The religious affairs departments of various Irish media outlets are having a bumper year.
“I read the news today; oh boy.”
Another day, another reminder that the new and the modern Ireland of so many Fáilte Ireland promos and checkerboard hotel fronts remains solidly, squarely the plaything of the God-fearing.
Stephen Fry’s comments on RTÉ Television’s ‘The Meaning of Life’ with Gay Byrne all of 27 months ago are set to be investigated by An Garda Síochána under a blasphemy law that was re-instituted as recently as 2009. It’s a law which states that the “publication or utterance of blasphemous matter” is an offence punishable by a fine of up to €25,000.
Whatever the result of this investigation – we seriously doubt Fry will raise anything more than a wry chuckle at our deference to the robes and chalices, and he’ll scarcely end up having to put his hand in his pocket, but that’s beside the point – what we’re seeing is a strange creep back into religious autocracy, helped by our own political dithering and the twin threats of Trump and Theresa May.
That the investigation into Fry’s interview with Gay Byrne is only taking place now fits in well with the 2017 narrative.
Two years ago, when The Donald was just a haircut on a golf course and David Cameron had yet to lay all his chips on ‘oh bugger’, news that we would potentially prosecute a celebrity for saying some mean things about Himself Upstairs would have been marked out as parody. A Waterford Whispers headline. We were ‘past all that’.
Then we had the events of June and November 2016, satire became truth, and everything was changed.
Now the Fry scenario is a signifier of what we’ve returned to; a country where moral concern masks a chronic sheepishness, never more evident than in the debacle over St. Vincents, the Sisters of Charity, religious incantation in the Government’s chamber and the words of Micheál Martin earlier this week when he was asked whether a woman should have a right to choose abortion in the case of incest.
Martin’s dithering may have provoked a stern backlash on Twitter among Generation Woke but you can be sure that many kitchens up and down the country – those same kitchens that turned over to Home and Away during the more difficult news reports from Tuam – will have applauded the Fianna Fáil leader for standing against a woman’s right to choose in the most horrific of circumstances.
Those same kitchens, much like the disenfranchised Americans who so endorsed Trump, may not protest on a Saturday afternoon at the Central Bank and wouldn’t know a Change.org petition if it stood up and gave them a haircut, but they’re far quicker to vote than others.
They’re the reason Stephen Fry might want to avoid that next ferry from Holyhead for fear of a hefty bill at the other side, and they’re the reason our government is still shackled by rosary beads and acquiescent to the broken promises of those who promised redress for abuses past.
They’re still abusing our present, and will continue to do so until religious interference in the running of the state and its services is rendered properly defunct on the streets and, most importantly, at the polling station.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
