Why bother asking Ray D'Arcy for an apology after he told listeners to his radio programme: “The Catholic Church, in many ways, has f***** up this country”?
I do not believe that the communications office of the Irish bishops was wise to issue a demand for such an apology. D'Arcy did apologise for using the swear-word on air, but did not retract the substance of his sentiments.
And the radio station, Today FM, has simply backed up their man and, in effect, rebuffed the spokesman for the Catholic bishops, Martin Long.
Moreover, it now looks as if the Church has backed down, by saying it will merely “reflect” on the matter.
Much better if the communications office had said nothing in the first place.
For Ray DArcy is only damaging himself and his own reputation with such rough language and half-witted sentiments. He seems to have grasped a glimmer of this point by stating subsequently – three times, which indicates some discomfort – that the object of his animosity was the Catholic hierarchy, not ordinary practising Catholics.
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I was referring to the Catholic Church, I was referring to the Catholic hierarchy, not to people like my mother, who is a devout Catholic and a great Christian.”
He is not much of an advertisement for his mothers Christianity, alas.
If Mr DArcy knew anything about the history and culture of this country, he would know the Faith and fatherland are so tightly interwoven that it is a logical impossibility to divide the character of the Faith from the people. As George Bernard Shaw, another atheist, said: “In Ireland, the people is the Church and the Church is the people.”
To be sure, there have been incompetent bishops, dim bishops, and bishops who consistently made the wrong decisions. There have also been brave bishops, clever bishops, and bishops who were men of vision. There have been quixotic characters who were a contradictory mix of traits.
There have been bishops who were right on one subject, but wrong on another: the famous Bishop Lucey of Cork was risibly wrong in his stern disapproval of dance-halls. But he was magnificently right in opposing racism and the rise of Nazism all through the 1930s and 40s.
John Charles McQuaid of Dublin was a dragon, but he had a feeling for the poor, for unwed mothers, for the Travelling people, and for drunken poets.
Human nature is complex. To say that the Catholic Church (Mr D'Arcys original words) “f****** up” this country is the statement of a blockhead, and the communications office should not have gone into the ring with a blockhead.