I CAN’T fundamentally disagree with Bryan Redmond (Letters, July 21st) when, in light of the predicted swine flu pandemic, he calls for an end to the sign-of-peace handshake at Catholic Masses. But if the public health risk is really that serious, maybe it’s time for us as a nation to take a much more radical step and ban handshakes altogether.
As for the particular danger posed by religion, I suspect Mr Redmond is exaggerating slightly what calls “this silly meaningless nonsense of shaking hands with all and sundry at Sunday Masses”. Maybe Christians in Dublin 14, where he lives, are prone to overdoing it. In any Catholic churches I have been to, however, the approach has been much more minimalist.
Far from shaking hands with all, or even sundry, most people target only their immediate neighbours, left and right: at least one of whom is likely to be a close relative and therefore already infected with anything they have. A few of the more aggressive peace envoys may cover all the primary compass points, by shaking the hands of those in front and behind as well. But the only people I have ever seen extend the process to a whole pew, for example, have been priests.
In any case, given falling Mass attendances, the sign of peace is hardly the biggest risk of spreading viruses. It would be a sad thing if the weekly church service was a person’s only point of physical contact with others. Although I have no statistics to support it, my guess is that the average Irish person might be at least as likely in any given week to have his hand shaken by – say – the local TD.
Even as we speak, more than 160 of the country’s most promiscuous handshakers have departed Leinster House for their summer breeding grounds. And if anything is certain, it is that they will spend the next two months shaking hands with all and – yes – sundry: at Masses, public meetings, weddings, wakes, funerals, football matches, and anywhere else they find a hand free. It’s a cruel joke, in the circumstances, that the places where TDs formally meet constituents are called “clinics”. But at least this hints at one possible plank of the HSE’s autumn flu strategy. At a minimum, political clinics could be targeted with posters warning about the dangers of infection. A more radical scheme, based on existing programmes for condom and needle exchange, would ensure that people attending were given free gloves.
The GAA would also need to be part of any nationwide handshake management plan. It’s not just that GAA players invariably offer each other the sign of peace at the end of a match (often after beating each other up for the previous 70 minutes). It is also usual for rival fans to shake hands at the end; when, moments before, typically, they have all been biting their nails. That can’t be healthy.
If the holy trinity of church, TDs, and the GAA joined forces to discourage unprotected hand-shaking, we could be halfway to a de facto national ban by September. Then maybe the HSE could concentrate on hand-shaking black-spots, such as the Ballinasloe Horse Fair: where the notorious custom of spitting on your palm before offering it could be outlawed by emergency legislation. Other higher-risk handshakes, such as those reportedly used by Freemasons, might also merit special treatment.
Some critics will say it is completely impractical to eradicate such a popular habit. But if the campaign were approached on an all-island basis, as it should be, the HSE could draw on the expertise of the Democratic Unionist Party, which has successfully avoiding shaking hands with people for years. “No Hands Across the Border” would be one possible campaign slogan.
Yes, there are other ways of tackling the problem, such as that advocated by Hillary Clinton during last year’s Democratic primaries. Asked how a politician stayed healthy on the campaign trail, she said: “You wash your hands all the time”. Cue an outbreak of derision from the Clinton-hating right: more literate members of which likened her to Lady Macbeth, trying to remove the stains of her past crimes.
Albeit inadvertently, around the same time, Barack Obama suggested another possible solution when he and his wife greeted each other with the famous “fist-bump”. Involving only brief manual contact, between knuckles, this is much more hygienic than the traditional exchange of palm sweat. True, it had its right-wing critics too, who preferred the description “terrorist jab”. But then Obama won and his gesture became part of the zeitgeist.
Getting back to the sign of peace at Masses, this is one potential alternative. Maybe two of the more reformist clerics – Willie Walsh and Diarmuid Martin – could set the trend by exchanging a highly publicised fist bump at Maynooth, accompanied by the words “Peace, Bro!” After all, I don’t believe anyone in ecclesiastical authority ever specified that the gesture had to be a handshake. Equally there’s nothing to say a Mass-goer, called upon for a sign of peace, could not just smile beatifically at his or her neighbour. If some form of contact is considered necessary, another safe option would be the continental-style “kiss”: which is really a hug, with only the most fleeting of touches between cheeks, and no exchange of body fluids whatsoever.