Catholicism and modern individualism

Further to two recent posts, one about Steven Pinker's view that the Enlightenment is the source of science, reason and progress, and another about Tom Holland's view of the modern west as being very much the legacy of Christendom, I came across this interesting article.

A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions and that populations characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) are particularly unusual. People from these societies tend to be more individualistic, independent, and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting of strangers) while revealing less conformity and in-group loyalty. Although these patterns are now well documented, few efforts have sought to explain them. Here, we propose that the Western Church (i.e., the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church) transformed European kinship structures during the Middle Ages and that this transformation was a key factor behind a shift towards a WEIRDer psychology.

By breaking down extended kin-based institutions and encouraging a nuclear family structure, the Church encouraged more individualistic behaviour.

This also ties in with Larry Siedentop's brilliant Inventing the Individual; the Origins of Western Liberalism which makes a very powerful argument along similar lines, i.e. that the moral revolution unleashed by Christianity sewed the seeds of modern individualism as we know it.

This idea of the Catholic Church as a cultivator of individualism is rather refreshing when one has come to take for granted the more popular idea that the church inculcated authoritarianism and generally frustrated human freedom, i.e. the kind of idea that Pinker would promulgate.

There is also an irony to this; the individualism that the Church unleashed basically went rogue and now thrives independently of any religious objectives.

This highlights two different types of causation; physical and logical. Speaking logically, i.e. the language of necessity, if I was to suggest that you needed Christianity to be have individualism, such an argument would be difficult to sustain.  There are many argument for individual freedom that do not rest on religious foundation. The writings of Kant and Rawls immediately spring to mind as examples. Rawls appealed to hypothetical metaphysical state of nature (i.e. veil of ignorance) in making his case - that this is also a secularised version of the Christian soul doesn't mean it relies on the   actual existence of souls to be valid.

Speaking in terms of physical causation, i.e. the language of historic contingency, it is extremely hard to see how modern individualism could have emerged without Christianity. Without the church's concern with individual souls, conscience and will, the conceptual space for the notion of individual flourishing would not even have existed.

These arguments are a reminder that in criticising modern individualism, Catholics should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remember that individual freedom remains inextricably linked to the faith. Christians should be wary ceding individual freedom as a principle to liberals and being seduced by anti-individual movements on the right.

Taking the ball home

On the recent controversy over the Fine Gael government's plans to commemorate the RIC, and the subsequent decision to cancel those plans, Irish independent economist Dan O'Brien argues that "reflecting on history should become more like the practice of faith - a private affair." This is to avoid unnecessary controversy caused by bringing up old and irrelevant divisions.

Is Dan sulking? The force of public opinion caused Fine Gael to backtrack on its ill-advised proposal. Perhaps Dan is a bit sore over this and consequently does not want anything to be publicly commemorated now. The giveaway is the following line; "...and how strongly some of those who opposed it appear to feel on the subject."

So all the strong feelings are on one side? The proposal itself was the outcome of Minister Flanagan's own very personal and strong feelings about the subject. It was completely and explcitly unsupported by the expert advisory group on commemorations, despite the minister's claims otherwise. His strong feelings on the subject were also apparent in various interviews he did to try and defend his decision.

There were strong feelings on both sides. But the issue here is not an inability to commemorate the past, but just an unwillingness to celebrate certain things, and a feeling of genuine annoyance when a government tries to celebrate those things.

It probably was an irrelevant and unnecessary distraction but that was Fine Gael's fault for starting such a pointless fight. It was not irrelevant in the sense that the history of the RIC or Tans in Ireland is irrelevant. History like that is as relevant as the current times dictate, and the passions (passion not being a dirty word btw) aroused show that the subject matter is still very important.

So contrary to O'Brien's narrative, Fine Gael, due to strong feelings, sought to commemorate something that was not appropriate to commemorate, and were forced to backtrack due to inevitable and justifiable backlash of the pubic. Using this as a argument for banning all commemorations is just sour grapes. The controversy is a signal to think a little more carefully about what we commemorate, not that commemorations should cease full stop.

Ireland's weird politics

In a previous post, I spoke about the political and how it relates at its purest to the distinction between friends and enemies. That is because nothing unites like a common enemy (it is much harder to unite around a common value) and from that unity comes political community.

The politics of any given time refers to the way in which friends and enemies are designated in that time. In the Ireland of the present, the political enemy is what can be termed "Catholic Nationalism". Catholic Nationalism has never really existed. It is an imagined object. To be sure there has been nationalism and there has been catholicism and the two have often overlapped, associated with each other and even complemented each other. But they are nevertheless distinct and separate.

Why are they perceived as forming a singular thing? Well nationalism and Catholicism are both the foes of a third political creed in Ireland, liberalism. And for liberalism, presenting these foes as one unified villain creates a more simplistic and therefore compelling narrative.

In presenting the unified villain, Catholicism and nationalism are reduced down to common essential elements. Mainly, these are patriarchy, authoritarianism, atavism, irrationality and a general sense of being of the past. These are all very much the opposite of what liberalism today prides itself on. Desmond Fennell famously characterised this binary division in the 1980s as being between nice people and rednecks. This was quite brilliant by Fennell because his use of the term 'rednecks' emphasised the imported artificiality of this division. Ireland has actually not changed that much since the 1980s, i.e. all of the key structural changes that have produced the social upheaval since that decade had already occurred by that point.

This weird politics, still at its infancy when the shrewd Fennell commented on it, has now grown into an all-encompassing monster. The picture above shows Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein leader, speaking after the disgraceful and reprehensible killing of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry and waving the pride flag in solidarity. LGBT rights have of course long been pulled into the orbit of the contemporary politics, and so the flag in a southern Irish context has come to signify liberation from Catholic repression. How interesting then that in the north, it is used by McDonald to express a rejection of a retrograde nationalism. Afterall, there is nothing to suggest that McKee's LGBT identity was anything but incidental to the killing. And yet the political currency of that identity is used by McDonald to shame her killers.

The LGBT movement and feminism, radical movements in their purest forms, have been effectively commandeered by liberalism and used by it to clobber its enemies. The street credibility, authenticity and general coolness of these movements, which accrues from an earlier and genuinely disruptive radicalism, has conferred on them a moral power which liberalism has exploited shamelessly. This reserve of moral power is fast depleting but not before liberalism has mined every last bit. And not before Sinn Fein has subscribed fully to liberalism.

Why do I call this politics weird? For the simple reason that it is clearly dysfunctional and seems to distract from monstrous incompetence and shoddy governance. It is not a politics that delivers for the plain people of Ireland. What Ireland needs is a new politics. The enemy designate for this? Let's go back to what works; the British, colonial imperialism of all forms, rentiers, landlords, planters.

Pat Leahy and the backstop

Last week I wrote about how a certain moral bankruptcy permeated Dan O'Brien's recent commentary on Brexit and the backstop.

A similar trend is apparent in the case of Pat Leahy of the Irish Times this weekend. The central point in his latest piece is that the Irish government has a decision to make in relation to Brexit; whether to continue with their backstop policy or whether to give Theresa May a bailout by granting a concession to help her get the deal over the line. He then talks about the form the concession might take and the need for Theresa May to prove in advance that it would be accepted (since her trustworthiness has imploded).

A particularly irritating approach from Leahy here is to mix up his own value judgments with factual analysis. He tells us in a matter-of-fact way that the Irish government still has a decision to make. But whether the Irish government does have such a decision is actually a value-laden statement, and the truth of it depends on one's view as to where responsibility lies.

Most people would subscribe to the philosophy that if you break something you own it. This is why the bank bailouts during the financial crisis caused so much annoyance and disgust - there was a perception that responsibility for causing the problem became separate from responsibility for paying for it.

The Irish government has had no responsibility for the Brexit saga. It did not choose Brexit nor did it choose the red lines. Not even the backstop, which has been vindicated by subsequent events, was really a choice as it was the only real response any Irish government could make in response to the risk facing us.

Notwithstanding all of this Leahy thinks the ball somehow is in our court. He believes that the Irish government has to make a decision on whether to defer the risk of hard Brexit or not. There are a number of problems with this anyway.

Firstly, it's not clear that deferring Brexit would get us anywhere, other than kicking the can down the road for a few years and still leaving the problem of us having to engage with people who we now know are untrustworthy, if not irrational. This point was made by Varadkar and others. Deferring risk means delaying certainty - if the difference is simply one of time, we might as well grasp the problem now.

Secondly, the British government haven't exactly exhausted all of the avenues. The same contradictory red lines are in place and Tory party unity has yet to be properly tested. They still have yet to move out of their political comfort zone. Yet in such a context we are expected to make life as convenient as possible for them by choosing between our own peace and prosperity?

Most importantly, though, even though we haven't broken it, Leahy believes we somehow still own it. Because we stand to get harmed by it, whether by damage to our peace or by damage to our prosperity, the onus is somehow on us to stop it. Such a logic would basically reward and incentivise threats and intimidatory behaviour. In such a situation, I would be of the view that we don't have a decision to make and can only hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Bizarrely, Leahy plays down the political damage a climbdown would do the Taoiseach, on the basis that Varadkar would supposedly find it easier to sell the evasion of an immediate risk of a hard Border now in exchange for the risk of a hard border later. This is very fanciful and would not accord with my understanding of the Irish electorate. If the Taoiseach and Fine Gael were to back down on such a principled stance and simply defer the risk as described above, in the face of British irresponsibility, selfishness, threats, bad faith etc. how could that not be politically disastrous for him? Leahy just asserts that it wouldn't with very little support.

Finally he concludes that it will be Ireland's choice to make and not the EU's and that the situation itself will put pressure on Ireland. Again, this ignores that obvious reality that at this point, the EU clearly feels it has something at stake here itself apart from helping the Irish government. As has been remarked upon widely, if the EU was going to abandon us it would done so by now. Why it hasn't is the real question. The EU wants to make a point of its solidarity and show that delivers for all of its members, including small nations. It's about projecting strength and unity. By speaking of the alleged choice as being only our own, Leahy is presenting a distorted view of the situation where all the pressure is on Ireland.

Is it any wonder Eoghan Harris, the doyen of Irish journalistic shoneenism, has singled out Leahy for special praise in recent columns?

Is Dan O'Brien channeling the Cruiser?

Dan O'Brien and the late Conor Cruise O'Brien. A rather random association you might think. Where did that come out of? There's nothing linking them apart from a common surname and your humble aurhor putting them in the same sentence just there. And maybe the fact that they are both examples of Irish public 'intellectuals', albeit in different fields with differing levels of accomplishment who wrote in different times. But otherwise chalk and cheese.

Except for one very distinct aspect of the Cruiser's political philosophy with regards to matters Anglo-Irish. In reading some of economist Dan O'Brien's recent columns on the Brexit "Backstop", I intuitively knew that there was something I specifically didn't like about what I was reading but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. Then it hit me reading his latest article this morning; Dan O'Brien is basically channelling the Cruiser. That is, the writings of Dan O'Brien contain clearly identifiable elements of Cruiserology. I shall explain.

What is Cruiserology? One of the best essays I have read on the Cruiser is Barra O'Seaghdha's "The Celtic Tiger's Media Pundits" contained in the book Re-Inventing Ireland. There is a lot in the essay worth reading but one of the main takeaway points for me was a story on how a bad personal experience in either the late 60s or early 70s had a significant influence on Conor Cruise O'Brien's thinking on the National Question going forward. The Cruiser was in the North one day during the Troubles and ended up somehow getting beaten up by a group of Loyalists. O'Brien's general reaction to this was very unusual. Instead of being filled with a justified and quite rational anger against loyalism and its brutish violence, as you might expect, he paradoxically directed his indignation at Irish nationalism instead.

Crucially, this wasn't because he thought Irish nationalism was in the wrong and loyalism in the right.  That didn't matter. Rather, because he perceived loyalism as being more violent and dangerous than nationalism, he quite literally and physically feared its backlash and believed it was up to nationalists to refrain from goading or provoking it in any way. When they didn't that made him fearful and angry at them. Effectively, British loyalism was something to be appeased out of a fear of its power. It didn't matter if it was right or wrong, but only that it could hurt us.

So where is the Cruiserology in Dan O'Brien's writings? Let's look at his latest piece. Today he writes that the "backstop chickens are coming home to roost". For him, the backstop is a gamble by the Irish government. And as the prospects of a No-Deal Brexit become more likely (though it is still unlikely overall in my view as the British are bluffing) Dan O'Brien sees the gamble as potentially failing. This view is deeply flawed for two reasons.

Firstly, leaving the Cruiserology aside for a moment, this is wrong on a purely factual basis. After Britain voted to leave the EU, British government policy sought early in the process to leave the customs union and the single market. The logical outcome of such a position, then, was that the 6 counties would, at some point, leave the customs union and the single market too. In such a case, you would have a scenario exactly the same as the appalling no Deal vista that O'Brien describes, where Ireland is forced to choose between economic access to Europe on one hand and an open peacful border on the other. The only difference is that by not having a backstop, you kick the can down the road on that decision. It may or may not be more orderly, we do not know. If the backstop is a gamble, then that is no more a gamble than fudging until a later date.

And that's assuming that Brexiteers would not have a found another excuse to threaten 'no deal' anyway. Afterall, up until the last week or so, the European Research Group viewed the backstop as just one problem among many with the Withdrawal Agreement.

Rather than creating this risk of a hard border, the backstop is a way of avoiding it. If there is no deal because of the backstop, then we are no worse than if we had a Withdrawal Agreement that paved the way for a British exit from the customs union and the single market, or indeed a crashout no-Deal because the ERG or the DUP found something else they didn't like. A withdrawal agreement without a backstop is just as bad as a backstop that could cause there to be no withdrawal agreement.

Secondly, there is something more disturbing about Dan O'Brien's approach. By reducing the conversation to one of pure realpolitik, games of chicken and gambles, we lose sight of the bigger moral picture here too. I know, very quaint. This is where the Cruiserology comes in. Basically, moral hazards don't matter to Dan O'Brien. It doesn't matter that the British have acted in bad faith by:

• Trying avoid a backstop, even though they are signatories of the Good Friday Agreement, the spirit of which a hard Brexit would violate
• Going back on a previous commitment to observe the backstop, a commitment given in response to EU/Irish concessions
• Allowing the DUP, a minority party in the North, to use a fortuitous position to hold the process to ransom

What only seems to matter is the end result. And so he sees the "Backstop" not first and foremost as something that the Irish government is morally right and even obliged to insist upon, but just as a move in a game that can only be evaluated by its economic consequences. It doesn't matter that the British are in the wrong, just that they can harm us significantly. The general gist of his anti-Backstop stance is a 'might is right' consequentialism seemingly triggered by fear, if not dubious loyalty, rather than any kind of moral clock.

I don't wish to reduce to this to a realist versus idealist debate because i don't see this distinction as  valid. The Irish government have been realistic. They are also doing what is right. If right does not prevail because of uncontrollable factors, that doesn't mean they should become the object of blame. And by dispensing with any regard for moral idealism, Dan O'Brien is not being realistic. Because as Irish history shows, nothing moves people more than a sense of injustice.

Brexit and English Nationalism

Fintan O'Toole has a lot to say about Brexit. One of the big assertions he makes is that Brexit represents "English Nationalism", i.e. it is an expression of the idea of England as a distinct political community. I believe this is at best over-simplistic and at worst wrong. Before I discuss why I wish to  clarify my understanding of the Brexit impulse.

Firstly, my view has always been that Brexit has two dimensions; an elite dimension and a popular one. These two dimensions are distinct from each other and in some ways are even incompatible with each other.

Politically, the elite dimension emanates from an overlap of Eurosceptic and Thatcherite factions within the Tory party. Its support base is overwhelmingly concentrated in southern England, the home counties and to some extent the City of London and comprises those sections of the British society with an economic interest in deregulation and free markets.

This political tradition has been around since Britain joined the EU but really started to raise its profile in the 1990s around the time of the Maastricht treaty. It has often been referred to as the 'little Englander" tradition, though this is misleading because the economic liberty and freedom it desires is contingent on Britain exerting power and influence on a global level, centred around the concept of the Anglophonic world and building upon existing structures such as the Commonwealth. For this reason, the political tradition invokes a certain nostalgia and romanticism for the British Empire.

Meanwhile, the popular dimension to Brexit is something quite different. Its political base is not made up of well-do-do Tories but natural Labour supporters located mainly in the rust-belts of the West Midlands and the North of England. These are working class people who feel alienated and disaffected by the de-industrialisation brought about by deregulation and globalisation. These people are anti-immigration because they perceive it as directly causing a decrease in their living standards and working conditions. They have no interest in the global Britain promoted by the elite group and in fact will be hurt even more by such a project, as it will involve a repeat of Thatcherism-style economic shock therapy and economic austerity.

Where does this leave us with O'Toole's claims? In relation to the elite group, his claim that Brexit represents English Nationalism is simply wrong. This group are not English nationalists but British globalists. While they don't exactly want to revive the British empire itself, they certainly want to revive the idea of a Anglocentric world-order, economic if not military, with the British elite at the apex. They care not for the principal of national self-determination, and their objections to the EU stem not so much from its alleged hierarchical anti-democratic nature than from the fact that it is France and Germany, and not Britain, at the top of the food chain. In order words, elite Brexit is hegemonic in character.

Ulster unionists demonstrate this mentality perfectly. The Democratic Unionist Party are emphatically not English nationalists but very much are attracted to Brexit because it bolsters and doubles down on the ideology of British unionism. English political nationalism would be dangerous to the DUP because it contradicts the central idea that the whole of the UK constitutes one political unit.

How about the second group? Here, I would say the answer in inconclusive. It could be argued that this group is more nationalistic and isolationist than the first group. This is certainly the case economically where the appetite for de-regulation and institutionalised global piracy would be less. Politically, however, it is a mixed bag. While some might not shed a tear if Scotland broke away and formed another political entity, others would have a more reactionary unionist mindset that sees Scotland (and Ireland) as being naturally subordinate to England. When has British imperial nationalism not been a vehicle for England's interests? The fact that Scottish concerns are arrogantly dismissed is nothing new and is not of itself a sign that they we are dealing with a new phenomenon.

Overall, one cannot help but feel that Fintan has become wedded to a certain narrative and, not for the first time, has become entrapped in it.

"Binary identity"

Speaking in the context of Britishness, former leader of the Ulster Unionists, Mike Nesbitt, says he does not believe it is helpful to think in terms of 'binary identities', that is, thinking of people as being either British or Irish, or British or European. He cites poet John Hewitt's hierarchy of identity; Ulster, Irish, British, European. One can be all four.

He further adds that he does not believe that it is honest to think in this way on the basis that there are not many "pure gaels" or "pure Brits". He points to the fact that many Irish Catholics fought in the first world war, i.e. they were Gaelic yet British.

Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times columnist, agrees with him saying that around the year 2011/12 Irish and British people (probably meaning such people on the island of Ireland) were moving away from the "neurotic" approach of defining themselves on the basis of who they were not and in fact started to define themselves "by the actuality of their real existence which is quite complex and ambiguous rather than through these binaries." He then makes the point that Brexit has upset this and that the push for a hard Brexit is forcing people back into these binaries.

It is undoubtedly the case that one can have multiple identities, or at least that there can be multiple levels to one's identity. What is not the case, though, is that a person can have more than one political identity. A political identity is a very particular type of thing and one can ultimately only owe one's allegiance to one political order. Otherwise what would happen if two or more of the political orders one subscribes to came into conflict with each other? Implicit in the idea of order is the idea of  singularity. If you had multiple orders, this would lead to potential chaos which is clearly a contradiction. 

A person could certainly be politically British and only culturally Irish, or vice versa, and this would not cause a problem per se. Ian Paisley Sr. was an example of a man who considered himself Irish, though in a cultural/provincial sense that was subordinate to his political Britishness. Crucially, this did not mean Paisley was in any doubt as to Westminster's ultimate right to govern Ireland. That was the order of things. His Irishness only went so far.

Both Nesbitt and O'Toole seem to miss this important distinction between political identity and other types of identities. In speaking of people having complex and ambiguous identities, O'Toole appears to say that this means your political identity becomes equally complex and ambiguous, i.e. because the Irish are now so ambiguous and complex, so is their politics. I believe this to be rubbish. Our political identities are just as binary as they ever have been and ever will be; it's just that the politics we identity with have changed profoundly. We don't think in terms of a Holy Messianic struggle of National Liberation from Monarcho-Imperial oppression anymore. We now think in terms of being the model citizens of a global liberal democratic order. The binary is still there, it has simply moved.

What really copper-fastened the peace process in the North was not belligerents overcoming their differences but the divisions between them being rendered utterly trivial in an age of globalisation. Like a tidal wave, it washed away the importance and significance of their enmity. New enmities and divisions replaced the old, defined according to notions like the War on Terror. Irish and British cultural identities, along with many others, were subsumed into a new bigger narrative. But the binary distinctions that mark the political in any society at any point in history remain.

Thus, at the heart of Nesbitt and O'Toole's account is a delusion, if not a deceit, that the end of old school nationalism and unionism marks the end of binary identities.

Blasphemy

In a previous post, I suggested that the designation of the enemy in Ireland's politics had changed fundamentally. Rather than seeing our enemy as the British or British imperialism, our politics now increasingly sees Catholicism as the enemy.

As discussed in that post, the political is that part of discourse that is concerned with distinguishing friends from enemies in a somewhat black and white fashion. In a democratic republic, the process of enemy designation is a public process determined by as wide a range of the population as possible. In a more elitist system, the process is largely privatised and monopolised by the few.

In the Ireland of 1918, British imperialism was the enemy of a newly emerged and broad-based provincial middle class.  Some culturally influential was this class that it spilled over into Dublin in a rare example of reverse colonisation. This class was the effective ruling class in its day and so its politics reigned supreme. In the Ireland of 2018, Catholicism is the enemy of the current ruling class, which in contrast to the ruling class of a century earlier, is geographically concentrated around Dublin and oriented around international capital interests.

The politics of any given society is in a constant state of flux. The enemy is always being re-defined to suit the needs of that society's ruling class. No society has the moral high ground when it comes to this ugly business. However, I think it is fair to say that a politics which tracks a broader range of interests is superior to one which tracks a narrower range. On this basis, I believe that the politics of the present is inferior to the politics of the past.

The Blasphemy referendum is very much the politics of the present, let us call it Varadkarism, asserting itself. To a naive person, it would seem like confused priorities; why are we focussing on a defunct provision that isn't even enforced when we should be focussing on real issues like housing? But there is no confusion here.

To the people who determine what the political priorities are in this country (by definition the ruling class) blasphemy and the removal of any notion that Christianity is sacred in this land is more important and urgent that the fact that some people don't have houses or can't get houses. The support base of Varadkarism sees Ireland as some sort of beacon of liberal democracy for the whole world. It values that image very dearly, to the point of obsession. Because this base is well off - and it doesn't even include young professional couples looking to get on the housing ladder - it has the luxury of putting a premium on such an image.

Marriage equality, abortion, blasphemy - these are all premised on the idea that Catholicism, at least in a public sense, is the enemy. Under Varadkarism, ordinary people are mobilised around this phantom enemy. In this way, it is largely a politics of mass distraction.

I will not vote no in this referendum. Nor will I vote yes. I object to this referendum taking place at all. But I don't want to abstain as that would be akin to political apathy when I am in fact fully politically engaged. Therefore, I will spoil my vote. By spoiling my vote, I will be declaring my rejection of Varadkarism.

Some people say that if we objected to referenda because they are not urgent then we would never have referenda because there will always be something more pressing than a constitutional provision. This argument is not convincing. We vote on important constitution provisions all the time and quite legitimately in relation to EU treaties or even matters like creating a Court of Appeal or reforming the Seanad. Of course there are times when reforming the constitution is an important issue. Also, inserting a constitutional provision to the effect that water as a resource shall never be privatised is something that would have alleviated the concerns of reasonable people in relation to water charges.  Why was there no clamour for this?

Only in the most ideologically anti-Catholic sense could a toothless blasphemy law be considered a priority. But ideological anti-Catholicism is the key plank of Varadkarism.

The Political and the Church in Ireland

In his essay, the Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt defined the political as that part of discourse concerned with the distinction between friends and enemies. In the same way as morality concerns the question of good and evil, aesthetics the question of beautiful and ugly, economics the question of profitable and unprofitable, the political "denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation." (page 26).

The crucial point about the distinction between friends and enemies for the purpose of the political is that it is binary; it is so intense and divisive that there are only friends and enemies, there is no third neutral intermediate position. And the more you approach the intensity of this binary distinction, the more you are approaching the political.

So, if we look at Ireland in the past, the obvious enemy in a political sense was Britain, or the British Empire to be more exact. Our friends included the enemies of Britain, nominally the Germans during the First World War ("Gallant allies"), and later international entities such as the Catholic Church, the League of Nations/United Nations and the European Community/Union.

In relation to the Church, religion in Ireland came within the orbit of the political in the 19th century because catholicism provided a substitute national identity contra Britain. This happened within a larger context of British state politicisation of religion in the preceding centuries since the reformation. The British saw themselves as an essentially protestant people against the Popish European continent. They first mobilised this political protestantism in Ireland during the 1798 rebellion, cultivating Orange reactionism and laying the foundations for the Unionism of a century later. It was inevitable in this context that an Irish nationalism would have to make a big deal of its own catholicism. This is not to say that religion in Ireland was purely politically motivated, but rather that the political situation gave religion an added edge.

Fast forward to today, and religion is again politicised. However, the nature of the politicisation is radically different to before. First of all, the collective enemy in Ireland today is no longer the British. As a poster boy of the liberal world, the Ireland of 2018 would like to think of itself as being above such petty nationalism. We live in a global economically integrated country that increasingly identifies with a Westernised humanitarian internationalism. Our friends are those who support such an order and our enemies are those who oppose.

We now appoint ex-British intelligence personnel as commissioners of our police and worry that our presidential inaugurations will clash with a commemoration of the end of the First World War (since when do we care so much about this). We see the effects of this on perceptions of sport as well. "Foreign games" was a thing a hundred year ago, a real dead serious thing. Now, it's an embarrassing anachronism that is barely coherent. The context that gave this policy sense has changed utterly. We are no longer against Britain but something else. Who is our enemy now?

While religion is not quite the enemy here, it is certainly very close to being it. There can be no doubt that the West has become a cold house for religion. In today's West, the antagonism towards a certain religion is proportional to its incompatibility with the "Plato to Nato" narrative. The most incompatible is Islam followed by Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism and then mainstream Protestantism. The more religion is likely to cause to you to have an opinion which violates a trope of Western liberal humanitarianism, and therefore be "political", the more it is an enemy. "Plato" represents the idealised notions we have about pre-Christian Greco-Roman civilisation. 

If religion is close to being the enemy in the West, nationalism is equally close. As with religion, nationalism and the division of people into national groupings clearly disrupts global internationalism. "Nato" represents the idea of a multilateral world order promoting liberal democracy.

This is a double-whammy for catholicism in Ireland. It is close to being the Enemy of our politics for two reasons; the general anti-religiousness of Western culture and the historical closeness of catholicism in Ireland to nationalism. (The abuse scandals do not explain why catholicism has become of political import).

Religion was politicised in the past, but the politicisation was along denominational lines. Questions around divorce, homosexuality, abortion were totally uncontroversial because everyone here was equally against them. Furthermore, the Catholic Church's suspicion of nationalism generally prevented the the two in Ireland becoming fully synonymous.

Now it is the very idea of religion itself, and what are perceived to be the most extreme manifestations of it, that exercise people. This explains the phenomenon whereby people who have no interest in party politics, day to day current affairs or voting in general elections all of a sudden develop an intense interest in referenda that involve in some tangential way a skirmish with religion and especially the church. This is explains how a Government minister who is facing a crisis in relation to a cancer misdiagnosis scandal, a 'lesser' issue, can get a pass because of his performance in a debate involving abortion rights, a 'major' issue. This also explains why an online article about, for example, the budget will fail to attract anything like the number of views an article on, say, church involvement in education would. 

It's because we perceive the referendum or the online article as being more important and relevant to the question of the political that we are more attracted to it. Nothing riles us up like our enemy. Party-political debates about the budget or housing or social welfare spending simply do not attract this level of interest because they are deemed to be further away from the truly political.

It is often thought that modern society serves to depoliticise. But we are by our nature political animals. What has happened in modern society is that what is the political has changed. What really speaks to the sickness of our politics is that we have stopped seeing the most consequential issues as political issues and increasingly see more abstract issues as the most important. And so, a story about a hospital bed crisis brings about a collective shoulder shrug of apathy, whereas a story about a new hospital happening to be built on land owned by nuns causes hysteria.

Simon Harris plays to the gallery again

In response to comments by the Bishop of Ephin around artificial contraception, Health minister Simon Harris had this to say:

Please just make it stop! Increasing access to & availability of contraception is and will remain public health policy. Religion plays an important role for many on an individual basis - but it will not determine health and social policy in our country any more.

At a time when himself and the Taoiseach are under increased pressure in relation to the Cervical cancer scandal, Simon Harris has decided that it's time for a decoy. Knowing that church-bashing is in vogue, and still basking in the glow of the recent referendum victory, he's jumped onto twitter to lambast a Catholic bishop for saying something...well Catholic.

It is hard to think of something more inconsequential that the pronouncements of clerics on the subject of contraception in 2018 Ireland. But Harris, aware of the growing constituency of irrational anti-religious ideologues in Ireland, could not resist the opportunity to set out his cool secular credentials once again and in the process divert attention away from important issues. And the ideologues are already lapping it up.

The great irony of course is that Harris' comments in fact violate the principles of secularism. Let us recount what has happened here. A member of the clergy has expressed a view that the principles of the Papal Encyclical, Humanae Vitea, have been ignored for too long. In other words, a member of civil society is simply offering a moral opinion on something.

In response, Harris looks to close down any debate before it can even begin by prescribing the terms of the debate. So, he says that religion plays an important role for many on an individual basis but will not determine health and social policy anymore.

Hold on a second - is this not a democracy? Religion will play the role people want it to play (which as it happens is quite little at the present time) - that's not for Harris to decide. Afterall, if people have certain views of a religious nature and desire those rules to be reflected in the laws of the land, then religion, in an indirect way, will determine our health and social policy, whether Harris likes it or not.

And if some respond that in a secular republic personal moral views should not be forced on people generally, well that's what happens in a democracy or indeed any polity involving a social contract. Moral views are forced on people all the time. In the recent referendum to repeal the 8th amendment, the moral views of two thirds of people to the effect that the unborn child did not have the right to life was forced on the other third who believed it did.

Indeed, there is no such thing as a personal moral view. Moral views by their nature are views that apply generally to other people. If it does not apply to others it can scarcely be called a moral view.

What has happened here is that Harris has proclaimed a particular view to be off-bounds - "please make it stop" - before it is even debated because it emanates from a religious organisation and goes against his own view. It's the equivalent of somebody from a union proposing increasing the minimum wage and a minister responding in the following way:

Please just make it stop! Keeping minimum wage at current level is and will remain public finance policy. Unions play an important role for many on an individual basis - but they will not determine finance policy in our country any more.

Secularism is about separation of church and state. It does not mean that the church refrain from many comments of a moral nature (i.e applying to other people, the horror!) in the sphere of civic society. Telling the church to "stop" making such comments violates the principle of secularism as it involves the state going deep into the territory of public discourse and policing opinions.