Dangers of disparaging religion

Probably the most interesting speech by a politician for years was delivered last week by the Taoiseach when he warned of the…

Probably the most interesting speech by a politician for years was delivered last week by the Taoiseach when he warned of the dangers of "aggressive secularism", writes  John Waters

Speaking in Dublin Castle at the opening of a "structured dialogue with churches, faith communities and non-confessional bodies", Mr Ahern touched on the most dangerous trend in modern societies: the tendency of public discourse to sideline or disparage religion as something outmoded or dangerous. "So much of what is happening within our society and in the wider world is bound up with questions of religion, religious identity and religious belief," he said, "that governments which refuse or fail to engage with religious communities and religious identities risk failing in their fundamental duties to their citizens." This, considering the secularised nature of the discourse into which the Taoiseach was seeking to advance his analysis, was radical stuff. Usually when we hear talk in the public square about a "right" to religious belief, it is in the context of the need for public "tolerance" of faith and religious practice.

The implication is seldom far from the surface of such platitudes that, of course, whereas those who engage in such superstitions are to be "tolerated", they are also to be regarded as engaging in a near-obsolescent and unmodern activity. Our society seems merely to put up with people who believe in God because such "tolerance" is part of our liberal ideology .

It is some time since I heard a public figure identify precisely why this is such a dangerous trend. We are suffering at present, the Taoiseach said, from "a form of aggressive secularism which would have the State and State institutions ignore the importance of the religious dimension. They argue that the State and public policy should become intolerant of religious belief and preference, and confine it, at best, to the purely private and personal, without rights or a role within the pubic domain. Such illiberal voices would diminish our democracy. They would deny a crucial dimension of the dignity of every person and their rights to live out their spiritual code within a framework of lawful practice which is respectful of the dignity and rights of all citizens. It would be a betrayal of the best traditions of Irish republicanism to create such an environment."

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Mr Ahern here expressed something that no politician or public figure has articulated for a generation, and few clergymen have managed to say so well. Usually when the subject of religion is broached in public it is either by way of pious invocation or derisory dismissal.

Catholic bishops, for example, frequently speak about the importance of religious faith, but they tend, in doing so, to suggest that faith and religion should be embraced as a kind of duty, perhaps even a duty to them and their church, or, in the personal context, a guarantor of goodness. The Taoiseach was saying something altogether more interesting and profound: that human beings have a deep need for what religion offers, and that the right to practice is therefore a fundamental human entitlement. Although the current fashionability of atheism, agnosticism and secularism tends to convey that religion is merely a hangover from outmoded tradition, there is considerable evidence that it is, in fact, a natural and essential element of the human psyche.

The mood of the present tends to dismiss what our forebears took for granted: that we are born with a longing for what is "beyond", and that this longing is as real in us as the sexual instinct or the sense of smell.

Disparaged it may be, but tradition knew something about us that we seek to deny: there is a religious dimension inherent in the human being, faith comes from within, and without these we are less than human. This surely tells us that the importance of religion goes far beyond issues of morality and identity, extending also to hope, meaning and freedom.

The world on its own does not offer sufficient hope to carry the average human being through an average life. The baubles of the marketplace do not for long serve to quiet the longing in the human heart. And the promise of earthly freedom fails to address the issue of how we are to free ourselves from our instincts, our weaknesses, our egos and our selfishness.

As we observe our society plunging into the secular paradise promised by the liberal ideologues who triumphed over the custodians of tradition, we observe also the manifestation of the many baneful symptoms of this shift. Alcohol, drugs, rampant consumerism, sex crimes and countless related phenomena tell us that there is something in the human being that is voided by secular, material society.

Increasingly, our society manifests an erosion of hope, a misdefinition of freedom and a collapse of meaning, and all of these phenomena are directly related to the disappearance from our culture of what we know of as religion.

This is not simply because the Catholic Church has lost the authority to tell us what to do, but because, in the absence of a religious consciousness, there is, ultimately, no hope, no meaning and no freedom.