Sinéad O'Connor - A Troubled Soul in This Life; May God Grant Her Rest in the Next
Last week, Sinéad O'Connor was found dead at her flat in South London, She was 56 years of age.
Some basic background facts on Sinéad from an article on her in Wikipedia. These speak volumes and help us understand her.
- She was born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor in 1966 Dublin. She attended Dominican College Sion Hill school in Blackrock, County Dublin.
- Sinéad made repeated accusations of physical, emotional and psychological abuse against her parents towards her as a child.
- In 1979, at age 13, O'Connor left her mother and went to live with her father, who had recently remarried.
- At the age of 15, acts of shoplifting, as well as of truancy, led to her being placed for 18 months in a Magdalene asylum in Drumcondra, run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity.
- On 10 February 1985, when O'Connor was 18, her mother Marie died in a car accident, aged 45.
- O'Connor was married and divorced four times. She had four children.
- On 7 January 2022, two days after her 17-year-old son Shane was reported missing, he was found dead by suicide.
- In 2007, O'Connor disclosed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday. She was also diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder. Having smoked cannabis for 30 years, O'Connor went to a rehabilitation centre in 2016, to end her addiction.
- In a 2015 interview with the BBC, O'Connor said she wished that Ireland had remained under British rule, saying "the church took over and it was disastrous."
- In 1990s, Bishop Michael Cox of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church (an Independent Catholic group not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church) ordained O'Connor as a priest.
- In a July 2007 interview with Christianity Today, O'Connor stated that she considered herself a Christian and that she believed in core Christian concepts about the Trinity and Jesus Christ. She said, "I think God saves everybody whether they want to be saved or not. So when we die, we're all going home [...] I don't think God judges anybody. He loves everybody equally."
- In an October 2002 interview, she credited her Christian faith in giving her the strength to live through and overcome the effects of her childhood abuse.
- On 26 March 2010, O'Connor appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° to speak out about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. Writing for the Sunday Independent she labelled the Vatican as "a nest of devils" and called for the establishment of an "alternative church", opining that "Christ is being murdered by liars" in the Vatican.
- Shortly after the election of Pope Francis, she said:
"Well, you know, I guess I wish everyone the best, and I don't know anything about the man, so I'm not going to rush to judge him on one thing or another, but I would say he has a scientifically impossible task, because all religions, but certainly the Catholic Church, is really a house built on sand, and it's drowning in a sea of conditional love, and therefore it can't survive, and actually the office of Pope itself is an anti-Christian office, the idea that Christ needs a representative is laughable and blasphemous at the same time, therefore it is a house built on sand, and we need to rescue God from religion, all religions, they've become a smokescreen that distracts people from the fact that there is a holy spirit, and when you study the Gospels you see the Christ character came to tell us that we only need to talk directly to God, we never needed Religion ..."
Adding:
"Genuinely I don't mean disrespect to Catholic people because I believe in Jesus Christ, I believe in the Holy Spirit, all of those, but I also believe in all of them, I don't think it cares if you call it Fred or Daisy, you know? Religion is a smokescreen, it has everybody talking to the wall. There is a Holy Spirit who can't intervene on our behalf unless we ask it. Religion has us talking to the wall. The Christ character tells us himself: you must only talk directly to the Father; you don't need intermediaries. We all thought we did, and that's ok, we're not bad people, but let's wake up [...] God was there before religion; it's there [today] despite religion; it'll be there when religion is gone." - In October 2018, O'Connor converted to Islam, calling it "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey."
What to make of all this?
HJ found this obituary in the Catholic Herald one of the best. It's spiritually insightful, balanced and compassionate.
"(Sinéad) frequently spoke out on issues of rights, racism, child abuse, religion and feminism, and she was clearly a deeply damaged, troubled person desperately seeking stability and truth. If it was Galilee circa 31AD she would have recognised truth and found the rest that she so rightly longed for. But she was unable to recognise that which is “the same yesterday, today and forever” in the short span of time between 8 December 1966 and 26 July 2023. That Christ was not clearly revealed to her through the Church which He established is something that should give us pause. After being ordained a fake priest in 1999, O’Connor (still restless) moved on again and converted to Islam, calling it, “The natural conclusion of any intelligent theologians’ journey”, But O’Connor was not an intelligent theologian. Her ignorance of Catholicism was staggering, and she had been badly let down by those tasked with feeding the sheep. She was a woman crying out in agony and hearing no adequate response from the Church of her cradle, a failing which Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of as he reflected on Jesus’ own agony: “…Think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church. How often the holy sacrament of his Presence is abused…how often we celebrate only ourselves, without even realising that he is there. How often his Word is twisted and misused. What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words. How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him. How much pride, how much self-complacency?" What O’Connor lived through was the worst of both worlds in the Church: on the one hand a loveless legalism experienced as a rejection of sin and sinner, and on the other a false compassion welcoming both. The pendulum smacked her in the face wherever she stood. It’s no wonder she couldn’t recognise truth. I’m surprised she could stand up. There are many people like this: broken, hurt, damaged, their relationship with God ruined by the very people charged with safeguarding it. The ripples are far reaching, and it is hard to know what our response should be, the response of those still clinging to the ark. There is a temptation to jump off, swim away and join these poor damaged people out in the depths. The thing is that they will drown there, and we will drown with them. Hard as it seems when we are faced with pain, trauma and confusion in our own families, or in the families of those we meet along the way, we need to call them back, throw out a life jacket and keep them safe. We need to reassure them that the ark is the only place to be and bring them in deep, past the drunken sailors on the outside, past those who have fallen asleep at their post, past the lies of those saying, “luxury yachts this way”. We need to draw them deep enough that they see the face of Christ, but we cannot do this if we have not ourselves encountered Him. This is a journey that Pope Benedict XVI shares in Jesus of Nazareth which he describes as “an expression of my personal search for the face of the Lord” It seemed to me that Sinead O’Connor spent her life searching for love, but was only ever deceived by a counterfeit. False love, false compassion, will appease, will leave people where they are and let them drown. It is a comfortable lie, easy to say, easy to hear and easy to accept. Real love is a challenging truth; difficult to speak, difficult to hear and difficult to accept in our fallen world, but the end of one is death and the end of the other is life. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness”. Sinéad O’Connor was made for a greatness which we all glimpsed in the beauty of her face and voice, but the soil was shallow and when the sun came up she withered without root. Eternal rest grant unto her O lord and let perpetual light shine upon her and her son."
I don't get it. I understand that the poor woman was dealt a horrible childhood and this wrecked her life. I feel great sympathy for her and believe that God will show her greater love than she has received up to now. Whatever her theological errors.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't get the amount of publicity her death has generated. I must be missing something.
I hope she's found peace, but why is she important enough for the President and PM of Ireland to express their sadness?
See my comment below.
Delete@ Prof G
DeleteBecause she become an icon, a symbol of a supposedly new, liberal and vibrant Ireland that has shaken off the tyranny of a Catholic theocracy.
This is summed up in an article in Esquire where Dave Holmes writes:
"Ireland on the day of Sinéad’s death is vastly different from the country she was born into. Abortion is legal, and gay marriage is the law of a land where homosexuality was illegal until 1993. A once-repressive country has become one of the world’s most progressive. There is no Ireland moving away from the Church as we have without Sinéad,”
[This is a good thing?]
This echoes Sinead's own comments:
“The Catholic church has controlled us by controlling education, through their teachings on sexuality, marriage, birth control and abortion, and most spectacularly through the lies they taught us with their history books. My story is the story of countless millions of children whose families and nations were torn apart for money in the name of Jesus Christ.”
[Ironic given she converted to Sunni Islam]
This is designed to keep a particular “memory” of the Church alive in the minds of the young, "modern" Irish lest the faith starts to re-establish itself. It's hyperbole and historical, social and political illiteracy - though with an element of truth.
The penetration of the Church throughout Irish culture and consciousness means that for many people, all the miseries of school life, of being a teenager, or the judgment of people around you, of struggling with life's temptations, can be easily conflated with and blamed on the Church itself. This is what gives modern Irish anti-clericalism and anti-Catholicism its zeal.
O’Connor is being turned into a "plastic saint of secularism", rather than being remembered as the complicated, moralising, and deeply troubled person she was. She's serving a political-religious agenda.
The singer Morrissey has accused the establishment of hypocrisy for their effusive praise of her following her death, compared with their exploitative treatment of her (and other artists) when she was alive.
Delete"Why is ANYBODY surprised that Sinead O’Connor is dead? Who cared enough to save Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday? Where do you go when death can be the best outcome?"
Delete@HJ and Bell thanks for context in answer to my question.
DeleteIt occurs to me that the issue in Ireland with regards Catholicism and Christianity is driven more by the various scandals, then by the strictness of the church.
It's the hypocrisy evidenced by the scandals that is the issue .
I think that the association of religion with violent national sectarianism during the Troubles also hasn't helped. From what I've seen, both popular Irish Catholicism and Protestantism from the period appeared to be particularly rigorous, joyless and unpleasant; it's no wonder that people want to disassociate themselves from a politicised faith that was, implicitly or explicitly, more concerned with killing and hating one's fellow countrymen than loving them, and so intimately entwined with some of the darkest parts of Irish history.
Delete@Lain yes that's true as well. The churches of both sides should have been stronger in their condemnation and clearer in their disassociation with the men of violence in both camps.
DeleteAt the risk of sounding like a broken record, Sinéad O'Connor was not the only one who has trouble recognizing what is "the same yesterday, today and forever." (No names, no pack drill, Your Graces). That said, being Irish myself and almost contemporaneous with her, I found myself quite sickened with the outpouring of gush and garbage that came out in a torrent from people in Ireland -- the evolved, sophisticated, educated chattering class -- who latched on to a mentally disturbed woman because it allowed them leeway to kick the object of their maniacal hatred, the Catholic Church, but who would have crossed the road to avoid her had they seen her coming towards them in the street. It was a miniature reprise of the whole Princess Diana thing in the UK.
ReplyDeleteJack has been somewhat critical in this article of the Church of a previous age, legalistic and unyielding. I commend him for recognizing that what came after it was, to say the least, less than a springtime in the Church. Right now, it feels more like nuclear winter. Two years older than O'Connor, I caught the tail end of that unapologetic Catholicism. I strayed from it for some years, but eventually came back when I finally understood the concept of "the same yesterday, today and forever." The idea of "historical inevitability" is claptrap. There is no earthly paradise, and there never will be. The Church has been right all along, which is why the aforementioned evolved, sophisticated, educated classes hate it so much. I'm just sorry that the ground O'Connor's faith was planted in as a girl was not as fertile as the one which enriched me. If it were, she might be alive today.
@ Bell
DeleteYou have to remember that the Catholic Church in Ireland was infected by the heresy of Jansenism. This denied free will in the acceptance and use of grace, was very legalistic and very controlling.
Happy Jack merely quoted this from the Catholic Herald article:
What O’Connor lived through was the worst of both worlds in the Church: on the one hand a loveless legalism experienced as a rejection of sin and sinner, and on the other a false compassion welcoming both. The pendulum smacked her in the face wherever she stood. It’s no wonder she couldn’t recognise truth. I’m surprised she could stand up.
He agrees with it too, having experienced the legalism of this presentation of the faith both in primary school (Catholic Irish nuns) and listening to priests sermons during his summer holidays in Eire.
O'Connor went too far - she threw the 'baby out with the bath water' - but the "soil" of her soul was poorly prepared for the Word and by her early childhood experiences.
@ Jack - I suspect that much of her 'going too far' was a deeply wounded person lashing out, shamefully egged on by those who stood to profit financially or ideologically from her doing so - in which I include the so-called Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church that 'ordained' her. Pain is always either transformed or transmitted.
DeleteI don't know that much about her life, but it seems she was always circling around faith, but never found a place to land that wasn't barbed. I pray that she's found the peace that seems to have eluded her in life.
Yes. 30 years of smoking cannabis didn't help, given what is now known about the damage it causes to brain development and cognitive functioning. Put this on top of her traumatic early life experiences, her adult life choices, notoriety and fame, exploitation by the media and music industry, and it's little wonder she went under.
Delete@Jack -- Jansenism? Is Jack taking a specimen, or has he been reading Edna O'Brien again?
DeleteJansenism or not, and there are 'scholarly' disputes about his, Irish Catholicism was certainly rigid, lacking sufficient humanity and emphasised the dark side of human nature and hell. The focus was on communal outward devotion and obedience, rather than interior and personal spirituality. Educationalists stressed the corrupt nature of the child and the consequent need for severity. Let's call this "Augustinian Catholicism", or “hyper-Augustinianism”.
DeleteI apologise for my ignorance, but this is the first time I’ve heard about Jansenist influence in the Irish Church. I thought it was almost exclusively a French thing. The Jansenist schools at Port-Royal seem to have made a very good job of providing a first-rate education for the sons of the aristocracy and the wealthy classes. There are grounds for suspecting that their achievements in this field, and not any alleged “heresy”, were the Jesuits’ real reason for attacking them. The Jesuits bitterly resented what they saw as an upstart competitor muscling in on their market, and they were prepared to go to any lengths to restore what they saw as their rightful monopoly.
DeleteThis article covers some of the complexities of the issues at play.
DeleteHere's a quote HJ found amusing:
There is an amusing anecdote relayed to us by one of the most prominent (or notorious) Jansenists, Pasquier Quesnel (1634-1719), that illustrates well the chimerical nature of the term Jansenist. He tells us that Cardinal Aguirre (a Benedictine), in a heated discussion with the General of the Jesuits in 1688 sought to distinguish between three types of Jansenists, since his Jesuit opponent was using the term so freely. First, there were those genuine, full-blown Jansenists who clung to the five condemned propositions from Jansen’s book "Augustinus" (listed above). There were few of these people, Aguirre said. Secondly, there are moral rigorists, and these are many. Thirdly, there are those who oppose the Jesuits, and these are infinite! It’s a quip which must have infuriated the Jesuit general, but there’s much truth in it.
@Ray. Having passed through the Irish educational system from ages 4 to 18, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that one word we never heard was "Jansenism." We DID get a large dose of what Jack's article refers to as moral rigour, but Ireland until very recently practiced an ultramontane kind of Catholicism; if the pope condemned it, it didn’t happen, end of. As in NEVER. The confusion may be coming from the fact that, as you said, Jansenism was mainly a French thing and, for historical and cultural reasons, events in France were always watched more closely in Ireland than in the UK.
Delete
Delete@Happy Jack and @Bell, thank you both!
I once read that at the heresy trial held in the Sorbonne, one of the Jansenists challenged his opponents to point out the five “heretical” passages in the Augustinus. I don’t think they ever did. They dodged the issue. They wriggled out of it. They still won their case, though.
This was part of the wider dispute between Dominicans and Jesuits over "predestination" and how to understand the writings of Augustine and Aquinas. It all revolved around the paradox of grace, free will and predestination.
DeleteThe nub of the heresy of Jansenism lay in denying the role played by free will in the acceptance of grace. Jansenism asserts that God's role in the infusion of grace cannot be resisted and does not require human assent. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states the orthodox position that "God's free initiative demands man's free response" - that is, humans freely assent or refuse God's gift of grace.
In a nutshell:
According to Jansenius, fallen man cannot help sinning continually. This is because he is deprived of grace. He claims that God refuses to give grace to some people among whom are sinners and infidels, and that those to whom God does give grace cannot resist it. In other words, Jansenius denies the doctrine of sufficient grace. Grace, in the teaching of Jansenius, necessitates the consent of the will. Thus man sins because he lacks grace and consequently his damnation is not due to his own free will but to the predestination of God who refuses to give him the grace sufficient to be saved. A consequence of this teaching is that Christ did not die for all men and does not wish all men to be saved. This is a logical conclusion from the teachings of Jansenius for, if Christ did die for all men, he would have merited grace for all. But, if this were true, then all would be saved since grace is irresistible. But, since in our state of corrupt nature, all do not get grace, then Christ could not have died for those who have not received grace.
The following propositions of Jansenism were formally condemned by Innocent X in Cum occasione, in 1653:
The Five Propositions, supposed to have been taken from the Augustinus, are as follows:
1. Some commandments of God are impossible even for the just for the grace which would make them possible is lacking.
2. In the state of fallen nature we can never resist an interior grace.
3. To merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature a man does not need freedom from necessity; freedom from coercion suffices.
4. The Semi-Pelagians taught the necessity of interior prevenient grace for every action even for the beginning of faith; they were heretics forasmuch as they considered grace to be such that the human will can either cooperate with it or refuse to do so.
5. It is a Semi-Pelagian error to assert that Christ died and shed His blood for all men.
Here’s a better article than the one HJ previously linked to.
Yes, Jack, but the question the Jesuits never answered is, Kindly show us where those five propositions are stated in Jansen's Augustinus. As far as as I know, to this day no one has ever found them in it at all.
DeleteAt the trial, the Jansenists agreed that the five propositions are heretical and it would be right to condemn the Augustinus if they could be found anywhere in it, but in fact they can't.
Interestingly, Jansen himself was never considered a heretic because in the book, he placed his writing for the discernment of the Church and declared he would abide by that judgement, even if it went against him. It did, but he is merely considered wrong, not a heretic.
Delete@ Ray - the New Advent article is quite detailed. It appears the propositions were extracted from the book by a council of interrogators over a period of some years. The Jansenists replied that these couldn't be found in the book or, if they could be, they weren't meant to be taken the way that they were taken. Augustinus was published posthumously, so it wouldn't have been possible to clarify what Jansen had actually meant.
Deletehttps://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08285a.htm
Which is why HJ wrote: "supposed to have been taken from the Augustinus."
DeleteThat said, these propositions can be inferred from the in a nutshell summary of Jansenius' writing given above. It's a conundrum - the paradox of grace, free will and predestination - and one the Catholic Church has never definitively declared a position on, apart from acknowledging these as parameters and accepting God wills that all be saved but permits some to refuse His offer.
As the second article HJ cited states:
"The Jansenists tried to avoid the papal condemnation by turning the problem into a textual one. The question of the fact and the right as it was applied to the Five Propositions can be approached in two ways, textually and theologically. It was the intention of the pope to condemn the propositions as heretical, not to discuss whether they were to be found textually in the 'Augustinus'. The Jansenists converted the problem into a textual one as a means of defense and as a basis for argumentation ....
Antoine Arnauld in the 'Second Lettre de M. Arnauld' stated that the Five Propositions were not to be found in the 'Augustinus', although he had previously stated the opposite in his 'Apology'. Arnauld claimed that, when the Church gave a decision on points of faith, she could command internal assent, but that the fact, whether Jansenius taught such a doctrine or not, was not a part of the deposit of faith. It follows from this that on a question of fact it is enough to observe a respectful silence. The pope has the ability to declare infallibly on a question of doctrine, but the fact pertaining to the judgment of an individual as heretical does not fall under papal infallibility. For the Jansenists this distinction of Arnauld was to assume enormous importance for it turned the Jansenist controversy into another phase, which no longer concerned the question of grace but rather the question of the infallibility of the Church. Such a distinction enabled the Jansenists for years to ignore the papal condemnation and served to prolong the controversy until 1668 when an agreement was concluded known as the 'Peace of the Church'.
I've never read the book, so I can't comment on it. However, it was initially condemned by Urban VIII for being in contravention of an order prohibiting works concerning grace from being published without the permission of the Holy See - so it was probably not in the Church's good books, so to speak, from the outset. According to Wiki, Innocent X instituted a commission which held 36 meetings over two years to investigate the text. As the text had by then clearly become a partisan political hot potato - Jesuits vs. Jansenists - one wonders how charitably the propositions were inferred from it, and whether a fear of encroaching Calvinism motivated a harsher judgement, given the climate at the time and the topic of the book.
DeleteThe Dominicans and Jesuits went head to head over the writings of Luis de Molina (Molinism) on the same issues. In 1597, Pope Clement VIII established a committee whose purpose was to settle this controversy. Before he gave his decision, he died. In 1607, Pope Paul V ended the quarrel by forbidding each side to accuse the other of heresy, allowing both views to exist side-by-side in the Catholic Church.
DeleteReturning to the original topic, this view was expressed in a "fringe" outlet ("fringe" meaning right wing.)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theburkean.ie/articles/2023/08/03/irish-liberals-killed-sinead-oconnor
A mentally unwell young woman, with nascent artistic fame, swept up in the currents of a social movement whose consequences she could not understand, Morrissey’s statement rings truer than liberals care to realise: ‘Why is ANYBODY surprised that Sinéad O’Connor is dead?’
DeleteIt puts me in mind a little of someone like Greta - a vulnerable and idealistic young person swept up by a media and hysteria-fuelled social movement that will drain her and spit her out when she's outlived her usefulness.
That's a good article from The Burkean.
DeleteI learned of the Jansenists through reading the works of Blaise Pascal, especially the Provincial Letters.
ReplyDeleteThe dish Jansson’s Temptation is sometimes mis-spelled as though its name relates to Cornelius Jansen.
On the now defunct Catholic Answers Forum I once got into trouble for naming the Provincial Letters as one of my favourite books by a Catholic author. Another poster hastened to warn me I was making a mistake: “Pascal was not a Catholic, he was a Jansenist.”
DeleteNaughty man!
DeleteWiki sums up the letters this way:
"Structurally, the first three letters ridicule the dispute between the Thomists and the Jesuits on the nature of salvation, rather asserting a Jansenist understanding of salvation. Making allusion to the Congregatio de Auxiliis, the debate concerned the respective role of grace and free will, Molinists (i.e. Jesuits) claiming that an "efficacious grace" was not necessary to save man, but only a "sufficient grace" bestowed by God to all men, while Thomists claimed that the "sufficient grace", given to all men, had to be assisted by an "efficacious grace", bestowed only to the select few (in accordance also with Augustinism). Pascal thus highlighted, in the Second Letter, that neo-Thomists and Jesuits were using the same term, "sufficient grace", with two different senses, for political reasons."
There's huge difference between neo-Thomists and Molinists understanding about predestination and they are not the same. The difference has not be settled to this day - and probably never will be.
The Jesuits language deceitfully? I am SHOCKED.
Delete@Jack, I have taken a quick look at the Wikipedia page that you are quoting here and frankly it strikes me as pretty poor stuff. The Letters are hardly recognisable in that hamfisted verbiage. Try this instead. It’s the translator’s introduction to the Penguin edition of the Letters. You needn’t read the whole thing if you don’t want to. The important bits are section 3, on pp. 12 to 15, reconstructing the chain of events that led Pascal to write the Provincial Letters in the first place, and the first part of section 4, on pp. 15 to 18, discussing why the book still appeals to present-day readers.
Deletehttps://archive.org/details/provincialletter00blai/page/12/mode/2up
I don't think that I was much into pop music when Sinéad O'Connor was doing her thing. Her spiritual journey - if we can call it that, I really don't know - doesn't make a lot of sense to me at first glance, but may God rest and have mercy on her troubled soul.
ReplyDelete