Trendy Trocaire can't be put above the rules
Sunday March 11 2007
TROCAIRE is different. That in essence is what that august agency of the Roman Catholic church seems to feel. And of course, anything to do with Catholicism is, and always has been "different" in Ireland, ie not subject to the same rules, strictures, and disciplines as everybody and everything else. Even if it gets up people's noses, - it means well, and only a really nasty person (like, maybe, an agnostic/atheist?) would point out that church and state in Ireland are nominally separate.
Justin Kilcullen, director of Trocaire, says that the current television commercial featuring a panoply of cute babies, all at risk because of their femaleness, apparently, which asks people to apply for Trocaire donation boxes, and sign a government-lobbying petition on the babies' behalf, should be perfectly acceptable to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. The BCI has control of all commercial broadcasters, including Newstalk 106, TV3 and Today FM. It has instructed those stations to drop the commercial because of the lobbying request, which it believes to be contrary to Section 10 (3) of the 1988 act, which prohibits advertising towards a political end. "A technicality," says Justin Kilcullen. And RTE, which is not subject to the BCI, would seem to agree, because it has not pulled the advertising campaign.
But it all raises a far wider issue: if the law is not applied in all cases, even on technicalities, we are in the murky situation of subjective decisions as to its interpretation. It's in a "good cause", so to hell with rules and even with legislation. "It doesn't agree with my ethics, so I have a right to destroy and damage other people's property." That was the decision in a court in Co Clare, where a woman who had caused massive damage to a US aircraft at Shannon was found not guilty by the jury because her personal moral code included a hatred of US planes on Irish soil, and a disagreement with Irish government policy which allows them to land here.
You can call it compassion; you can call it free-thinking; you can call it the moral high ground. And if you do, we can all take to our personal moral high ground. Sinn Fein/IRA can murder children on the streets of Britain in pursuit of Irish freedom. Christians can burn down pharmacies which sell condoms in defence of their religious code. Anti-globalisation protestors could shoot American troops in the transit lounge at Shannon. (Mind you, a soldier signs up to being killed. And that includes Irish soldiers, which you wouldn't think was the case when the Irish government demands that other countries' soldiers are onthe front line when they're on UN duty. Ours are different, you see.)
And Trocaire is different. Indeed it is. For a start, it does not advertise its starting point: that all its work is subject to Roman Catholic doctrine and teaching. It does not, for instance, promote the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV/Aids. Indeed, Catholic aid workers teach that condoms do not protect against Aids. That, to a secularist comes close to being a cruel, inhuman, and dishonest philosophy that can lead to devastation, to hundreds of lives being devastated unnecessarily.
Yet the Trocaire advertisement says that female babies all suffer from the handicap of their gender, and that they will be particularly subject to HIV/Aids; they may also be denied an education. And, of course, be far more in danger of rape than boys.
Much of that is true. But boys born in third-world countries are equally in danger of contracting HIV/Aids, either genetically or if they have unprotected sex. In their culture, manliness means unprotected sex yet Trocaire tells these boys that a condom will not protect them; it encourages their uneducated tribal machismo. Nor does the advertisement mention the fact that boys are also in danger of being conscripted as child soldiers. Children born into the third world face an uncertain future, whether they're boys or girls. But it's fashionable to concentrate on the problems women face. And the Catholic church is not slow to be fashionable, even if it means being dishonest about what it teaches.
Most of the controversy surrounding the Trocaire advertisement on behalf of female children has been concerned with the irony of Roman Catholic institutionalised misanthropy, specifically its doctrinal refusal to allow women to be ordained as priests. If people want to go down that particular road, they should go back a great deal further: to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, an article of faith for Catholics, which they are required to believe. In other words, Roman Catholicism teaches that a full woman was not considered worthy to become the mother of God. That's the real discrimination: men are better than women, full women are impure. Being denied the priesthood is a minor shibboleth compared with such an overwhelming insult to the essence of womanhood.
That's what's wrong with the Trocaire advertisement: it's part of a trendy bandwagon, and therefore offensive. And offensiveness isn't limited to commercials which contravene sections of the Broadcasting Acts. We have an adorable little boy on the lavatory holding his nose because the air freshener has run out. Cute? Not in the least: what about the child's dignity? We have a gaily laughing couple about to sugar their cappuccinos and he picks up her tampon (inexplicably it's loose on the table) instead of a sugar stick. Gosh, how discreet? No, merely crude.
We have women throwing their knickers out the window because they've found panty liners with wings. Until recently, just washing and changing your knickers was considered perfectly adequate to keep you "fresh" but now consumerism requires expensive, disposable commodities of which we need a constantly renewed supply.
And to create and satisfy these needs, the advertising trade seems to have lost all sense of proportion and taste. Prince Charles and the then Mrs Parker-Bowles horrified royal watchers around the world when a tape was leaked of a joking telephone conversation in which they discussed tampons.
In Ireland, it was another club with which to beat the "decadent" and "dysfunctional" royal family. Butat least that lovers'conversation was being held in private, not in glorious technicolour across our television screens.
- Emer O'Kelly
