> > No, I'm Catholic in the same way you are (although most of my
> education was in American public schools).
It was a poor joke about predestination, never mind. I have to put that theological education to use somehow and, let's face it, becoming a man of the cloth seems rather unlikely at this point.
> I wasn't actually aware that there was much growth in fundamentalist
> thinking. I haven't really encountered much. If anything the trend
> seems to me to be in the opposite direction. You have your exceptions
> of course but they tend to be clustered into extremist groups such as
> Youth Defence and RSF who nobody gives much time to.
I was writing more generally, rather than about Ireland on that issue. There's an awful lot of talk about Christian fudamentalism in the US and England, and of course Islamic fundamentalism in Europe and elsewhere. Both seem, to me anyway, to be fueled by something other than devout belief (and I would guess that they're both overstated in the press, à la the BNP scare stories).
I've read a lot about Youth Defence but never seen them. When they say "youth" defence, what exactly do they mean? Defending people that don't yet exist? RSF I rarely see or hear about, though I did get a laugh a while back when I walked past their office on the Falls Road. They were selling a glass ashtray of the standard bar type with a giant candle stuck in it, wrapped in barbed wire. Very 'outsider art'. And very bad.
There's a relatively new Jesuit newspaper though, if I recall correctly and I think that the Catholic Worker operate in Dublin. There's also a relgious environmentalist newspaper but I forget its name. Some aspects of what people characterise as left-wing fit quite snugly with religion.
> I mean look at the recent civil partnerships debate in the Dáil.
> Without exception, *every* TD who spoke in the debate said that they
> support civil partnerships. So why do we still have no civil
> partnership legislation?
Good question. Incidentally, there's a diversity mural down near the docks with, I'm told, two men kissing depicted in it. It'll be interesting to see if it lasts.
> I'd say you're probably living among the demographic that would be
> most likely to favour liberalisation of the abortion laws. One
> interesting thing I've noticed since I've been involved in pro-choice
> activism here is that the accents of my Irish comrades are all fairly
> 'neutral' ... there don't seem to be many working class Dubs in the
> campaign.
Probably but I couldn't say for sure. I've lost touch with where people stand on these sorts of things. I was working for a fortnight in an immigration-related enterprise (profit-making) North Dublin (just doing shifts to fill in while a staff member was off on holiday) and I was suprised by the religious tenor of things. I'd never really thought about it before, at least not in terms of the devout religious beliefs of immigrants from Africa and, of course, Poland. Religion plays a very small role in my life—that it plays one at all is because I think about it quite a bit—and I was raised by a rapidly lapsing Catholic and a former agnostic who is now an atheist with a visceral hatred for the Church. This is why I suspect that what goes on at home is probably more important than in der Schule—though not the sole factor because I gave up god before either of my parents. In fact, I've never believed—as soon as I was capable of thinking about it rationally, I dismissed it. I recall in primary school kids picking up food they'd dropped on the ground, blessing it and saying: "If you bless it, it's clean." Er... Anyway, enough autiobiograhy.
To me there's no neutral Dublin accent. Even the ones 'round here who think the letter r is pronounced 'oar' and say Doarsh instaead of Dart have a distinct accent even to my cloth ears. Who knows what they make of mine.
> You'd expect it to of course. But the kind of people I've been
> posting about in this thread - the right-to-life lefties - aren't
> necessarily religious at all.
Well, you know I think this is one of the big failings of the Irish left. They're pretty weak on the whole, and I don't just mean in terms of popular support. For understandable historical reasons, of course, but weak nonetheless. It ain't just god I have no faith in.
Morality issues are probably quite useful, though. I'm just musing this as I type so don't read too much into it, but there aren't many other issues about. The nurses strike is a non-event and despite all of the non-stop whinging about the cost of houses and Fianna Fáil being in the pocket of the constrcution industry this never seems to translate into a real politcal issue. The Mahon tribunal is an utter snoozefest. Talk about sleeping with politicans...
I'm just hoping to take childish delight in the disappearance of the PDs. Not that that counts as politics either.
> They mightn't buy the idea of a winged
> soul coming down from heaven at the moment of conception, but they
> still accept that sperm + egg = human life with all the rights of the
> born, they still believe all that garbage about women being pressured
> into having abortions by greedy babykilling fetishes and suffering
> psychological trauma for life, etc etc. I mean that's why the Church
> pushes all that stuff isn't it? They know there's only so much of the
> population that they can convince on faith alone.
I sort of agree but not with the idea of suffering psychological trauma for life being related to religion. That may well have originated with the Church but I'd say it's a pretty well accepted view in secular circles internationally and not just regarding abortion. Every minor unpleasant event in people's life seems to be inflated to end-of-the-world proportions and people are viewed as sad and fragile little individuals. Secular religions, eh?
Jason.