Angelus Bells and the 6.01

I think RTE should give the angelus the chop, not because it might offend someone of another religion, but because it would be a step in the right direction in widening the gap between church and state.

That said, I would not like to see political correctness gone mad here as in North America, where everyone says 'happy holidays' at Christmas in case you offend non christians.. I heard recently that it is getting to a stage where you can't even say 'christmas tree'.

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

Are you genuinely unaware of what the angelus is, or are you trying to claim it's not religious?

Yes, plenty of times on these threads Catholics have come in and admonish all for claiming that it's religious. They'll tell you it's not religious, merely a time of reflection. However it's very important that this period of reflection coincides with the times for the Catholic Call to Prayer, and it should have the traditional Catholic bell tolling allowing for timing to recite the Angleus. And the tv bits should feature Catholics doing their stuff.

Apart from all that, yes it's not religious :P

Daith wrote: »

You can have a minute of pause and reflection without the hypocrisy that the Catholic Church brings into it.

There are loads of options:

1) BBC News 24 style 60 second count in with shots of Irish landscapes and no religions connotations whatsoever. Just a nice chilled out bit of imagry.

2) Something like Euronews' No Comment segment which could just take one topic and let people reflect on it without any particular angle being taken.

3) A space for art and culture. Give animators and film makers a 60 second space.

4) Something like a video diary that just gives you a 1 minute snippet of some aspect of Irish life. Could be anything.. might be an interesting way of using it.

...

The Angelus no matter how they spin it is a throw back to the days when Ireland didn't understand what being a Republic is (we still don't really understand it but we're improving a bit).

It's entirely about lack of an ability to separate the church and state, which largely just photocopied from the UK in 1921. We broke off from a theocratic state with an established church and then for some daft reason decided to attempt to quasi-establish the Catholic Church.

There's simply no reason why a state body like RTE with a huge platform as public service broadcaster should be doing twice daily calls to prayer for any religion.

If they're doing religious programming, it should be "about religion" not dogmatic or ritualistic stuff.

I really fundamentally think Ireland throws the word "republic" around the way North Korea throws the word "democratic" around. It means government for the people, by the people and of the people. We should not have to be referring to any outside agencies like the Catholic Church or to a deity for our concept of sovereignty.

Our constitution still establishes its notion of sovereignty based on the British model that it's from god. Where as the French constitution for example is very much about "we the people".

Compare the two if you ever get the chance. Ireland's is like a Mass booklet while the French one is like a rip roaring declaration of a true republic, flinging down despots and dictators, enshrining fundamental rights and all about a sovereign population. It's fairly short and it's full of enlightenment ideas.

There's nothing anti-religious about being a secular republic, far from it, it just means that religion is a private matter and the state usually guarantees your freedom to practice and protects that. What it doesn't mean is that the state imposes a religion on anyone or gives any religion special privileges. Ireland does both of those things through the 90%+ fully religious education system and other public services.

Being a Republic is more than just having a president instead of a queen and being "not the UK".