There is something so sad about yet another restatement from Archbishop Connell of the Catholic Church's "teaching" on contraception. No doubt he genuinely feels he is speaking a vital and ineluctable truth when he denounces contraception and planned parenthood, just as a baglady feels she is reiterating some great and imperishable verity when she corners you in a shop doorway and tells you how a Martian has invaded her cat with a view to conquering the world.
The baglady will return to her bedsit piled with ancient newspapers and half-empty tins of catfood everywhere, even while the Martian moggy defecates on the often-soiled bedding and great orange toadstools emerge from under the lino, and there she will relax, convinced that all will be well in her palace once she has exorcised her cat of the alien inhabitant. But of course, the Martian cannot be removed, because it is not there.
Sexual code
Dr Connell's palace, to be sure, is no doubt somewhat more salubrious than that flat, but the preoccupations with and the habitual declarations of what is supposed to be an enduringly authentic sexual code have about as much meaning to the plain Catholics of Ireland as do the baglady's incantations to rid the cat of its own little ET.
The quandary in which loyal ministers of the Catholic Church are placed on this issue is not a pleasant one; it was encapsulated rather well this week by Father Michael O'Leary, writing to this newspaper from New York. "Also, contraception is a subject I am nervous about preaching on. The dilemma is that I want to stay close to God's people, but also true to God's words."
If he states the dilemma as badly as that, then the dilemma is genuine; however, I might ask him, or anybody else, when God said anything at all about planned parenthood. Whatever about papal `revelation", the issue is simply absent from all scripture; to cite the example of Onan is merely to remind ourselves that, rather prudently, he didn't wish to get his brother's wife pregnant. Clever fellow.
But of course, he was guilty of planned unparenthood, which these days we usually call contraception. When Pope Paul VI denounced the pill nearly 31 years ago, he launched the Catholic church into approval of the mysteries of "natural" family planning and the baffling alchemy of the rhythm method. There was nothing remotely "natural" about the rhythm method, requiring as it did a dextrous use of the thermometer and the calender and a heroic faith in the ability of the libido to accord with the movements of a tube of mercury.
But it was the method endorsed by the Pope; and now we hear Archbishop Connell declare that planned conception is perilously close to planned production: the child is not so much a person as a consumer product. And he drew inspiration from Humanae Vitae - a much misunderstood and humanely anguished document - to subscribe to the notion that human beings cannot hold complete dominion over all nature.
Hair-splitting
These are matters which should vex us all. But what on earth is the rhythm method, complete with temperature charts, clocks, calendars and glass cylinders inserted into a woman's body, if they are not together a pseudo-sympathetic control of nature? Only hair-splitting can declare that to be more "natural" than the condom; and no hair-splitting at all is possible when one contemplates the dominion over nature which science achieves when it banishes cancer from the otherwise doomed, turns a leaking heart into a strong and enduring muscle, and returns sight to the blind. These, surely, are the conquest of nature by technology; should they too not be denounced?
"A profound alteration in the relationship between parent and child may result when the child is no longer welcomed as a gift but produced as it were to order," declared Dr Connell. That may or may not be so; but it is just as likely that the order is issued by suspending "natural" family planning - i.e. messing about with thermometers and urine and things - as it is by suspending "unnatural" methods such as condoms or the pill. In other words, the methods of family planning specifically endorsed by the Church might be morally no worthier than their unnatural cousins once either is abandoned and the couple seek a child. And that surely is a pretty kettle of loaves and fishes to contemplate.
Speaking of fishes, within my lifetime, it was the ruling of the Catholic Church, enforced with metaphorical rod of iron and quite literal fires of hell, that any Catholic who chose to eat meat on a Friday without a dispensation would be committing a mortal sin. Fridays were accordingly days of desolation and boiled haddock. In addition, those who knowingly broke their fast and then took Communion would be similarly damned.
Lent then was a season of deprivations; Good Friday a day of frugal collations and cold water. In other words, the Catholic Church once expressed itself, as did and do those other religions of the Middle East, Islam and Judaism, in dietary ways, and those dietary proscriptions were once amongst the most visible aspects of the practice of Catholicism.
Church congregations
That day is as gone as are the days of the Holy Roman Empire; though both the imposition of dietary rules and the possession of imperial might were once seen as essential expressions of the power of Christ's Vicar on Earth. The focus has shifted from halberd and alimentary canal to reproductive organ, even as church congregations plummet and vocation-masters gaze over empty classrooms in Clonliffe.
The Catholic Church is not a theatrical impresario. Merely because it is not getting box-office receipts shouldn't mean it should change production. But there might just be a message there. If, as Michael O'Leary suggests, the congregations are composed of "God's people", is it not possible that God has chosen to speak through them rather than through the bagladies of the organised Church?
Archbishop Connell: gifts and products
Michael D. Higgins TD
In An Irishman's Diary of June 19th, 1998 concerning Teilifis na Gaeilge, reference was made to Mr Michael D. Higgins TD, the former Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, as Michael D. Lorean Higgins. The Irish Times and Kevin Myers confirm that the reference was not meant to suggest that Michael D. Higgins at any time acted dishonestly or for personal gain in the matter of Teilifis na Gaeilge or on any other matter.