Political fast broken horribly
Friday's normally relatively quiet in Irish political circles, at least that I've noticed. No Vinnie B, no Prime Time, most of the TDs long back to the sticks to make mischief there for a while. Start of a Bank Holiday weekend doubly so, you'd imagine. But of course, the Catholic church has its own calendar, in many, many ways. Thus, Sean Brady's been all over, on the abortion issue.
What I find especially wearing is the incessant terminology carpet bombing. It would never do just to say "we're vastly opposed to terminations of pregnancy, except where a lack of same is actually about to kill the woman". No, instead we have to have all this guff about "medically necessary interventions" versus "direct intentional killing of unborn children". And of course, an utter determination to refuse to either provide a legally actionable test as to which is which, or to even admit that clarity is even necessary. To a point, this is all part of the usual political semantics-go-round. Been proposing a "wealth tax", and looking for a way to relentlessly criticise a "property tax" without sounding like a bigger bunch of asses than you will anyway? Insist on calling it a "family home tax". Repeat endlessly for every political party ever.
The RCC seems to have a knack of taking such things to rhetorical extremes, though. Doubtless it's partly an attempt a matter of judo: attempting to tweak liberals' tails by couching their gripes in terms of "human rights" -- and hoping no-one notices the lack of coherence of the argument, or the vast hypocrisy entailed in who's using it. But some of Brady's claims today went beyond that: pretty much into "Big Lie" territory.
The remark that first got my attention was that of "potentially menacing implications" to "religious freedom". I suppose we can give the RCC some credit for the concepts of both "freedom of religion" and "freedom from religion", having historically been such a strong motivator for the need for each. But it's pretty galling to hear that "Catholic hospitals" having their "rights" curtailed, when firstly, the legislation only provides for terminations in public hospitals. I realize that "slippery slope" arguments are stock in trade in this area, but that seems a pretty imaginative stretch. And frankly, freedom of conscience can only meaningfully be exercised by people, rather than by corporate bodies. Freedom to have treatment policy dictated straight from the Vatican, exempt from domestic law? Exactly how much do we want medical need to be met on a "whatever ethos the medics are having themselves" basis? And what the heck is the public good in having "Catholic hospitals" in the first place, if I might be so bold?
In a somewhat similar vein, there was bleating about "the existing legal and constitutional arrangements that respect the legitimate autonomy and religious ethos of faith-based institutions". This is reminiscent of a take on "separation of church and state" that the wing-nutters on politics.ie frequently seem to argue. Semi-permeable separation, where "religious ethos" gets a free hand, and it's the job of secular society to shut up about it, pick up the tab, and clean up their messes. As if the problem in these parts is that the country has too much influence on the church, rather than the church too much on the country. Archbishops thundering down the public airwaves telling politicians what to do, perfectly fine. RCC not being allowed to operate its own parallel legal system and state-within-a-state, an outrage!
Then on a different media appearance, he came out with some fanciful construction on events to claim that the legislation was "unlawful". That's outright factual inversion. He's arguing for the present situation, in which a legal right has been determined to exist, without legislative provision for it or clarity as to when the law is or is not being broken. That's the legal nonsense, and one that he's alarming eager to preserve. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt to act as a restraint on action... and where it doesn't do that, to act as a veil of obfuscation, behind which his like can pretend that such untoward matters don't arise. Except when, well, someone dies. Then you have to fall back on throwing out accusations of "exploiting a tragedy".
In one of his interventions (I might be losing track as to which is which), he complained that a whipped vote in the Dáil would be "undemocratic". This puts the tin lid on it. It's "undemocratic" for political parties to impose party discipline on their members to get government business through the parliament? Perfectly fine for a religious body -- and one that just happens to be a monarchy with theogerentoligarchical characteristics at that -- to be imposing its eternity-line whip on everyone, of course. Ignoring that opinion-polling has shown the public to be considerably in advance of sentiment of that in the Dáil -- never mind that of the constitution, much less of the church. Or that exclusion of suicidality as grounds for termination from the constitution has been explicitly rejected by the electorate twice now. (Once directly on that matter alone, and once when packaged up with FF/PDs god-awful "bill that becomes part of the constitution" carbuncle -- looking at you, Micháel Martin and Michael McDowell, MoH and AG at the time, each now presuming to be wise after the event on the issue.) In short, he's saying give us carte blanche to harangue TDs from the backwoods into voting against the legislation. And is there nothing to be said for another attempt to tinker with the constitution in a still-more-restrictive direction; I thought the last three went very well. OK, disastrously.
Ultimately, I suspect these ludicrously over-the-top protestations will prove counterproductive. Even on p.ie, even the most fanatical anti-abortion crowd are eager to portray themselves as not arguing from a religious starting point explicitly, or "necessarily". Even while agreeing with every particular of the RCC's tortured logic, surprise-surprise. All the while, of course, bishops waving placards on parliamentary demonstrations, cardinals on TV, thundering from "charities" like the Alive! pamphleteers in most parish churches... If the present legislation (cheese-paringly minimalist as it is) passes, as seems likely unless FG revolts and FF opportunism reach an epic scale, and public support is and remains in line with poll evidence, the church is throwing "capital" that it frankly doesn't really have any more, in order to play Canute. But it seems guaranteed to make the whole think very fraught and drama-laden in the meantime, at the least.
What I find especially wearing is the incessant terminology carpet bombing. It would never do just to say "we're vastly opposed to terminations of pregnancy, except where a lack of same is actually about to kill the woman". No, instead we have to have all this guff about "medically necessary interventions" versus "direct intentional killing of unborn children". And of course, an utter determination to refuse to either provide a legally actionable test as to which is which, or to even admit that clarity is even necessary. To a point, this is all part of the usual political semantics-go-round. Been proposing a "wealth tax", and looking for a way to relentlessly criticise a "property tax" without sounding like a bigger bunch of asses than you will anyway? Insist on calling it a "family home tax". Repeat endlessly for every political party ever.
The RCC seems to have a knack of taking such things to rhetorical extremes, though. Doubtless it's partly an attempt a matter of judo: attempting to tweak liberals' tails by couching their gripes in terms of "human rights" -- and hoping no-one notices the lack of coherence of the argument, or the vast hypocrisy entailed in who's using it. But some of Brady's claims today went beyond that: pretty much into "Big Lie" territory.
The remark that first got my attention was that of "potentially menacing implications" to "religious freedom". I suppose we can give the RCC some credit for the concepts of both "freedom of religion" and "freedom from religion", having historically been such a strong motivator for the need for each. But it's pretty galling to hear that "Catholic hospitals" having their "rights" curtailed, when firstly, the legislation only provides for terminations in public hospitals. I realize that "slippery slope" arguments are stock in trade in this area, but that seems a pretty imaginative stretch. And frankly, freedom of conscience can only meaningfully be exercised by people, rather than by corporate bodies. Freedom to have treatment policy dictated straight from the Vatican, exempt from domestic law? Exactly how much do we want medical need to be met on a "whatever ethos the medics are having themselves" basis? And what the heck is the public good in having "Catholic hospitals" in the first place, if I might be so bold?
In a somewhat similar vein, there was bleating about "the existing legal and constitutional arrangements that respect the legitimate autonomy and religious ethos of faith-based institutions". This is reminiscent of a take on "separation of church and state" that the wing-nutters on politics.ie frequently seem to argue. Semi-permeable separation, where "religious ethos" gets a free hand, and it's the job of secular society to shut up about it, pick up the tab, and clean up their messes. As if the problem in these parts is that the country has too much influence on the church, rather than the church too much on the country. Archbishops thundering down the public airwaves telling politicians what to do, perfectly fine. RCC not being allowed to operate its own parallel legal system and state-within-a-state, an outrage!
Then on a different media appearance, he came out with some fanciful construction on events to claim that the legislation was "unlawful". That's outright factual inversion. He's arguing for the present situation, in which a legal right has been determined to exist, without legislative provision for it or clarity as to when the law is or is not being broken. That's the legal nonsense, and one that he's alarming eager to preserve. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt to act as a restraint on action... and where it doesn't do that, to act as a veil of obfuscation, behind which his like can pretend that such untoward matters don't arise. Except when, well, someone dies. Then you have to fall back on throwing out accusations of "exploiting a tragedy".
In one of his interventions (I might be losing track as to which is which), he complained that a whipped vote in the Dáil would be "undemocratic". This puts the tin lid on it. It's "undemocratic" for political parties to impose party discipline on their members to get government business through the parliament? Perfectly fine for a religious body -- and one that just happens to be a monarchy with theogerentoligarchical characteristics at that -- to be imposing its eternity-line whip on everyone, of course. Ignoring that opinion-polling has shown the public to be considerably in advance of sentiment of that in the Dáil -- never mind that of the constitution, much less of the church. Or that exclusion of suicidality as grounds for termination from the constitution has been explicitly rejected by the electorate twice now. (Once directly on that matter alone, and once when packaged up with FF/PDs god-awful "bill that becomes part of the constitution" carbuncle -- looking at you, Micháel Martin and Michael McDowell, MoH and AG at the time, each now presuming to be wise after the event on the issue.) In short, he's saying give us carte blanche to harangue TDs from the backwoods into voting against the legislation. And is there nothing to be said for another attempt to tinker with the constitution in a still-more-restrictive direction; I thought the last three went very well. OK, disastrously.
Ultimately, I suspect these ludicrously over-the-top protestations will prove counterproductive. Even on p.ie, even the most fanatical anti-abortion crowd are eager to portray themselves as not arguing from a religious starting point explicitly, or "necessarily". Even while agreeing with every particular of the RCC's tortured logic, surprise-surprise. All the while, of course, bishops waving placards on parliamentary demonstrations, cardinals on TV, thundering from "charities" like the Alive! pamphleteers in most parish churches... If the present legislation (cheese-paringly minimalist as it is) passes, as seems likely unless FG revolts and FF opportunism reach an epic scale, and public support is and remains in line with poll evidence, the church is throwing "capital" that it frankly doesn't really have any more, in order to play Canute. But it seems guaranteed to make the whole think very fraught and drama-laden in the meantime, at the least.