Religious War Rages On

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Sidewalks with Tom Deignan

Religious War Rages On

June 14, 2007

WHAT could be wrong with Irish Americans Matt Dillon (the actor) and Christine Quinn (New York City Council speaker) joining forces to save an historic church? Why bring up the violent past just as stability takes hold in Northern Ireland? From Manhattan to Belfast, the Irish are once again caught in the middle of an intense debate over culture and religion.

In recent weeks, Irish Americans have added new wrinkles to their already complex relationship with the Catholic Church. With a heated presidential race looming and a prominent Catholic candidate things are surely going to get more interesting.

Let’s begin with Christopher Hitchens, whose new book God Is Not Great has risen all the way to the top of The New York Times best seller list. The famed intellectual gadfly and proud atheist has used Belfast to illustrate the corrupting influence of religion upon the world.

Author Terry Golway (whose numerous Irish books include a biography of John Devoy) delivered a theological smackdown to Hitchens in this week’s New York Observer.

“Mr. Hitchens cites a plainly apocryphal story from Belfast as evidence of yet another way in which religion ruins everything; worse, Mr. Hitchens insists that the story is both true and a local joke: A visitor to Belfast is asked if he is a Protestant or a Catholic? He replies that he is an atheist. The inquisitor pauses, then asks: Are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?’,” Golway writes. “Surely the story, true or not, shows us that the conflict in Belfast was-what a joy to talk about it in the past tense-about labels, not about theology. Those labels, those divisions, were nurtured by the British Empire, which saw religion as a nifty way to keep the locals at each other’s throats…. The ensuing carnage throughout the old empire might, at first glance, prove Mr. Hitchens’ thesis. A closer look, however, would demonstrate something else again: That human beings screw up religion, not the other way around.”

Perhaps this tells us a bit about why numerous Catholics are playing large roles in the upcoming presidential race but not many are on the same ideological page. Irish Americans such as Tom Monaghan (former Domino’s pizza owner) have poured millions of dollars into tipping the political balance towards conservative Catholic candidates.

This is bad news for Rudy Giuliani, already despised by some Irish Catholics for his role in the Joe Doherty affair.

Now, a political action committee with links to Monaghan, Fidelis America, is reportedly looking to sink the former New York mayor’s presidential candidacy. They believe Giuliani’s position on abortion makes him insufficiently Catholic, even though some polls show that a majority of Irish American Catholics actually differ with the church on this issue.

Nevertheless, if it is true that Giuliani is inconsistent when it comes to faith and policy, he’s not the only one.

That’s where Quinn and Dillon come in. Give credit where credit is due Dillon has been out front of the movement to save the Lower East Side church St. Brigid’s from demolition.

“This church is part of our history,” Dillon said at a rally this week. “It was built by Irish immigrants fleeing the Famine, by shipbuilders who were the first longshoremen in the city. It’s unbelievable to me that the Catholic Church would even consider destroying it.

“If the city keeps going the way it’s going with all this new development, it’s going to end up looking like Toronto. I think they should save it and turn it into a museum to celebrate the history of Catholics coming to New York, starting with the Irish who built St. Brigid’s.”

But let’s point out the obvious — the beliefs of those devout New York Catholics are not exactly popular in New York City, particularly in Manhattan, where Irish American lesbians such as Quinn have earned serious political power.

Maybe these complexities are inevitable. And it’s not to say that Catholics must be ultra-conservative.

Consider Robert Drinan, the Jesuit priest and activist who died earlier this year. Father Drinan (a son of immigrants) was elected to Congress in 1970 and served until 1980, when Pope John Paul II explicitly forbid priests from holding elective office.

Drinan, incidentally, spoke out against the war in Vietnam. And for abortion rights.

What does this all mean for the Irish vote in 2008? Expect the unexpected.

(Contact Tom tomdeignan@verizon.net.)

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