Something green is happening in Ireland. I hope it grows deep roots, but it’s too soon to tell.
1. Radical independence in Ireland.
Ireland’s prime minister gave a dramatic speech condemning the Vatican’s interference in the investigation of priests who molested children their under their pastoral care and protection. The prime minister said, basically, that the Catholic Church had wolves all the way up.
This is radical. Ireland is a country that has gone to war over religion. The Irish have spilled Irish blood because of their beliefs. Irish Catholics have fought, died, and killed out of loyalty to Catholicism.
Now this.
It’s a time of upheaval for the faithful in Ireland. Like an abusive spouse who’s wickedness is exposed, the Catholic Church may threaten and intimidate Ireland to return to it’s former deference. It recalled its Irish ambassador after Ireland issued a report highly critical of the Vatican. If the Vatican coerces Ireland to turn its eyes from the corruption of the Church, it will be a failure of justice in Ireland.
God be with the Irish. May they not waiver. If the Vatican tries to turn them back from their defiance, may Ireland say, "Go with God, but go." I’m betting that they will.
Then perhaps the Irish can bond more closely with some of their local prelates, who responded with greater clarity to the harming of children than the Vatican did.
What Ireland is doing is hard. That’s not obvious to someone outside the Catholic Church, as I am. But old ties have hard knots; they resist being loosened.
It’s comforting to think of the ancient Church as a wall that you can put your back to in hard times, who’s protection is constant and reliable. It’s so attractive to think that way that it takes courage to see clearly, to know that the wall of protection deserves a "danger" sign. The Irish might yet prove to be like the Israelites, who, long after fleeing from Egypt, trusted Egypt of old alliance, rather than trusting the unseen God.
Courage to Ireland.
2. Norway’s tragedy may instruct America.
And courage to America. Particularly, courage to those American conservatives who until now have taken the easy road of hatred of Muslims in response to the death of 3,000 of our own on our own soil.
We need courage as we look at Norway. Norway is reckoning with the unimaginable. One of their own has assassinated scores of their young people. The assassin did this out of a fear of both Islam, a hated enemy, and liberalism, a hated (supposed) friend of Islam.
It’s tempting to dig a cognitive moat between the psyche of the Norwegian killer and our own intolerant minds. So a friend of mine quickly called the Norwegian assassin "crazy". I respect my friend’s opinion, and I don't accuse her personally of intolerance, but I think her explanation is too easy in every sense.
Another cognitive moat: Fox News’s website quotes an anonymous police official, who might or might not exist, to say how puzzled the police are to find no connection between the killer and Norwegian Nazis. By crediting this puzzlement, Fox News insinuates a connection between Naziism and the killer. This is a connection that nobody who will attach their name to their words has drawn.
There's no proof to connect the Norwegian killer to insanity or to Naziism. But he clearly hates both Muslims, and, because they do not share his hatred, liberals. I’m not saying that all intolerant persons are would-be killers. But intolerance does kill. The proof of that is the Norwegian killer.
Because the Norwegian killer admits that his deadly actions came from his beliefs about Muslims; in a word, intolerance. Norwegians aren’t to blame; it was fringe thinking that led to the massacre. But intolerance was a strong component of that fringe thinking. So the massacre calls us to examine our own intolerance, and to decide whether we will permit intolerance to repose in our own minds
And for the intolerant, it takes courage to look upon intolerance and to see it for what it is: hatred, pure and simple. It’s what Christ of the Christians urged his followers to shun. ("[D]o not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." (Matthew 5:39.) "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you . . .." (Luke 6:27.))
The question is whether we will absorb Norway's trauma and purge our own intolerance.
3. History has cleansed us before.
We’ve turned from intolerance before. Anti-Semitism and racism were widespread in America before World War II. World War II changed us. In the Nazi death camps, we saw the effect of bigotry, and we were filled with revulsion. So we in large measure separated ourselves from intolerance.
I believe that this revulsion caused by the Nazi death camps was a tectonic plate that shifted in our psyches, that contributed to the rise of the great civil-rights movement of the last century.
4. Not an end to debate; a transformation of debate.
Tolerance doesn’t mean we must love the radical, fundamentalist Muslims who plot to harm us. (That would be a truly radical Christianity.) But it’s always wise, and it’s never naive, to see complexity in others.
So, rather than see Muslims as always the same, one to another, we can choose to learn about them. We can learn that Muslims vary from one to another as much as Christians vary from one to another. This isn’t easy. It takes effort. But revulsion to the massacre in Norway spurs us to that effort. Because Norway is the logical end-point of hatred, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens here.
And if we shun intolerance, that doesn’t end debate about national security or immigration policy. It just means that those debates continue without easy, harmful stereotypes.
5. Hope.
Ireland has gone through trauma. The revulsion of what they now know causes them to cast off an old, unquestioning deference. Good for them.
And good for us if we look upon Norway’s tragedy and make their revulsion our own, and use it to turn ourselves to our better natures.
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