Slow-burning anger in Irish politics

Even before the horrors of clerical sex abuse of children finally pulled down the crumbling authority of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, this programme made its own inimitable contribution to social change by making them not hateful but ridiculous.

Sidenote: ISTR an interview with Linehan in which he said that he could never make something like “Father Ted” today, because the abuse scandal had changed his view of the church from gentle disdain to blazing hatred. For a start, a setting with three priests exiled to a remote parish by the hierarchy would immediately make viewers think “oh yes, I know what they’re doing there…”

It sure doesn’t look like it was a smart move by the Green Party to join Fianna Fáil in government at the tail end of the boom. Spectacularly bad timing.

[sorry, I thought I erased that]

…lynched like they deserved) are now publicly whining that Obama doesn’t luv them,
are being taken seriously by the corporate media, and are sending their money to the GOP.

What I feared a couple of years ago in the USA is that the Democratic leadership would inherit the mess, clean it up just a little, take the blame, not reform much, and serve as the foils for a GOP resurgence. My fears were well-grounded.

Fine Gael are the most right wing party in Irish politics, now that the PDs are gone, but that doesn’t make them very right wing by international standards. In Europe, they are part of the European People’s Party (1). Most of the other members are some variety of Christan Democratic Party.

(1) I would prefer they joined the European Mammals Party, to make common cause with all our furry brethren against the European Squamous Thinnggggs party, but then we Irish are famously averse to reptiles.

#9: basically, the bubble. Fintan O’Toole’s book about the crisis is quite good in recognising this – it wasn’t all corruption and silly mansion houses, there really genuinely was a massive liberalisation and social revolution that accompanied the economic boom.

It just occurred to me that none of the recent large-scale journalism in the genre of Economico-Hiberniobollocks has used the term “cute hoor” for any of the perpetrators. This seems odd.

10 & 11: Whatever it was, I still want some. You must have heard that the Catholic League recently said “Bad museum!” to the Smithsonian, and the Smithsonian flattened itself on the floor and whimpered.

Of course, there is some weird history there, given that the Catholic Church had artistic control over Hollywood for decades, at a time when it was demonized among large segments of the population. My favorite data point is the Olivier/Garson Pride and Prejudice, which made Mr Collins (played by the estimable Melville Cooper) Lady Catherine’s librarian. Jane Austen, a village rector’s daughter, could depict a clergyman as a pompous toad-eater, but Joe Breen wouldn’t let MGM do it, even if the clergyman was an Anglican.

Break-up of the ERM! A whole lot of things changed forever that year [1992].

That was part of the process whereby Ireland’s authority figures came into disrepute. Until then the officials of the Department of Finance were believed to have some idea of what they were doing even if the Minister (Bertie Ahern) had none.

Another significant development that year was the ‘X’ case: the Supreme Court held that a 14-year-old girl had the right to an abortion if her life (as distinct from her health) was at stake. You might think that a very conservative finding, but Holy Mother Church had conniptions.

@ roac

Maybe because it actually wasn’t made in Ireland, but rather by the BBC (which would maybe have hesitated to make a show along the same lines about the CoE, rather than Irish priests?). Morgan was an exile from these shores, after his Scrap Saturday satire show was done in by political pressure on RTÉ.

@ Niamh

Long used to pulling in up to 40%

Correction here: FF is long used to pulling in more than 40%, not “up to”.

18 & 19: Yeah, I saw that. But wasn’t it broadcast on Irish TV? Or can everybody in Ireland pick up British broadcasts? Either way, I can’t believe the Church wouldn’t have found a way to stop it before, even if it meant building transmitters to jam the frequencies.

(As I acknowledged before, there’s no limit to how wrong my ideas might be. My point of reference is the uncle in At Swim-Two-Birds: “No disrespect, now!”)

“Maybe because it actually wasn’t made in Ireland, but rather by the BBC (which would maybe have hesitated to make a show along the same lines about the CoE, rather than Irish priests?). ”
Channel 4 made it actually. The BBC was doing this kind of stuff about the C of E in the 1960s, in “All Gas and Gaiters” with Derek Nimmo. Anglican clergymen are not exactly considered beyond ridicule in English comic writing.
“I can’t believe the Church wouldn’t have found a way to stop it ”
I don’t know of any practicing Catholics who were offended by Father Ted, or tried to ban it. There was an attempt to ban it by Anglo-Irish Trotskyists in the so-called Irish in Britain Representation Group, on the grounds that it represented “anti-Irish racism”.

@ Paddy Matthews

And it was Channel 4 rather than the Beeb.

Yes, you’re right.

Roac in #20:

“(As I acknowledged before, there’s no limit to how wrong my ideas might be. My point of reference is the uncle in At Swim-Two-Birds: “No disrespect, now!”)”

Not a good reference. ASTB was published in 1939 and, even then, the uncle is clearly a figure of fun to the (young adult) protagonist, and his views and attitudes are old-fashioned.

The decline in the church’s standing and authority long predates the economic boom. I left college in the mid-80s. The majority of my graduating class emigrated (for economic reasons), and the overwhelming majority (a) had no interest in the church and what it had to say about anything, and (b) were not susceptible to being influenced by the church. The church was not without institutional influence – the Eileen Flynn case, for example, was in 1982 – but unless it could do something to change the attitudes of me and my classmates or those who came after us it was inevitable that it would lose its commanding position in Irish society – which, of course, has happened. And I think it would have happened even without the boom.

In the past, if we are to believe Edna O’Brien people emigrated to escape the influence of the church, but even by the early 1980s this was no longer the case. My classmates emigrated for economic reasons; I don’t recall anybody leaving to escape the influence of the church, or even to escape a general social conservatism.

On Ireland’s financial problem, the bank debt is much less of an issue than public discussion makes out – see here:
http://www.ronanlyons.com/2011/02/15/this-is-the-peoples-economy-two-questions-to-ask-candidates/
And much of the anger is about the modest change in income tax liability, euphemised under the title “universal social charge”, for people who in comparative terms pay very little tax on income indeed.
Again, Ronan Lyons:

Taxation: At the same time, the way we were all taxed went bananas. A good tax system is one where your marginal rate of tax (i.e. the tax you pay on the next euro you earn) is similar to your average tax rate (what percentage of all your income is paid in tax). Unfortunately, the Irish system is all wrong. Thanks to overly generous tax-free credits, we have not only some of the highest marginal rates in the OECD, we also take very little tax off the majority of workers. For example, the middle earner in 2006 paid about 4% income tax. The OECD calculates an all-in tax on wages each year. In Ireland, it went from 10% to negative between 2001 and 2007. Everywhere else, it stayed about 20%. We all like to think of ourselves as over-taxed. We’re not.
http://www.ronanlyons.com/2010/11/30/irelands-economic-crisis-what-sort-of-hole-are-we-in-and-how-do-we-get-out/

Going back to C19, Trollope’s clerical novels showed the clergy as thoroughly worldly

Since, as any reader of 19th-c fiction kno, the CofE served as much as a property management enterprise (and a depository of second sons) as a religious denomination. Note, though, the ‘England’: I can’t think of any knockabout Scottish or Welsh clergy in popular culture.

Yeah, I saw that. But wasn’t it broadcast on Irish TV? Or can everybody in Ireland pick up British broadcasts? Either way, I can’t believe the Church wouldn’t have found a way to stop it before, even if it meant building transmitters to jam the frequencies.

um, wibble?

RTE turned down Father Ted before Channel 4 bought it, but they started showing it about a year (?) later. Most people on the east coast of Ireland could pick up British channels on the airwaves, but most people in Ireland (today, and I think in the 90’s too) would get their TV through satellite or cable, and get British tv as part of the package.
The Church building transmitters… is just a crazy idea. They just don’t work like that. Even in the 50’s, if they were going to do anything they would call in the government and get them to do it instead. Today they can’t give ministers the belt of the crozier. They rely on their entrenched position in education and still loyal members in the civil service (including RTE). If Father Ted was turned down for religious reasons, its not because someone phoned up the bishop and asked what to do. (Of course there are groups like Opus Dei who see it as their business to get into positions of power where they can make decisions in favour of the Church, but that’s a little different)

But there was always a hint that Craggy Island was a kind of post-scandal exile for Ted, albeit of the financial kind: ‘that money was just resting in my account’ is a very Irish defence.

They were all sent there as a punishment posting. The money, famously, was just resting in Ted’s account. Dougal was responsible for some sort of terrible cock-up with a wedding. Father Jack was in trouble about a whole class of schoolgirls. Oh yes, they went there.