Understanding Ireland’s Vote Approving Same-Sex Marriage
Her name is Muriel. She is the 86 year-old widow of an Irish farmer living near the city of Kilkenny in the southern part of the Irish Republic. She is the mother of seven children, six sons and one daughter. Her youngest son, Peter, now runs the family’s cattle farm, making this family’s economic life dependent on the price of beef. Like most citizens of Ireland, Muriel and her children are historically and traditionally Roman Catholic. They are not particularly zealous about religion, but the Catholic Church is imprinted deeply on their souls, their lives and their culture. This is not an unusual, but a rather typical Irish family.
While in Ireland recently, I interviewed Muriel. I went Ireland to interview a number of Irish citizens in search of answers as to how it happened that in the late spring of 2015, this deeply Catholic country, in a public referendum, had by a wide margin approved and thus made legal nation-wide same-sex marriage. Before this vote no one had predicted this outcome. Indeed it came as a huge surprise.
Standing in fierce opposition to same-sex marriage was the entire leadership of the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland. The financial resources of this institution were dedicated to defeating this initiative. Every Catholic pulpit in Ireland was mobilized for this fight and from those pulpits came the word to the faithful that “same-sex marriage was a clear violation of Catholic teaching.”
Aligned on the other side and thus in opposition to the church was a coalition of liberal human rights organizations, each dedicated to the ideal of human equality. Generally these groups were regarded as passionate, but they were not considered to be either well-organized or particularly effective. To most seasoned political observers this referendum looked like a Goliath versus David affair. The smart money was clearly on Goliath.
When the day of voting came, however, and when the television, newspaper and radio ads ceased to run, the people of Ireland trudged to the polls to vote. The result? A huge victory for gay rights. The political pundits of Ireland were stunned. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church announced that they must have “lost touch with the people.” The younger adults of Ireland celebrated together with the various advocacy groups. They had hoped for victory, but they had not anticipated a landslide! That was when I decided that there had to be a story here that I needed to write. I came in search of that story.
I interviewed a cab driver in Dublin. He was clearly a descendant of the ancient Viking invaders with fiery red hair and a thick Irish accent. He was not pleased with the referendum. “How do you think it happened?” I asked. Without a moment’s hesitation, he said: “The money from gay American lobby groups had flooded into Ireland to buy the election.” It was a fascinating and familiar kind of response. I made some official inquiries to determine whether this charge had any credibility. In official circles, no one seemed to think this was a significant factor. In the South of my youth blaming “outside agitators” for change was always the tactic of those who had trouble admitting that their opinion no longer represented a majority view.
On a Sunday morning, we attended worship at the Cathedral in Kilkenny. There were perhaps eighty people at the Eucharist. I am certain that we stood out as visitors. We were warmly welcomed and I got a chance before the service to talk to several people informally. I did not reveal my identity, but I suspect that my questions indicated that I was not just a disinterested American visitor. One couple, in their late 50’s, well dressed and clearly leaders in that community, were especially gracious, telling us something of the history of that cathedral. It felt as though they were welcoming us to their home. When I got the opportunity to ask about the referendum and just how it was that gay marriage had been so resoundingly affirmed in the referendum, the woman of this couple appeared to take umbrage at the question itself. “Only a distinct minority in this country favors gay marriage,” she said. She then explained the majority vote on this issue by suggesting that if one added the votes of those who opposed gay marriage to the number of people who did not vote, the referendum allowing gay people to be wed legally would have been overwhelmingly defeated! It was strange logic, revealing more of her prejudice than it did any political reality. In politics those who feel the most fervor about an issue or a candidate tend to be the ones who are motivated to vote. It obviously salves wounded feelings to pretend that your own prejudice is still held by the majority of the population. Facts do not support that delusion. I did not challenge. My task was to gather information not to debate it.
Among the last people I interviewed was an elegant and clearly successful Irish national, who had risen to the top of one of the utility companies of the United Kingdom. He was deeply and thoroughly Irish, born in Dublin and a graduate of Trinity College. He was also open and liberal in his attitudes. He had only one comment: “How can anyone vote against love?” enough said! I interviewed a number of others, but these were the representative opinions.
This brings me back to Muriel, who was very perceptive. “We do not trust the church any longer as a moral guide,” she stated. When I asked what had brought this change about, she replied, without hesitation: “Bishop Casey.” I did not know who Bishop Casey was. That evening I went to my computer to read about Eamon Casey, the Catholic bishop of Galway in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He was a dynamic leader of the church, possessing both charm and great ability. A rising star in the Irish Catholicism, he was constantly quoted in newspapers and had a reputation for driving at top speeds on Irish highways, frequently receiving tickets from the Irish national police force. The impression was that this bishop lived on the edge, pushing the limits.
Casey became a bishop in 1969 in Kerry. He was such a champion of the poor that he was chosen by other Irish bishops to represent them at the funeral of Oscar Romero, the murdered Archbishop of San Salvador, who opposed the landed aristocracy with which the Catholic hierarchy was traditionally aligned. After that experience, Bishop Casey became incensed by the foreign policy of President Ronald Reagan in Central America, which he believed, also sided with the oppressive ruling classes. When Ronald Reagan visited Ireland, Trinity College conferred upon him an honorary doctorate. Bishop Casey denounced this decision and boycotted the ceremony. He was nothing if not outspoken on the side of the poor.
Life, however, sometimes turns on people not on issues. In 1973, while Bishop Casey was still serving in Kerry, a family relative, living in America, asked the bishop if he would assist his daughter, Annie Murphy. She was a twenty-five year old woman, who had just undergone a miscarriage and a bitter public divorce in Connecticut. She needed a place to be anonymous in which to put her life back together. Bishop Casey agreed to have this lady come to Ireland and to have a set of rooms in the Bishop’s Palace. Bishop Casey met her at the airport. He was twenty years her senior but, despite his age and their kinship, the two of them sparked at first sight and soon entered into a passionate love affair. Annie Murphy became pregnant. The bishop moved her into one of the Catholic institutions for unwed mothers. He paid for her care from discretionary funds, available to the bishop. The child, a son named Peter, was born and Annie Murphy refused to give him up for adoption as the bishop had urged. So Bishop Casey provided financial payments to care for his son from church sources, even as the bishop rose in the hierarchy, even paying for his son’s university education. Annie Murphy’s demands grew as he became more and more a public figure. Hiding such large withdrawals became much more difficult. Finally, he refused to meet her increasing demands, which looked more and more like blackmail. In response, Annie Murphy went to the Irish Free Press of Dublin in 1992 and broke the story. It broke across Ireland like the rolling sounds of a thunderstorm. “The sexual liaison was one thing, being an understandable human weakness,” Muriel said, “but using church funds, received to provide care for the poor, to support one’s mistress and one’s illegitimate child was quite another.” Bishop Casey was removed from his position and sent to other parts of the Catholic world. In the mind of Muriel, however, this was the disillusioning moral break between the people of the Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church, a break that has never healed.
The scandals of child abuse by both priests and nuns, which seemed to take place in almost every Catholic school and orphanage in Ireland, fell on this fertile soil of negativity during the next decade widening the breach between the people and the church. When the Irish government, in response to a state ordered investigation of church abuse, published its findings in 2006, the depth of both abuse and cover up was so great that even the Archbishop of Ireland was forced to resign. The disillusionment begun with Bishop Casey became pandemic. “The Church no longer has moral credibility,” Muriel said. The people no longer recognize its authority. It was a sad commentary, but Muriel alone seemed to express the reality of Ireland. It mattered no longer to Ireland’s population what the Church said about much of anything.
I did not rejoice in learning these things. I hope that this great Church can find its way back to moral integrity. The proper starting point is clear. This Church must face its own past with honesty. It would help if this Church would also admit how wrong and how morally inept it has been for so long about homosexual people. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation; it takes but a moment to destroy it.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online
here.
