should, collectively, turn our back on such people and their traditions - as beggars on horseback - will remain a black mark on 20th century Ireland and on us "indomitable Irishry??, of whom Yeats so affectionately boasted.
In the North of Ireland, where Church of Ireland members were also in a minority, though a much bigger one, things were very different for them. They retained and sustained privilege, in part by supporting the implementation of policies which actively discriminated against Catholics in a manner that was as shameful as anything undertaken by Catholics in the south.
In the North the Catholic minority suffered greatly at the hands of fellow Christians while their co-religionists in the south sat on their hands. To that degree the majorities North and South bear a large share of responsibility for the bloody strife that subsequently engulfed Northern Ireland. It was also the case that members of the Catholic Church in the south and Church of Ireland members in the North did little to help their beleagured Church colleagues on the other side of the border in the decades of the last century, from the 1920s through to the 1960s. This may have been politically difficult in both contexts, but it has to be said there did not appear to be too much appetite for it anyhow.
There are deep lessons in all of this, - for all of us ? and which have great pertinence in an increasingly multi-cultural, pluralist Ireland. Our experiences should have taught us to take care of our minorities, respecting their traditions as we expect they will respect ours.
And we must not simply respect, we must assist them in living decent lives, in educating and caring for their children. We must foster a spirit of tolerance among ourselves and among them too, for all our sakes.
Which is why I find it disturbing that some on the Christian right, some few members of this Church too, seem unable these days to resist any opportunity to demonise Islam and/or Muslims. I know this is true because such people have been in contact with me seeking opportunities to do so.
Currently we have 40,000 Muslims in the Republic and, to the best of my knowledge, they are decent, law-abiding people, despite the crowing of alarmists who would have us believe otherwise.
We must learn from our history and ensure they do not suffer as did Protestants in this State or Catholics in Northern Ireland, throughout most of the last century. We must not scapegoat them too for having differing allegiances.
And I am sure the Gazette will continue to assist in this by ?building up of human freedom through communication of the truth?, as Canon Ian Ellis wrote in his Irish Times article last March.
Long may it do so.
Thank you