It’s always dangerous to look for scapegoats

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

There has been much talk about the behaviour of the 200 or so people who protested in a very intimidatory manner outside Dáil Éireann on Wednesday, September 20. I saw on X, formerly Twitter, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae being accosted by some of the so-called demonstrators. It was appalling behaviour.

It is difficult to say to what exactly they were objecting.

While most of these people can be classified as far right the phenomenon goes deeper than that. They see the world as a great conspiracy. They might even see themselves as zealots.

And it is a spectacle that is appearing all over the world. Donald Trump actually calls his conglomerate a ‘movement’.

 

When I was a post graduate student in Rome between 1976 and 1979 I became aware of a group of young clerical students who simply flabbergasted me. At the time I found myself calling them the ‘lunatic fringe’.  They were mainly from the United States.

Although most of them were not yet ordained priests, they wore long flowing clerical garb, wearing Roman collars that were so big they must have had trouble placing them around their necks. To me back then they appeared extremely weird.

 

These people were so off the scale that a few of us gave them nicknames. I still remember one young man, who dressed in some sort of blue garb, we called him the ‘Blue Streak’.

 

I returned to Ireland in 1979 and forgot about it all.

Twenty, thirty years laters I was reminded of them again when I began to notice something out of joint among young clerical students across Europe and in the United States.

 

Every generation brings its own qualities to the table but this new generation of clerical students seemed to me to be zealot-like in their behaviour. Someone commented to me that they thought they were merciless. There was an air of superiority about them. 

They gave the impression they were the persecuted and had right on their side. Reality is far more nuanced than that, indeed messy and complicated too.

They felt that the church must return to the more certain and doctrinaire style that was fashionable in the 1950s. They felt that the ’70s generation had failed the church.

John Strickland is bishop in Tyler, Texas. He has a large social media following. Strickland was not well pleased about the roll out of the Covid vaccines. 

Rumour has it that the Holy See is not too happy with him and is thinking of removing him. His followers have started a campaign to keep him. I have been shocked with the tone of many of his supporters. There are hints, an undercurrent of violence in their words. It is threatening, certainly insulting and rude to Pope Francis.

Those who acted in such an appalling way on Kildare Street on September 20 feel persecuted and are looking for scapegoats. They feel insecure and threatened. They believe the so-called elite are the cause of all their woes, for them the elite have become their scapegoats.

It’s always dangerous to look for scapegoats.