It is the fate of many former outsiders or reformers to become, without being aware of it, the comfortable voice of the establishment. It happened in Ireland to the Catholic Church, with predictably bad consequences. It is happening again to the liberal left.
This was an under-discussed factor in the defeat of the family and care referendums last year. The establishment, including Heather Humphreys as director of elections for Fine Gael, behaved as though there was a burning desire to remove the allegedly sexist references to women in the home.
This managed to annoy lots of people. It enraged many older women who had spent their lives in the home, and are now in the homes of their children, minding their grandchildren. In part, this is happening because childcare is so inaccessible, but it is also because their adult children want their children to have the experience of coming home to a loving presence.
The proposed changes to the Constitution denigrated what these women spent their lives doing – which, funnily enough, gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, just like Article 41.2 says. The proposed wording infuriated lots of farming and working-class women who worked inside and outside the home, and did so for far longer than the Irish Constitution has existed. It annoyed many younger women desperately trying to balance home and work life. They themselves may have benefited from having a mother working primarily at home, but know it is an unattainable goal for themselves.
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And equally unattainable is having an affordable home without two substantial incomes and help from parents.
Most women I know want flexible workplaces. In an ideal world, they would like the option to take time out for a year or perhaps more at important times in their family’s life. In 2024 an Amárach Poll for the Iona Institute of 500 women found that if offered the option (and money was no issue), 69 per cent of women with children under 18 would prefer to be a stay-at-home mother.
Removing references to women in the home when it is virtually impossible for women to spend as much time in the home as they want is akin to what CS Lewis’s cynical anti-hero says in The Screwtape Letters: “The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.”
Then there is that other exasperating establishment view, which claims to know more about Catholicism than Catholics. “Catholic” becomes code for “has a non-establishment, and therefore wrong, view on abortion and marriage”. Yet undermining people of faith risks undermining the basis of much that civil society holds in common.
An orthodox Catholic believes in the radical equality of every human being, because they are all created and loved by God. Like it or not, when the doughty Eleanor Roosevelt, a lifelong practising Episcopalian, thrashed out the UN Convention of Human Rights, she was motivated by her Christian faith.
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True Christians believe in the centrality of family but also care for the stranger. They believe in justice for the global South. They want to steward the planet that God gave them and not burn it to a crisp. For more than 150 years, the Catholic Church has championed the right to housing and dignified work, making concrete the principles of solidarity and social justice, which go back thousands of years.
Now that Catholicism has been weakened almost to irrelevance in Ireland, let’s ask some questions. Where is the progressive utopia we were promised would blossom organically in its stead? Do we have less loneliness and more community solidarity? Is Irish society as a whole healthier, physically, emotionally or spiritually? Are more people housed? Are women happier? In the same Amárach poll, 71 per cent of women felt “not really or not at all” valued for the work they do as mothers.
It helped to achieve the standing Ireland holds in the world today that our missionaries went everywhere there was need and, for the most part, are remembered fondly. Was a society where everyone had an aunt, uncle or cousin on the missions more or less likely to burn down accommodation in case it might house asylum seekers? What about services in Ireland? Would we ever have had a hospice movement if we had waited for the State to provide it?
Having made undermining Catholicism a central plank of left-liberalism – not just its shameful failings but virtually every aspect of it – suddenly, it is missed now that the real far right has reared its head.
Having pilloried and attacked the church as merely a power-hungry institution scheming to control every aspect of Irish life, now some commentators argue it must be given its place in presidential elections.
Of course, this thinking goes, its representatives will be trounced, but the Catholics are apparently better at acquiescing to democracy than the new enemies.
Now that Catholicism has been beaten into the ground, it is a little late to start invoking tolerance and fair play.
