Editorial

Soheil Arabi and Saint Brigid

Atheist Ireland is working with forty ex-Muslim, atheist, and secular groups to highlight the plight of Soheil Arabi, an Iranian blogger recently jailed by the Iranian regime. He was sentenced to death a decade ago for facebook posts, then released after an international campaign. The Iranian regime has arrested him again during the current protests, and have beaten him violently and denied him needed medicine.

Meanwhile back in Ireland, two years ago the government proposed a new public holiday to mark the efforts of frontline workers during the Covid pandemic. The most obvious way to do that would have been to call it the Frontline Workers Public Holiday, or the February Bank Holiday dedicated to the frontline workers during Covid.

Instead, the public holiday was dedicated to Saint Brigid. This has a very different symbolism, which is religious evangelisation. She supposedly wove a Christian cross out of rushes to convert a pagan chieftain into Christianity as he was dying. Today, state-funded schools make children replicate these crosses. That is exactly the wrong message to convey about the multi-cultural Ireland of today.

Pope Francis has said “It is imperative to evangelise cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel.” This Saint Brigid decision joins other examples in Irish culture, including our parliamentarians starting each day praying to the Christian God and asking him to direct their words and actions, and the free advert that RTE gives to the Catholic church each day in the form of the Angelus.

Some people have suggested that the holiday should celebrate an earlier Brigid, who is a mythological pagan goddess and therefore part of our cultural history and not of religion today. But Paganism is a recognised religion in Ireland today. Pagans legally solemnise marriages. Why should we disrespect Paganism as a religion by pretending it is only part of our cultural history?

As always, you can help us to campaign on secular issues by joining Atheist Ireland as a member, or by asking anybody who you think may be interested in joining us to do so. We are an entirely voluntary body with no paid staff, and we depend on our members to continue our work. You can join Atheist Ireland here.

Atheist Ireland News

Day of Action for Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi

Public holiday for Covid frontline workers hijacked by Catholic evangelisation of culture

Two years ago the government proposed a new public holiday is to mark the efforts of frontline workers during the Covid pandemic. The most obvious way to do that would have been to call it the Frontline Workers Public Holiday. Instead, it was dedicated to Saint Brigid. There was absolutely no need, and indeed it is a distraction, to add religion into this scenario. When the healthcare workers were protecting us from Covid, nobody was applauding Saint Brigid.

Saint Brigid has a very different symbolism, which is religious evangelisation. She supposedly wove a Christian cross out of rushes to convert a pagan chieftain into Christianity as he was dying. That is exactly the wrong message to convey about the multi-cultural Ireland of today.

Some people have suggested that Saint Brigid would balance the public holiday named after the male Saint Patrick. That is a separate issue from the proposed frontline workers public holiday. If we want to have a public holiday dedicated to Irish women, then we should do that separately and not entangle it with religion.

Other people have suggested that the holiday should celebrate an earlier Brigid, who is a mythological Pagan goddess and therefore part of our cultural not religious history. But Paganism is a recognised religion in Ireland today. Pagans legally solemnise marriages.

Why should we disrespect Paganism as a religion by pretending it is only part of our cultural history? And why should we disrespect people of no religion or other religions than Paganism and Christianity by enshrining them in public holidays for everyone?

In any case, adding a new saint does not balance an existing saint. It just reinforces the divisive and anachronistic idea that we all identify with mythological saints that are already over-represented on our calendar. A better balance to a male saint would have been a women scientist, such as physician Dorothy Stopford Price or chemist Kathleen Lonsdale.

Instead we have another religious holiday, dedicated to a symbol of religious evangelisation. And State-funded schools use this symbolism to teach children to make Saint Brigid's crosses to bring home to their families. As pope Francis has put it, “It is imperative to evangelise cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel.”

There are many examples of this in Irish culture, including our parliamentarians starting each day praying to the Christian God and asking him to direct their words and actions, and the free advert that RTE gives to the Catholic church each day in the form of the Angelus. Changing these is not as important as achieving secular education, but they remain on the agenda as things that need to be changed to reflect the pluralist Ireland that we now inhabit.

Schools making children make Saint Brigid's crosses may seem harmless on the face of it, but not if you look at it the other way around:  If State-funded schools forced even one Catholic child to make an atheist symbol and bring it home to their family, we would never hear the end of it until such indoctrination was rightly ended.

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Sample Atheist Ireland tweets this week

The Concluding Observations of the CRC on Ireland are due out on Thursday 9th February. The Committee took a great interest in the rights of minorities in the Irish education system. We would like to thank the Committee for all its hard work in promoting human rights #UNCRC Read Tweet Online with Graphic

In schools with Catholic ethos, religion & beliefs are not taught in an objective manner. Catholic bishops have said this is because this approach requires teachers to adopt & promote a pluralist approach to religion which goes against philosophical basis of catholic education Read Tweet Online with Graphic

Under Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act every teacher employed in a school with a religious ethos (the vast majority) is legally obliged to uphold that ethos or they can be dismissed. Read Tweet Online with Graphic

In Ireland paganism is recognised as a religion. The Pagan Federation of Ireland are registered on the state religious register to legally solemnise marriages. Whether you are making crosses because it is a Catholic or pagan symbol, it is still a religious symbol. Read Tweet Online with Graphic

It may not seem an issue to teachers to force children from minority background to make a St.  Brigid’s cross. The reason for this is that teachers are not trained to understand the basis of the Constitutional rights of parents or the right to freedom of religion  & belief. Read Tweet Online with Graphic
 

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