Does this resonnate? Who wrote it? When and where?
“Solidarity is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property.
“The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them.
“These convictions and habits of solidarity, when they are put into practice, open the way to other structural transformations and make them possible.
“Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.”
Ireland imagining an alternative politics
Does it not seem that the most important thing about the forthcoming event being organised by Ireland’s new political movement, the Reform Alliance (RA), in the Royal Dublin Society’s conference centre on 25 January is first and foremost the challenge it throws down to us to free our imagination?
Ostensibly “policy” is on the agenda. But unless we break free of the bondage which ties us to habits of thought about ourselves and our society, which have become second nature to us over the past few decades, then we will be wasting our time.
Philip Blond, an English philosopher and political thinker with an Irish lineage, is addressing the conference. This gives us reason to hope that it is all on the right track. Blond has written about the condition of Western society in his paradoxically entitled book, Red Tory [1]. In it he looks at the generally sorry state we have allowed ourselves to get into and how we have enslaved ourselves in all sorts of practical ways.
However, he writes, even our minds are not free. In order to be truly liberated we have to be able to imagine an alternative to the prevailing order. This we manifestly cannot do at present. So colonised have we become by consumption, fantasies of glamour, and cynicism about the public good that we cannot envisage anything different from that which we currently experience. In order to create such an alternative one has to look both backwards and forwards. Backwards, because history tells us that things were different once and that what has happened need not have occurred. Forwards because with knowledge of an alternative past in a manner that isn’t simply naive or idealistic, it is possible to envisage a better future that we all might inhabit.
That must surely be the starting point and basis for any creative political life which will offer us a way out of the mess we are now in. Our thinking about education, health, social and economic policy has to engage in a truly Promethean struggle and to break itself free from the ideological bonds of selfish individualism and once again see the common good as the only foundation stone on which a just and equitable society can be built.
It is hard to know why we lost the plot so badly. Were we so scared of Communism and Socialism that we overcompensated by elevating the individual to the centre of the universe? Did we then surrender ourselves to selfishness and narcissism – which is the inevitable consequence of setting the individual up as master of all he surveys? Whatever the reason for us getting there, we must now find a way out of this prison.
Blond in his book offers an analysis of why this happened in Britain over the past half century, and what the dire consequences were. It does not take a huge leap of the imagination to see how what he describes applies to the island of Ireland in almost equal measure – or to see that the pace of our pursuit of our neighbour’s folly has increased to breakneck speed. Blond is addressing the RA conference and hopefully he will underline all this in the stark detail which he provides in his book.
He traces a good deal of the rot back to the 1960s when what he describes as “fragments of the middle classes”, some of them associated with the ‘new left – the ultra fashionable intellectual left of that era – “preached personal pleasure as a means of public salvation.” They had little idea what they were doing, he says.
While toxic to civilised middle-class life, this mixture was lethal to the working class. Some measure of sexual liberation was necessary, and could have led to a deepening of loyal relationships between men and women. But, in reality, it was contaminated by narcissism from the outset. For the working class this narcissism meant the dissolving of the social bonds that had kept the poorest together during the worst times of the 1930s – illegitimacy increased and family breakdown began in earnest.
He then goes on to describe how the “new left”, contaminated by this self-centred ideology became disengaged from the politics and needs of working-class people, “as a politics of desire overwhelmed whatever was good and decent in its prior ethic. This license to express the self allowed the advocates of liberation in the late 1960s to embrace drugs and hedonism as if personal emancipation for bohemians would lead to the liberation of all.” The consequences of this were disastrous for the working class as the cancer seeped into the building blocks of society – the family and the communities which families constituted. This corrosive culture of self-indulgence continues to flourish.
The family is the first and the most intimate social institution that human beings have, Blond reminds us, – it might vary by extension but nothing can challenge its decisive importance. But just look at what has happened to the British family: in 1964, 63,300 births were recorded outside marriage, only 7.3% of all births. In 2003 it was 257,225, over 41% of all those born.
If present trends continue, soon the majority of UK children will be born out of wedlock, with all the pejorative consequences for the young that both sociology and statistics have amply elucidated. For example, each child born to unmarried parents has only a 38% chance of seeing out their childhood with both parents present. Marriage is clearly better for children: 70% of children of married parents can expect their mother and father to stay together during their childhood. But marriage is failing too: the number of divorces rose in 2008 to 167,000; in 1961 there were only 27,000 divorces granted.
Do the Irish think they are immune from this contagion? From the way all Irish political leaders are charging ahead with every piece of permissive legislation the Irish liberal left shouts for, you would think they do.
Last year the Iona Institute surveyed the situation in the Republic of Ireland and revealed the following:
<p style=”padding-left:30px;”>■ There are now 200,000 adults who have suffered a broken marriage. This is five times more than in 1986 (divorce was put on the statute books in the Republic in 1996).
■ There has been an increase of 80 per cent in the number of lone parent families since 1986
and the total now stands at almost 190,000.
■ There are 121,000 cohabiting couples, up nearly fourfold in just ten years.
■ The number of children being raised in non-marital families is now one in four, which is
drawing close to American and British levels.
As Blond says, “The picture isn’t pretty” – neither in Britain nor in Ireland. With family breakdown affecting so many – and continuing to increase, – “the fundamental bedrock of civic life has been destroyed.” He points the finger without apology – and Ireland knows that the finger is pointing in the same direction there:
It was some of the very people who thought themselves left-wing – the pleasure-seeking, mind-altering drug takers and sexual pioneers of the 1960s who instigated the fragmentation of the working-class family and sold the poor the poisonous idea of liberation through chemical and sexual experimentation.
And they haven’t gone away, you know.
The whole problem has been compounded by the disastrous corrosion of political life and political institutions. In both Britain and Ireland huge segments of the electorate have been disenfranchised by the merging of all established political forces, left and right, into one amorphous mass of politically correct puppets pandering to that other increasingly arrogant force in the public life of a country – the mass media.
As the influence of this force grew, public representatives needed to take account of it at all times. To do this more effectively they had to enlist the help of professionals from within the media and the “spin doctor” came into existence. The term itself denotes deceitfulness. All this further enhanced the media’s influence to the point where it can only now be described as power. The unelected tribunes within the media now effectively lead the elected representatives along the path of least resistance to goals which they identify as “progress”, manipulating the politicians who live in fear and dread of being pilloried by this new bardic class. This is the trend in every country but true with far more dire consequences in Ireland where a monolithically liberal-left clique dominates the country’s print and broadcast media. Meanwhile increasing numbers of the electorate look on in helpless dismay.
Blond sums it up like this:
The real outcome of the last thirty years of the left-right legacy is a state of disempowerment. Nowadays we have the worst of the left and the right combined in one philosophy: an authoritarian, illiberal, bureaucratic state coupled with an extreme ideology of markets and the unlimited sway of capital. Little wonder then that most Britons feel they cannot influence their locality let alone their region or nation. Passive and compliant, all we can do is shop – and after a while that doesn’t make us particularly happy either.
Many in Ireland – it is estimated that between 40 and 50 percent are disillusioned with all the political options presented to them by the current political establishment – are living in hope. Their hope is that what is now stirring in the public square will emerge as a political force to challenge this essentially corrupted status quo. They hope that it will restore integrity to the system, that it will offer them something in which they can again place their trust, their aspirations for the future, the future of their children and their country.
[1] Blond, Philip, Red Tory. How the Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It. Faber and Faber, London. 2010.
More good news for the disenfranchised Irish
There is more good news for the disenfranchised Irish in today’s Sunday Independent (Dublin).
The paper reports that the Reform Alliance, initiated by the members of the Irish parliament expelled for voting against abortion for reasons of conscience,will stage its first rally rally this month as it seeks set out its principled stall in the political arena.
The Alliance, the paper tells us, has been secretly planning the event – scheduled for January 25 – over the past two months away from the glare of the media spotlight.
“We thought, ‘New Year, new political ideas’. The timing seems right,” Ludinda Creighton told this newspaper last night. She added: “This is not about any one individual, but about being a vehicle for new thinking.”
The Alliance is currently made up of seven former Fine Gael party members; TDs Ms Creighton, Denis Naughten, Billy Timmins, Peter Mathews and Terence Flanagan and senators Paul Bradford and Fidelma Healy Eames.
There will be no shortage of snipers ready to try to take down this brave effort to put integrity back into Irish public life. The online comments with the Indepandent’s story offers plenty evidence of sniper activity. The left-liberal alliance is not going to sit around but will be out with all guns blazing. This movement is anchored on principles – honesty, respect for the truth, trust, sincerity and loyalty. The actual debate is something else. Let us all first agree on the principles. The rot in Irish political life is not in the policies primarily. Any rottenness there comes from the rot in the minds and hearts of those at the head of the political machines colluding in the system. Reform, radical reform at this deepest level is what is necessary. Reform the roots and the branches will flower.
More cracks in Ireland’s new abortion Act
The Irish College of General Practitioners has added its voice to growing concern among health professionals at the enactment this week of the new abortion legislation without clinical guidelines, The Irish Times reports this morning.
Dr Miriam Daly, the college’s programme director for women’s health, said in a statement yesterday that commencement of the Protection of Life During Act 2013 without guidance on how it is to be implemented was “clearly unsatisfactory”.
The College of Psychiatrists has already advised its members not to take part in review panels provided for under the legislation, to assess pregnant women expressing suicidal thoughts, until clinical guidelines from the Department of Health are issued. Read full report here.
Ireland’s new abortion law runs into trouble
Where does the much-trumpeted legislation for the abortion of unborn children introduced by the Republic of Ireland’s Government now stand? Currently it seems to be in some trouble. It sounds even worse – depending on your point of view – that President Obama’s Obamacare debacle.
The Irish College of Psychiatrists has advised its members not to participate in reviewing cases where women might look for an abortion expressing suicidal thoughts. They want proper clinical guidelines and the provision of these is fraught with difficulty – indeed some would say are impossible because they will be unable to provide doctor with any kind of legal protection.
The College has described the enactment of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act without clinical guidelines as “very haphazard and unsatisfactory” and has expressed “extreme concern” at the absence of any guidance for general medical practitioners on accessing suitable psychiatrists to assess a pregnant woman showing signs of suicidality; at the absence of guidelines for a psychiatrist seeking a second psychiatric opinion; and the lack of training for obstetricians in up-to-date psychiatric issues as well as for psychiatrists in obstetric issues.
The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act came into force on January 1st. A “Guidelines on Implementation Committee” was appointed last year by the Department of Health to draw up clinical guidelines on how the legislation would work in practice but this has yet to report.
The Act provides that a pregnant woman who is expressing suicidal thoughts and seeking an abortion may have one if three medical practitioners, including two psychiatrists, have “jointly certified in good faith” that there is a real and substantial risk to her life by suicide which can only be averted by an abortion.
There is also provision for a review panel, to be “established and maintained” by the Health Service Executive (HSE) “of at least 10 medical practitioners”. On this basis the HSE must request medical bodies, including the College of Psychiatrists, to nominate members to be appointed to it. Psychiatrists are not at all happy with this.
Miriam Silke, representing the College, told The Irish Times that until the guidelines were issued the college would not recommend to its members participation in the panel. “We simply do not know when they will be issued. We have not heard anything since the Bill came into law. I presume work is progressing but they aren’t imminent. It is very haphazard and unsatisfactory.”
“Dr Anthony McCarthy, perinatal psychiatrist at the National Maternity Hospital and former president of the college, said the new legislation failed to provide ‘real solutions’ for women in distress. A pregnant woman expressing suicidal thoughts would be seen by a psychiatrist, he said, but if that psychiatrist wanted to get a second opinion it was unclear how this would be obtained, the Times reported.
Dr. Ruth Cullen of the Irish ProLife Campaign issued a statement on the latest debacle on Saturday saying that “the deep-seated flaws in the Government’s new abortion law are starting to reveal themselves.”
Dr. Cullen added: “The Government knew perfectly well when it introduced the law that abortion is not a treatment for suicidal feelings and may in fact be detrimental to women’s health.
“The fact that the Government this week activated the new law without any clinical guidelines in place is further proof that the push for abortion legislation over the past year had everything to do with achieving an ideological goal rather than concern for women’s lives or the lives of their unborn babies.
“The truth behind the deep-seated flaws in the new legislation are starting to reveal themselves. This will only continue as more and more people begin to realise that the new law was never about evidence based medicine but about introducing an abortion regime in Ireland.”
Another fine mess from Prime Minister Kenny and his gifted Minister for Health, Dr. James Reilly.
Storms threatening the Irish liberal left’s hegemony?
Colette Browne, ultra feminist, ultra liberal and cheerleader of the pro abortion campaign in Ireland seems worried – although she is trying to hide it.
She is not alone.
Deep down the “monstrous regiment” of men and women which manipulated the Irish political system to legislate for abortion on demand with the formula “I-demand-an-abortion-and-I will-kill-myself-if-you-don’t-give-me-what-I-want” know that they have awakened the conscience of a nation – and they fear the consequences.
Enda Kenny is widely seen as having betrayed those who elected him by wilting under the pressure from Ireland’s left-liberal league and put a very flawed – even from a purely legal point of view – abortion act on the statute books. The medical profession is is now telling him that his act is unworkable. No Irish politician in living memory has been looked on with such distaste or has been spoken of in such hostile terms as this man has.
After his perceived betrayal of the electorate Kenny then mercilessly punished his political party members who refused to go along with his folly. These have since begun to talk to each other about reform of the Irish political environment and in a language which is music to the ears of voters who for the life of the current Government, and longer, have experienced wholesale disenfranchisement. This group now stands poised to put together a political option for these disenchanted voters. At a conservative estimate this group probably now constitutes more than 40% of the Irish electorate.
With an admirable strategy the reformers are not rushing to set up any definitive structure but are simply setting up a stall to attract politicians of any and all parties who are sick of the deceitful and self-serving politics which Kenny and his rump is now identified with. Just now, the water is being tested to find women and men for whom principle, integrity and decent human values come first. Policies will follow but will follow in a mould consistent with those values.
Kenny is currently trying to garner credit of Ireland’s tentative economic recovery. But Ireland’s relatively competent permanent public servants, the International Monetary Fund , the European Central Bank and the European Commission are the ones who have rescued Ireland from its notorious bailout. All the Irish political parties were complicit in the creation of the economic melt-down which necessitated the drastic measures which corrected it. Whatever party was in power when the bailout was forced on Ireland would have done what Kenny’s coalition government has had to do. No choice, no credit. The Irish people are not fools. They know this.
So what is the problem for Browne et al? It is this. They see an embryonic political movement which has the potential to set at naught all their political scheming to turn Ireland into a “progressive” and “modern” society made to their own image and likeness. They want to kill off this embryo before it has a chance to complicate their lives and their dream. Browne’s chosen tactic, employed in a recent column in the Irish Independent, was cynicism and abuse.
Other than a love of spouting meaningless banalities about the need for unspecified change and reform . . . what does the Reform Alliance (the provisional designation of the new movement) stand for? She asks.
Rhetorically she wonders why we are so convinced that we need a new political party when no one knows what it will stand for. Something of a non sequitor there?
In her response to the case for a new party put by an independent member of the existing Dáil (parliament) she retorts: “Sounds great doesn’t it? A thrusting new young party to enter the political fray and shake up the cosy-consensus politics that has come to dominate Leinster House.”
She asks: “Where does it stand on economic issues? With none of its members voting against the Government on any money bill, can we assume that they support the Government’s economic policies?
“What about social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage? We know that the members have a very conservative attitude to abortion but does this conservatism also seep into other areas?”
She knows full well that at this stage this movement is not about policies because there is no party yet to have an articulated policy. What she and others want is that these individuals might act prematurely so that they could then be slaughtered. She knows full well what some of them are thinking but she and others cannot properly begin their attack until policies are articulated. This is very frustrating.
Ms Lucinda Creighton, Browne reminds us all, has previously stated that she is against gay marriage and another member, Fidelma Healy Eames, has railed against the “scale and pace” of social legislation undertaken by the Government. Lucinda Creighton, formerly a Kenny government minister was the most prominent member sacked by him for her disobedience to the machine. She is clearly the driving force behind the new movement – and consequently the number one target that the liberal left want to get their teeth into. But she is too wily for them.
Browne then goes on to moan about the sameness of Irish political parties and analyses the problem pretty well: Irish voters now have no meaningful choice when they go to the polls. She does not put it this way, but the truth is that in recent elections Irish voters were presented with a range of politically corrected puppets of the liberal and equally monolithic Irish media to chose from. But clearly Browne does not like what she sees coming down the tracks and her strategy is to shout to us all, “Don’t be fooled – this is just more of the same.” That is where a great number of Irish people hope she is wrong. There is now an expectation that the local and European election in a few months time will show the true state of Irish political opinion. Some see these elections and the national elections due in over a year’s time as an opportunity for the biggest shake-up in Irish politics in 80 or 90 years.
Irish Justice Minister speaking with a forked tongue
Ireland’s Iona Institute points out how the country’s Justice Minister is speaking with a forked tongue.
In the Irish parliament this week, the Institute says, Alan Shatter delivered a speech that inadvertently but comprehensively demonstrated the case against redefining marriage.
We have said all along that redefining marriage radically redefines parenthood, attacks the rights of children and attacks freedom of religion. Minister Shatter’s vision of the family as outlined in his Dail speech proves this.
He sees no special place in Irish law or social policy for motherhood or fatherhood or the natural ties.
He has no real understanding of the state of marriage in Ireland currently.
He has a very shrivelled view of religious freedom.
The words ‘mother’ or ‘father’ appear nowhere in his speech. He simply does not seem to believe that society has any special interest in encouraging men and women to raise their children together in loving unions.
There is no indication that he sees the sexual unions of men and women as being different in any socially significant way from any other kind of sexual union, or indeed from any other kind of emotional union, period.
He was very far from the mark when he said in his speech, “we are more deeply attached to marriage as a society than ever”.
It is true that more of us are married in absolute terms. But that is only because there are more of us anyway.
But our marriage rate is now lower than Britain’s, and Britain’s is the lowest it has ever been.
More than a third of births are outside marriage. Almost 250,000 Irish people are divorced or separated and our rate of cohabitation has soared.
If the Minister for Justice is unaware of these facts, or is prepared to ignore them, then that is deeply worrying. What, if anything, would compel him to say, we are no longer so attached to marriage?
On the matter of religious freedom, he told the Dail that he will ensure religious solemnisers of marriage don’t have to perform same-sex marriages. But the Constitution almost certainly forces him to do that in any case.
But what happens to marriage guidance counsellors, wedding planners, wedding stationers, florists, photographers? Must they all go along with the proposed redefinition of marriage or be driven out of the business? The answer appears to be yes.
So Minister Shatter’s speech shows just how high the stakes are in this debate and how vitally necessary it is that we play our part in it.
His speech in full can be read here.
Good news for voiceless children
Good news – a close-run thing for those awaiting birth but a victory nonetheless.
Ireland’s Pro Life campaign today welcomed the defeat of a European Parliament report on ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights’. The report, proposed by Portuguese MEP Edite Estrela included a number of recommendations that promoted the provision of abortion services including one which recommended that, “as a human rights and public health concern, high-quality abortion services should be made legal, safe, and accessible to all”.
The proposal was rejected in Strasbourg today and instead an alternative report proposed by the European People’s Party was adopted by 334 to 327 votes.
Responding to the result, Cora Sherlock of the Pro Life Campaign said:
“Today is International human rights day. It is fitting that a report which sought to attack the most basic human right – the right to life – was rejected. The Estrela report sought to turn on its head the right to life, ignored the mounting evidence that abortion hurts many women and undermined the concept of conscientious objection for medical practitioners.
“The scrapping of the report shows that grassroots efforts of pro-life people advocating for authentic human rights have an impact. Irish people joined many others right across Europe in contacting their MEP’s asking them to reject this report. The result is evidence that making our voices heard on behalf of those who have no voice can make a real difference”.
You can check how your MEP voted on the alternative resolution which resulted in the defeat of the Estrela Report here
You can access the Estrela Report here
So where does the Catholic Church stand?
Irish television’s current affairs flagship, Prime Time, is turning its attention this week (Tuesday 10th of December) to ‘The Current State of The Catholic Church’ and its future. It is posing the question as to whether the Church is “heading to a more purist congregation or is the leadership of Pope Francis opening up its doors to a more diverse range of beliefs?”
While the awkward phrasing of that question in itself betrays a degree of confusion about the nature of the phenomenon being looked at it, the very posing of the question once again underlines the shock and awe aroused in the secular media – and it doesn’t get much more secular than Irish television these days – by the new man on the Chair of Peter.
What the question betrays is the simple ignorance of the fact that constant development is part of the DNA of the Catholic Church. The past 30 years have seen an incredible development and clarification of its teaching under the guidance of two incredible popes. We now have what looks like another extraordinary man setting out an explicitly missionary stall, defining the very nature of the church in those terms but also very explicitly building that mission on all the sacramental and moral principles which have been taught, developed and clarified by his predecessors over two millennia.
The church’s business is and always has been helping us find our way from this world, through this world, to the next. That is sometimes a messy business. It can be messy for internal and external reasons. It was internally messy for weak-kneed Peter, doubting Thomas, Augustine, overchaqrged with testosterone, and countless others. It was externally messy for its Founder and countless others of his followers down to even an hour ago. People are put to death every day for pursuing this business. For a lot more life is made very awkward because the take it all so seriously. But it has nothing to do with being rigid or purist – it is about the pursuit of the Good Life in the true meaning of both those words.
This is the stall now being set out by Pope Francis. I’d say, ‘just watch this space’.
We now enjoy far greater freedom from rigid social constraints than we did 50 years ago – although the new cultural phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ has put a number of new ones in the place of the so-called “taboos” we have got rid of. But freedom, while a very good thing, does not guarantee good judgment. At the heart of the Catholic Church is a teaching mission and the ultimate aim of that teaching is to guide us to right judgment. ‘How will they know if they are not taught’?
Many of the judgments we have made about ourselves and our condition which have now become enshrined in the modernist and post-modernist political and social consensus are totally at variance with the teaching of the Catholic Church. What the Church is now doing is finding the way to counter this alien consensus, as it has done for centuries – first, in the Roman Empire, later in the paganism of the barbarians, later still, in the many false, although often well-intentioned, cues of the protestant reformers, then in Marxist materialism and now in hedonistic materialism.
Pope Francis is now addressing the entire Catholic world in a letter (“Evangelii Gaudium”, Apostolic Exhortation, 24-XI-2013.) which is much more than a letter. It is a programme for missionary action, profoundly cognizant of human nature and profoundly supernatural, rooted in the essentials of Christian faith and morality. Here he is talking to the Church dispersed in particular churches throughout the world:
Each particular Church, as a portion of the Catholic Church under the leadership of its bishop, is…called to missionary conversion. It is the primary subject of evangelization, since it is the concrete manifestation of the one Church in one specific place, and in it “the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and operative”. It is the Church incarnate in a certain place, equipped with all the means of salvation bestowed by Christ, but with local features. Its joy in communicating Jesus Christ is expressed both by a concern to preach him to areas in greater need and in constantly going forth to the outskirts of its own territory or towards new socio-cultural settings. Wherever the need for the light and the life of the Risen Christ is greatest, it will want to be there. To make this missionary impulse ever more focused, generous and fruitful, I encourage each particular Church to undertake a resolute process of discernment, purification and reform.”
Later he says:
If we attempt to put all things in a missionary key, this will also affect the way we communicate the message. In today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs a greater risk of being distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s moral teaching are taken out of the context which gives them their meaning. The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with those secondary aspects which, important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message. We need to be realistic and not assume that our audience understands the full background to what we are saying, or is capable of relating what we say to the very heart of the Gospel which gives it meaning, beauty and attractiveness.
As Rome Reports summed up this letter: “Pope to Christians: Don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk.”
The God delusion – take two
In the middle of the twentieth century a play was produced on Broadway. Five years later it was filmed with James Stewart in the lead role but not the title role. The title role in both play and film was played by a giant rabbit who remained invisible throughout the performance. His name was Harvey and his presence not only dominated the play but in the course of it he transformed the lives of all the main characters.
On a superficial level the play was a farce. It was an uproarious farce, at the expense of a sizeable number of silly characters who got themselves into all sorts of predicaments because one of them made a nuisance of himself by thinking that he had a special friend who didn’t even exist. He compounded the nuisance by insisting on introducing this invisible friend to everyone he met.
But on another reading all this was not as superficial as it might seem. At the end of the play we are left scratching our heads wondering whether crazy Elwood P. Dowd has the better grasp of what the meaning of life is than anyone else in the play. Without once getting angry, annoyed or frustrated, Elwood penetrates the folly, cruelty and hypocrisy of modern life and society and leads the play’s other main characters to a better and deeper appreciation of who they are and what they are.
Where did this play come from? It came from the heart and soul of Mary Chase, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. It still remains on the list of Broadway’s longest running plays of the twentieth century and has been filmed in multiple versions – although none were as successful as the 1950 James Stewart version. The latest movie effort was to be undertaken by Stephen Spielberg but has since been abandoned because of disagreement over the interpretation proposed.
Mary Chase was born Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle and brought to this story all the sense and sensibility of her Irish-American Catholic upbringing. Inherent, although implicit, in the play is her understanding of this world and the next, and the interaction between the two. The close-knit family in which she grew up kept its links to Ireland and she was steeped in the stories and myths, full of spiritual vision and allusions, of the old country. Harvey is described in the play a Pookah, a benign spirit in Irish mythology.
What was Harvey really? Who was Harvey? Harvey might be read as nothing other than the presence of the Divine – or maybe a messenger from the Divine, the Guardian Angel of Christian theology, guiding a human being to see the multiple truths about our existence and to a proper understanding of what our relationships with each other should really be in this sometimes crazy world.
Everyone loves Elwood but they do not really understand the source of his goodness and his kindness – namely the Presence which he calls Harvey. But it is that Presence which makes Elwood everything that he is, and which also makes him appear mad to most of those around him.
The plot is simple. Elwood lives with his sister and her daughter. The house they live in is, however, Elwood’s, left to him inexplicably by his late mother. After a series of false starts on the search for a suitable husband for her daughter – for which they both blame Elwood’s eccentricity – they try to have him committed to the care of a psychiatric home run by a Dr. Chumley. In the best traditions of high farce, that is when things really begin to go wrong and we soon find that it is Elwood’s sister who gets incarcerated. Chaos reigns for a period as the “normal” human beings try to cope with the “abnormal” Ellwood. Theirs is a world dominated by social climbers, lawyers and psychiatrists. His is a much simpler and straightforward world.
They all end up being disarmed by Ellwood and his friend Harvey. Laid bare is all the unpleasantness wrought by their cleverness. This contrasts with the simple goodness of Elwood’s vision of the world.
Two epiphanies are central to the plot – one revealed by Elwood when he tells us, Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
The second comes from the taxi-driver who brings people to and from Dr. Chumley’s Rest Home. He talks to the bewildered characters who have just sent Ellwood to the surgery for the serum injection which is going to make him “normal” again.
I’ve been driving this route for 15 years. I’ve brought them out here to get that stuff, and I’ve drove them home after they had it. It changes them… On the way out here, they sit back and enjoy the ride. They talk to me, sometimes we stop and watch the sunset, and look at the birds fly. And sometimes we stop and watch the birds when there ain’t no birds. And look at the sunset when it’s raining. We have a swell time. And I always get a big tip. But afterwards, uh oh! …They crab, crab, crab. They yell at me. Watch the lights. Watch the brakes, Watch the intersection. They scream at me to hurry. They got no faith in me, or my buggy. Yet, it’s the same cab, the same driver. And we’re going back over the very same road. It’s no fun. And no tips… After this he’ll be a perfectly normal human being and you know what stinkers they are.
At that point they all look at each other and then rush in to rescue Elwood. We don’t know that they all lived happily ever after, but we do know that they all learned something from their encounter with Elwood and his friend Harvey. His niece, Myrtle Mae, finds love with the Rest Home attendant; Dr. Chumley is a happier man and his assistant seems to be about to settle down with the nurse who has been smitten by an unrequited love for him for the duration of the play.
Harvey is an archetype, a story of the Holy Fool who is no fool at all. Ellwood tells the psychiatrist, Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it. He sees what others do not see. Because he “sees” Harvey he actually sees other people, he loves other people, and he respects and values everyone he meets. He tells us at one point: I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whoever I’m with.
He has this vision of life because he has the eternal vision given to him by Harvey, revealed in one of the qualities he described in Harvey. Oh, yes! Yes. Yes — these things always work out just the way Harvey says they will. He is very, very versatile. Did I tell you he could stop clocks? Well, you’ve heard the expression ‘His face would stop a clock’? Well, Harvey can look at your clock and stop it. And you can go anywhere you like — with anyone you like — and stay as long as you like. And when you get back, not one minute will have ticked by. … You see, science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space — but any objections.
It is hard not to think that the modern world in the 21st century is confronting another manifestation of this archetype in none other than the new leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis. Here is a man who exudes affection, kindness, and attracts the interest an admiration of millions all around the world.
But do they really know this man? Do they know why he is doing the things he is doing, saying the things he is saying? Do they know what it is that makes him different from all the other leaders on this planet – that he is moved by a life sustaining Spirit whom they do not know nor want to know? We do not call that Spirit Harvey – but we might. Elwood was seen as “mad” by all those around him. There are not a few others whom history recounts that they were also told they were mad – or worse – when their wisdom came up against the conventional wisdoms of their day. It is an old story but it is one which is worth telling again and again.
Thank you, Mary Agnes McDonough-Coyle Chase.
Garvan Hill 