��ѿ��ý

Available for over a year

(In this edition of Thought For The Day it states that 796 bodies of premature babies and young children were discovered at a mother and baby home in Ireland. At the time of broadcast, “significant human remains” had been found, but the Mother and Baby ��ѿ��ýs Commission of Investigation had not confirmed the number of children involved.) Good morning In the wake of Friday’s Irish Referendum to legalise abortion commentators are pointing to the various ways in which the Republic of Ireland seems to be heaving off its Catholic past. Quite what is being heaved off by this result, together with the vote, two years ago, to legalise same sex marriage, will long be the subject of debate though certainly in both of these instances traditional Catholic social teaching has now been rejected as a basis for state law. One narrative strand that keeps surfacing, is the desire to throw off shame – whether associated with requests for abortion by women in crisis, by falling in love with someone of the same sex or with pregnancy outside marriage. Theorists of shame recognise that it can have some positive social benefits, reinforcing important norms that protect life and prevent violence – the turning of the tide of public opinion against those who harass and abuse women for example – throws the shame onto the perpetrator rather than leaving it with the victim – and yet often shame is used by social groups to protect the respectability of the many at the expense of the few. Last year when 796 bodies of premature babies and young children were discovered on the site of one of the mother and baby homes made notorious by the film Philomena, the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny commented, ‘no nuns broke into our homes to take our children – we gave them up. We gave them up because of our morbid and perverse pursuit for respectability.’ Respectability, shame and institutional religion have a complex relationship. Like other social groups, religious communities have spoken and unspoken rules, and as in families and friendship groups, those who break the rules can expect there to be consequences. Yet the most admired religious figures, Roman Catholics included, have cared nothing for respectability, and have asked instead, ‘what does love require?, being willing to step outside social norms and taboos to reach out to those most outcast, isolated and vulnerable, believing that whatever the failings of human beings as they are amplified in institutions, the love of God is all embracing and seeks nothing but the good and eventual restoration of all. As the focus of the abortion debate now shifts to Northern Ireland, people of all faiths and none will hotly debate what the law should allow there. If ‘what love requires’ provided an easy criterion then the issue would have been settled generations ago. But whilst the worst of religion plays on respectability and fear; my hope would be that the best of religion might not be silenced along with it. This is one of the reasons I like the film Philomena - because it’s not any cynicism or bitterness that wins out; what shines through in the face of heartbreak is the courage and faith of an elderly mother separated so long from her now dead, gay, beloved, son.