Blunt edge
The Irish Times reports dialogue from this week’s edition of Brendan O’Connor’s Cutting Edge programme. Had insulting comments been made about Roman Catholics by Northern Ireland Protestants on a BBC programme, they would rightly have been labelled as “sectarian.”
“So you reject the Catholic Church but let them be Protestants because that’s not really a religion?”
“I think most Irish people today are bloody Protestants, cos they watered down Catholicism and dropped the bits that they don’t like.”
“So that’s what Protestantism is? Watered down Catholicism?”
“Yes! It really is!”
Watered down Catholicism? Wrong. In its Preamble and Declaration of 1870 the Church of Ireland describes itself as “the Ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church of Ireland.” There is nothing watery in the declaration:
1. The Church of Ireland doth, as heretofore, accept and unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as given by inspiration of God, and containing all things necessary to salvation; and doth continue to profess the faith of Christ as professed by the Primitive Church.
2. The Church of Ireland will continue to minister the doctrine, and sacraments, and the discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded; and will maintain inviolate the three orders of bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons in the sacred ministry.
3. The Church of Ireland, as a reformed and Protestant Church, doth hereby reaffirm its constant witness against all those innovations in doctrine and worship, whereby the Primitive Faith hath been from time to time defaced or overlaid, and which at the Reformation this Church did disown and reject.
Dropped the bits that they don’t like? Wrong. It was not a question of what we did or did not like, it was a question of what was consonant with Scripture. The 1870 declaration reflected our Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion which contain the following under Article 6,
“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”
“Let them be Protestants because that’s not really a religion.” Wrong, unless endeavouring to shape the life of the church and one’s own life according to the faith of Christ is seen by O’Connor’s panellists as not really being religious.
A wise colleague, now deceased, used to comment that there was no-one more illiberal than a liberal. RTE seem to prove his observation.
I can’t get the thing on the RTE Player so I don’t know. Nor from the article in the IT is it clear that Gillian Wharton and Ruth Elmes saw it either. It implies it but it doesn’t ‘state’ it.
But here’s an observation for what it’s worth. I lived for some years in the UK, and religion is an aspect of BBC and ITV broadcasting that RTE simply doesn’t have, then or now. And for all the hoohaw about Ireland being the land of Saints and Scholars it sure as shootin couldn’t be divined from the broadcast media.
On whether any mention of religion is a good thing, I’m not sure. But for certain the debates on the BBC on a Sunday are uplifting. And on this I’m uncertain but it seems that religious professionals have at long last discovered it’s not other religions that should be the target for ire but the nihilists that at core are destructive to everything.
Always amusing that the Gloster Gladiator’s on Malta were Πίστις, Ἐλπίς and Ἀγάπη. Facing as they were a nihilistic darkness we must always be watchful, lest it return.
A bit heavy for a Sat morn. Have a good weekend.
The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, when a priest in Northern Ireland, used to talk of the “sectarianism of overlooking”, the attitude that allows people to talk about people as though they are not really there.