"Mea Culpa"

Bob Quinn

Issue 389, vol.98, Spring 2009

And, although backed by the threat of Hell-fire, these injunctions were frequently contravened in practice by public figures both lay and clerical. (So individuals who opted not to baptise their children into such an organisation may not necessarily now have to declare, ‘I was at fault : mea culpa’ !)

Be that as it may, church personnel were still spokesmen (if overly rhetorical) for the desirability of some generalised moral code that said, ‘Love thy neighbour’, that insisted on sometimes challenging values – such as : human life is sacred; ‘blessed are the poor’; ‘glory be to God for dappled things’. The traditional church stood, too, for the underlying intangible, spiritual realities (one echo of which was the ‘high’ music of the liturgy).

But then along came the age of the marketeers, with their louder mantras of consumerism : ‘Greed is good’, ‘Everything is relative’. In this new liturgy of Growth, ethical inhibitions had to go (even inhibitions against the use of children in advertising) – and that last bastion, religion, had to be undermined.

Yes, many priests were suddenly discovered to have behaved vilely in the past – as big a percentage as in any walk of life. But why single out priests and their misdeeds ? There were plenty of other targets for condemnation. Why not uproot the corrupt system of party politics ? Why not confront the arrogance of the banking system ? One reason might be that priests were a softer target for our accumulated resentments : attacking them did not threaten profits, or jeopardise the market, or put livelihoods at risk. Indeed such assaults advanced many a media career.

Bob Quinn is a writer and independent film maker; an elected member of Aosdána, he has lived and worked in Conamara since 1970.

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