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	Never Again Can the Catholic Church Be Allowed to Undermine Ireland's Laws By Ivor Roberts Irish Independent July 31, 2011 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/never-again-can-the-catholic-church-be-allowed-to-undermine-irelands-laws-2835969.html HISTORIC events crowd on top of each other in Ireland. After the queen's visit only a few weeks ago, we now have a confrontation between Ireland and the Vatican which, from the British side of the Irish Sea, seems scarcely conceivable. It is momentous enough to register not just in the press here in Britain but in the International Herald Tribune and a full-page spread in the leading Swiss paper the Neue Zurcher Zeitung. The images of a clerical society in Ireland where, to use Enda Kenny's colourful phrase, "the swish of the soutane" counts for more than the injunctions of civil society are hard-wired into British consciousness. Many years ago, my tutor at Oxford told me he had left his teaching post at TCD with the greatest reluctance because he couldn't put up with living in a theocracy ruled by the then Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. I thought he was exaggerating. But no doubt McQuaid would have excommunicated the current Taoiseach if he were alive today. It is a measure of how far Ireland has come, both socially and culturally, that the Taoiseach was greeted by a standing ovation when delivering the MacGill lecture in honour of John Hume a week ago. The diplomatic kerfuffle prompted by the Vatican's decision to recall the papal nuncio for consultations may seem arcane, even trifling. Yet it is virtually unprecedented for states which are not in a state of at least cold war to resort to such actions. The Vatican's claim that the withdrawal is the better to inform its response to the Cloyne Report should fool no one. If Rome wanted Archbishop Leanza back for his diplomatic and intellectual input, there are discreet ways of doing it without publicly announcing it and linking it directly to what the Vatican terms "certain excessive reactions" to Cloyne. No, withdrawal for consultations was a calculated move to express serious displeasure at the Irish Government's dramatically robust response to the report, with its withering attack not on the church in Ireland but on the Vatican itself. In a sense, it was also a pre-emptive move by the Vatican, given the various calls for the papal nuncio to be expelled. For the Government to reply in kind by failing to replace its recently departed ambassador to the Vatican, Noel Fahey, or by indicating that the nuncio's return in the future would not be welcome (effectively demanding his permanent withdrawal) would seem petty and unnecessarily confrontational. After all, the Taoiseach made his point as unambiguously and brutally as even Rome's bitterest critics in Ireland could have wished. And he has clearly been rewarded with an avalanche of domestic and international support (including, by his own account, from many members of the Irish clergy). So it would now seem prudent to turn the other cheek. What more Christian response could there be to a Roman Pontiff? Meanwhile, the Vatican is on notice that prevarication of the type illuminated in the Cloyne Report will not be tolerated. Justice Minister Shatter told the Sunday Independent last week: "We must get a rapid response from the Vatican" and warned that failure to produce one would lead to Government action. While he waits for the response in the next few weeks, the minister need not remain sitting on his hands. He should examine Irish legislation to ensure that it has no weaknesses which might allow clerics to claim that they are not bound by the supremacy of civil over canon law to report to the civil authorities any wrongdoing that comes to their notice. It can never again be acceptable for the church to undermine the Republic's laws. The Vatican -- not for the first time in this protracted and intensely painful and humiliating affair -- appears to have misjudged the public mood in Ireland and looks to be in urgent need once again of PR counselling to get it right. Going on the diplomatic warpath in response to the Taoiseach's home truths, admittedly not couched in diplomatic speak, was the wrong call. Instead of complaining at "excessive reactions", it might have been better to adopt a position of some humility in the face of the coruscating condemnation in Judge Yvonne Murphy's trenchant report. But the Vatican has a long track record of being a slow learner in this area. "We think in centuries," its officials say dismissively. In the internet age this is a lofty but inadequate response, though not a surprising one from a male gerontocracy. We may have to await a change of personalities, perhaps a generational change, before we see a more sensitive response to the general outrage prompted by the Cloyne and the three earlier reports on paedophilia in the church over the last seven years. Meanwhile, perhaps both Dublin and the Vatican will conclude that a papal visit might best await a change of cast at the top -- in Rome. Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity College, Oxford, is a former British ambassador to Ireland, Italy and Yugoslavia, and editor of the new edition of 'Satow's Diplomatic Practice'
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