I have recently finished reading Victoria White’s book Mother Ireland – why Ireland hates motherhood (which was referred to at the Institute’s conference last week on Women, Home and Work). 

One point that the author makes is that many of the founding mothers of Irish feminism had very bad experiences of husbands or fathers, and the bitterness comes through their writings. 

A massive rift in the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement) occurred about 1971, when one faction wanted to condemn marriage totally as an institution akin to slavery.  So they weren’t typical of Irish women as a whole.

This left me wondering how the whole movement would have developed if it had been led by women who were not carrying such heavy emotional baggage.  Suppose, for example, it had been led by women who had interesting work which they really found fulfilling, and whose case didn’t depend on debasing the task of rearing children.

So I applied a bit a lateral thinking to another of the Institute’s causes.  Would it be fair to say that many of the loudest voices advocating aggressive secularism are people who have been hurt by institutional religion and still have unhealed wounds? 

The irony is that the church is meant to have a healing ministry!  Suppose, instead, that the issue of dealing with a pluralist society had been led by people experienced in ecumenism and inter-faith relations.  They would have a very different take on handling diversity, and probably a much more positive one.

The question is, of course, can we say this?  It is important to meet reason with reason, and to refute arguments on their merits, not attack the person. 

But Victoria White was able to point out formative influences on specific founding mothers of feminism, without implying that all feminists are like that.  Could the same be said about leading voices in contemporary secularism?