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You are > Home > Just A Thought: Is Vincent Browne doing too much?
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Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Just A Thought: Is Vincent Browne doing too much?
By: Fr Brendan Hoban
Is Vincent Browne - journalist, columnist, barrister, radio and television presenter, erstwhile media mogul - doing too much? He's everywhere you turn.
It's almost impossible to get away from him. Is there a Browne-free zone anywhere to which refugees from the phenomenon they call Vincenzo can seek asylum? Probably not.
Even though he continually professes himself a pagan (if we were all pagans Browne would be an evangelical pentecostalist), he seems to believe that he acts as if he shares at least one area of expertise with the Pope - infallibility. Or at the very least he has an unnerving confidence in his own ability to analyse with the flimsiest of evidence the most intractable of problems.
Browne informed his weary listeners recently that he had travelled to Monaghan one day and to North Kerry another day and he seemed to imagine that such occasional pilgrimages among the rural unwashed qualified him to speak about the needs of rural Ireland. And often despite the confidence with which he presents his theories when they come up against expert opinion to the contrary, he is liable to cheerily accept that he doesn't know anything about the subject at all!
Browne visited Rome recently to report on the canonisation of Padre Pio. It could well be that he was possibly the most unlikely choice for such a project in the history of sound broadcasting. He was clearly out of sympathy with the entire project and professed himself amazed that religion is in such an underdeveloped state in a world so scientifically sophisticated. He sounded for all the world like a returning Yank in the Fifties explaining to the native Irish the advantages of in-house plumbing.
But the ultimate for me in Browne's infallible posturing is when he generalises from his own particular experience to general conclusions, even though the survey he conducts clearly has only a sample of one. For example, on the same visit to Rome, during a visit to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, he met a Cardinal who was very full of himself. Dressed immaculately in a long black soutane, a bright red skullcap with a broad sash across his belly, dripping to the ground with tassels at the end, Browne described him as having "all the confidence, self-importance, hauteur that I remembered of church dignitaries from decades ago but which I thought was now merely a memory . . . now here in Rome . . . was a Hollywood representation of a Prince of the Church in the full prime of authority, poise, assurance and that superb arrogance."
Browne's point is that this Cardinal, full of his own self-importance and delighting in meeting, in some way represents what he calls that "spectacular pride" at the heart of the Church's "empire", despite the revelations of scandals that have taken hierarchies in America and Ireland "down a few pegs". As far as Browne is concerned, despite all that has happened "the show goes on in all its majesty, splendour and insouciance".
Is that fair comment? Surely not. What does Browne expect the Church to do?
Close down and go home? Put down every church official who doesn't measure up to par in the humility stakes? Shut down Rome? Because there's a Cardinal who has lost the run of himself and walks around St Peter's talking to people whom he imagines are delighted to meet him? Or because the faithful on that day were "herded into pens"? If it wasn't organised how else would 200,000-plus people who wanted to witness the canonisation be otherwise accommodated?
Browne, of course, has a point. An attitude of arrogance and the kind of insufferable self-confidence of that Cardinal is very much out of tune with the Church and its mission. But it's not out of tune just now because of the scandals that should ensure the Church holds its head in shame. It was always out of tune with the gospel message of its founder. Arrogance, bullying, domination, control should never, ever have been features of a Church founded by the carpenter of Nazareth.
If Browne's logic - arguing from the particular to the general - was applied to newspapers or radio stations, people would be laughed out of court for drawing the sort of conclusion that Browne drew about the Catholic Church.
Imagining that the Catholic Church is a political party that should, because it was found wanting, be banished into the wilderness until it had paid its dues to civilised society. Building grand theories on personal experience is no substitute for rigorous analysis based on proper research.
The trouble with Vincent Browne is that he's a bit like one of those designer grease products that present themselves as butter-substitutes. The easier they spread the less substance they have.n My new book 'Touch of the Heart' a personal memoir on the death of my mother has just been published. It is available in bookshops locally or by post from me at Kilglass, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo. Cost e12.99 plus (e2 extra for P&p).
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