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AS SOMEONE WHO is an atheist in every sense except caring enough to go around proselytising about it, I found myself the other day listening to RTÉ’s Liveline and repeatedly and un-ironically growling “Oh for God’s sake”.
You know it’s the silly season when the burning issue of the day is whether the Angelus should no longer be featured twice a day on RTÉ radio and television. I listened for nearly an hour to bored liberals with nothing better to be doing than arguing with Catholic jihadis who would love to see us all in scapulars and mantillas. Despite being someone who has been on the wrong side of the Roman Catholic Church for 30 years, I was surprised to find myself thinking “Ah here, it’s only a bloody bell to mark midday and six o’clock”.
Of all of the things which are grossly offensive about Ireland’s unhealthy relationship with Catholicism, surely be to God the Angelus is the least of them?
In an Ireland where the Catholic Church still runs about 3,000 of the State’s 3,200 primary schools, should we really care that RTÉ stops twice a day to play a pre-recorded bell?
In an Ireland where gay teachers can still be fired from religious-run schools for the ethos-endangering crime of, well, being gay, is the Angelus really, as someone told me on Twitter, “the aural equivalent of tanks on the lawn”?
In an Ireland where the religious orders can’t even be bothered to honour the sweetheart deal they cut with Fianna Fáil to pay a meagre few bob in redress to the victims of their members’ grotesque physical, emotional and sexual abuse, is the minute of bongs that makes the Six-One the Six-One rather than the Six really all that’s troubling us?
Let’s end these pointless arguments
If I could encapsulate the arguments of my fellow liberals, I think it would be fair to say “The Angelus is a powerful symbol of the Catholic Church’s blah-de-blah-de-blah and has no place in a modern, secular yada-yada-yada.” Listen: it’s a bloody bell. Cop yourselves on. The only thing this argument is a powerful symbol of is your own insecurity at the religious beliefs of (I’m sorry) the majority of Irish citizens and the fact that, deep down, you are every bit as intolerant as every other human being.
Instead of getting into a really pointless argument where the Church and its fellow travellers get to don the sackcloth of victimhood yet again, let’s be sensible. Let’s concentrate on prising the schools from religious control. Let’s pressurise our legislators to amend Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act so that “religious ethos” is no longer a cover for homophobic hatred. As to how we can persuade the religious orders to pay even the pathetic redress they agreed to pay to abuse victims… I actually have no idea. They seem impervious to all legal and moral pressure.
What would Jesus say?
Heathen though I am, I’ve a lot of time for Jesus. I especially like the time he fashioned a whip made of cords and ran the money-men from the Temple (John 2:15). I also love the bit where Jesus advocated drowning anyone who would cause a child to come to harm (Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42 and Luke 17:2). I wonder what Jesus would have made of the religious orders.
Let’s keep the Angelus. We all need a pause in our day, a time when, like those people on the Angelus, we can take a break from the daily drudgery of re-enacting John Hinde postcards, teaching archery to pre-schoolers and carrying out Albrecht Dürer inspired acts of pavement vandalism. Who would deny that we are all better off for a couple of minutes of staring into the middle distance like we’ve just asked someone to enter their PIN at the counter in Centra?
Ring them bells! If for nothing else than to signify to those listening to the wireless that they are free at last of current affairs and can look instead to the promised land of Ronan Collins playing really brilliant music from the likes of Ron Sexsmith and Feist followed immediately by really awful music from people I don’t like.
A very important form of reflection
I really do think we should keep the Angelus.
I think the Angelus is a part of the aural landscape of Ireland, whether you like it or not, just as spires and steeples shape the skylines of our towns and villages.
I think we should, all of us, religious and irreligious alike, observe the Angelus as a very important form of reflection.
Twice a day, we should all stop and listen to those bells and remember all that was done in Ireland in the name of religion.
Twice a day, we should all stop and listen to those bells and remember all the women shamed, all the women broken and all the women enslaved by joyless men, by joyless women, who waged war on love itself in the name of their own austere god of respectability.
Twice a day, we should all stop and listen to those bells and remember all the children raped, all the babies sold, all the fields where the country people whispered of “the sod that would not turn” to signify the little bodies dumped in unmarked graves.
Ring them bells. Let them serve as a reminder of what happens when we outsource our thinking to anyone else. Let them serve as a warning of the absolute corruption which always comes from absolute power. Let them serve as a monument to a time when Ireland had few clocks and even less Christianity.
Ring them bells.
Donal O’Keeffe is a writer, artist and columnist for TheJournal.ie. He tweets as @Donal_OKeeffe
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No phone boxes either…
Post boxes to go next – as internet communications/e-commerce/e-mails increase, and take over.
Then post offices for the same reasons.
Son there’ll be nothing left to pee into.
Finally, the post office will disappear (with benefits paid into bank accounts) when postal deliveries cease, for good.
Where we live they already use disposable nappies and throw them in the ditches……
Post will benefit from the continued increase in online shopping. Going nowhere.
The majority of my internet purchases come by courier.
It was the number one spot outside Trinity.
Doddle is dealing with deliveries in London. 300 stores will be open at train stations across the UK. Argos is also in bed with eBay
True. I always wonder why eircom (eir) don’t just convert the phone boxes into worked hubs with boosted range and provide WiFi throughout the country. I know it might not be lightening fast but it would be something. I was in Limerick recently and noted that there is city wide free Wi-Fi. A few cities on mainland Europe do the same.
@Ger Comings: “The majority of my internet purchases come by courier”. The majority of Heroin and Cocaine comes by gurrier.
If you ever wonder what they were like just think about the toilet in the bookies in Trainspotting..
In a thousand years time this will probably be looked upon as a great archaeological discovery of how the Irish pissed in the twentieth century…..academics will probably write books on the subject or whatever they will use then to document these things.
It was a shit hole anyway
Think the fact we even had public toilets that could be considered historic is the real story here.
Yes liam. They were British toilets built by Armitage Shanks of Staffordshire – and, I suppose, they had to be gotten rid of, like Nelson’s Column.
There’s a story that one day some Japanese tourists stopped by Pat Ingoldsby selling books outside the Bank of Ireland and asked for directions to St Stephen’s green. He apparently pointed across the road to the toilets and told them to head down to the subway, take one stop and they’d be there.
A couple of old underground victorian style public toilets in london have been turned into cool little bars and restaurants.
Unfortunately our planning authorities are failing the city yet again
Yes Emma – there’s a fine/largish one on Shepherd’s Bush Green, which does extremely well. Because its near the massive Westfield Shopping Cente, which is the biggest in the UK.
We’ll just have to struggle on.
In fairness, these toilets were rather tiny from what I remember and would never have been viable as bars or restaurants.
Westfield is actually the third biggest in the UK Ger, the MetroCentre in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, is the biggest, followed by the Trafford Centre in Manchester.
Biggest – in terms of business, not square footage, which is not cost effective. In other words, the most profitable and busiest. Sorry for confusing you, pope.
Which pope is the wiki freak…p1, the kraut?
JR, in fairness? In fact, some were huge – with several staff.
Not even a nice try, you stated ‘biggest’ – not ‘most profitable’, sorry to piss on your parade Mr. Shortcomings :)
Biggest, as in business. Pope wiki…
Wrong again, you claimed ‘biggest’ period, Google ‘biggest’ and physical size will be the only results returned, learn how to communicate before digging an ever bigger hole for yourself and your overly sensitive ego.
These toilets were used during the 1916 Rising by the martyrs. This is an OUTRAGE!
I’m organising a march starting on Parnell St (outside party headquarters) on Saturday at 10am.
Will try pop down also. I have hoped for most of my years to see these public restrooms restored and put to use.
These will be as much of an improvement to the cityscape as the corpo flats. Our history is slowly being erased..
If you’re being serious, why did you wait until now? This was all planned ages ago.
Ah, Dublin City Council. From the people who brought you fines for pissing in the street, on foot of the closure of public conveniences in the 1990′s. What other civilised Capital City in Europe is without public toilets? I am not well travelled, but have been to Paris, Rome, Lisbon and Berlin – facilities which recognize human physiology are available in all these places. I cannot speak to their availability elsewhere.
I’m surprised it wasn’t objected to by people claiming a 1916 leader had a S***e in one during the rising
George Michael petitioning Dublin city council to preserve the toilets
Who she?
Sad that we had to lose the loos for the luas.
I cant understand why the existing structure couldn’t be used for a control box?
For the control of what exactly, Brian?
“Plans are now in place for a control box to be fitted at the site which will allow operate the College Street and Westmoreland Street Luas stops when they are completed.”
I would assume its that?
Remember that these particular jacksies have not been used (or abused!) for 20 years. Whatever alternative arrangements were to be made were made long ago!
Whatever the plan for the site is, It’s not available to view on the DCC planning search. I wonder Why?
Ah now! Demolished and not a protester in sight! I honestly thought that this action would surely merit a dirty protest!
Good riddance
remember the graffiti -Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. But seriously where are people meant to go for a pee in the city centre?
Against the spire…
It hasn’t been in use for 20 years. Didn’t bother you then
I think you have a point.
Put’s a new meaning to “taking the piss”
Luas drivers now going down the crapper. What next???
agh sh*te!
Pretty disgraceful treatment of the city’s Victorian heritage.
This is a real bummer.
The only sh*te you will see there in the future will be driving a tram. Ding ding.
If those walls could only talk. Shot no, we don’t want to go down that shady lane
Shur we’ll puss up the nearest alleyway it’ll be grand, we’re irish what else would you expect?
The Loos have made way for the Luas.
That’s some old shite..
“Public toilets over 100 years old are demolished to clear way for Luas”. I think this article is a load of sh*te. I’m pis*ed off!.
No shit!
A lot of Brown envelopes around the JC Decauox Dublin Bikes scheme. The deal was done in private and city manager did not allow transparency.
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