It has now been confirmed that Pope Francis will visit Ireland – south and north – in August 2018, and already some Dublin politicians are fretting that he might make a “controversial” statement about abortion during the visit. (There will very probably be an abortion referendum at this time.) Who knows? Francis is just as likely to reprimand the Irish for taking relatively few refugees (only 500 so far, from a pledge to take 4,000) and turning down many asylum applications.
But it’s interesting how little disapprobation there has been from Unionists in Northern Ireland to the planned presence of Francis in Armagh, the ecclesiastical Irish capital (which is, of course, within the northern state).
When Ian Paisley was alive, a protest against the pope from ultra-Protestants could always be relied upon. Paisley never ceased his colourful invective about “the scarlet woman of Rome” and “the whore of Babylon” – the Catholic Church – or his description of the pontiff as “the Antichrist”. Even in the last years of his life, he managed a demonstration against Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain in 2010.
But following Paisley’s demise in 2014, the Belfast commentator Newton Emerson reports that it’s proving difficult to find Ulster Protestants to denounce Pope Francis or say he isn’t welcome. Arlene Foster, the Democratic Unionist Party First Minister, issued a neutral statement, saying that she would meet the Pope in her capacity “as head of state”.
But Protestant clerics were more inclined to a note ecumenism, allowing that Catholics were entitled to a “pastoral visit”. Dr John Dunlop, a former Presbyterian moderator, said it would be a good opportunity for the Protestant community to “get over institutionalised anti-Catholicism”.
Let’s not predict anything in these uncertain times, but what I’ve seen in Northern Ireland is a very gradual understanding of an axiom advanced in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous: “Focus on the similarities, not on the differences.” And Pope Francis’s cordial personality has surely played a part, too.
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Cherie Blair urges us to replace the word “mothering” with “parenting”, because young dads these days are so much more involved with their children. I daresay she means to be encouraging to young fathers, and they deserve such encouragement. But that’s not a reason to distort language, whose purpose is to enhance clarity, not to mingle meanings and misrepresent biological facts.
An O-level lesson in biology would explain why we have distinctive words for “mother” and “father”: modern reproductive techniques, such as IVF, greatly underline the disparate roles in “parenting”.
It is reliably reported by historians that young men dying on the battlefield call out for their mothers in their anguish: it forms a heartbreaking narrative, reiterated in all languages, from World War I. Will scholars soon be obliged, in a politically correct future, to explain that dying soldiers cried out for their “parent”? Don’t rule it out.
Language is already being changed to muddle facts, and Mrs Blair’s recommendation, I’m afraid, adds fuel to this particular fire.
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The last British veteran who fought for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War died recently at the age of 98. Stan Hilton was born in a Sussex workhouse in Sussex and grew up in an orphanage. He seems to have been attracted to the troubles in Spain more from a sense of adventure than from political commitment, although he behaved bravely and came to feel that fighting for the International Brigade against General Franco was the right thing to do.
But the Spanish Civil War was not just about defying Franco, and many innocent lives were lost. Browsing the archive of the Irish Independent for 1936, I see that one edition in November records the roll call of 10 bishops shot by what the newspaper called “the Reds”:
Bishop Perez y Rodriguez of Cadiz and Ceuta shot at Almeria. Monsignor Narcisco de Estenaga Echevarria, titular Bishop of Dora, shot in Madrid (reported). Others murdered were: Bishop Olmos of Guadix. Bishop Milan of Almeria. Bishop Laguna of Cuenca. Bishop Jiminez of Jaen. Bishop Martin of Siguenza. Bishop Platero of Segovia. Bishop Miralpeix of Lerida and Bishop Barroso, titular Bishop of Epirus, Administrator Apostolic of the Barbastro diocese.
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