“He can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke/The same cigarettes as me” – Mick Jagger
When I was growing up (yes, Virginia, just outside Omagh), the Catholic Church was at the height of its powers. I wasn’t aware of the Church having any more powers than anyone else in the adult world: teachers, shop-keepers, policemen, older family members, older schoolmates : they were all bigger than me and could tell me what to do and not do. And they did.
If I didn’t have my homework done the way the teacher had instructed, he wanted to know why not. If I spent too long thumbing through copies of the Beano or Dandy, the shop-keeper would tell me to buy or get out of his shop. Policemen were big and carried revolvers, and were enforcers of The Law. My big brother wasn’t beyond offering to give me a thick ear if he didn’t like what I was saying or doing.
So there were many sources back then that could lay down the law to me, issue a sharp verbal or physical reprimand, if I didn’t follow the line of what they deemed to be good conduct. One of the benefits of growing up is, fewer people get to tell you what to do.
But back in the day children as well as adults did what the clergy told them to. They were told from the pulpit what films they were to avoid under pain of sin. Parish priests kept a weather-eye open for what they deemed too-close dancing and more hardline parish priests were said to thrash the hedgerows after a dance to root out courting couples. Some clergy were less authoritarian than others, but they all carried weight.
The funny part is, those who’ve most loudly denounced the clerical pulpit-thumpers of yesteryear have now scrambled into their secular pulpits to replace them; what modern layers-down-of-law deem acceptable or unacceptable is loudly and repeatedly made clear. You are of course free to express any view you wish, or do as you wish, providing it chimes with the views of these contemporary wielders of power. If it doesn’t, you will be brought to task with speed and firmness that clergy back in the day could only have dreamt of.
We live in a society that declares itself open but which will metaphorically tar and feather anyone who, however timidly, suggests a different take on the world. Should you wander off the contemporary true-and-narrow, its high priests will call for social fire-and-brimstone on your sin, and demand that you appear before them to explain yourself. “Explain what you’ve said/done!” they demand, but they don’t really want you to explain. They want you to retract, confess to heresy, and receive several verbal boots in the arse to encourage more correct behaviour in future.
We can’t control the thundering judgements of the contemporary high priests or the yelping packs which follow them. But we can control our response to their judgements/yelpings. We can make it clear that when they say “Jump!” we choose to sit, and when they demand an explanation of our sin, we walk on by whistling.
To be called on to explain yourself when you’re a child is chafing. To be called on to explain yourself as an adult is a bloody cheek.
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