Jody Corcoran: the Natural Order Has Been Turned on Its Head

Irish Independent
February 12, 2012

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/jody-corcoran-the-natural-order-has-been-turned-on-its-head-3016997.html

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin with Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

In his visceral denunciation of the Vatican in the aftermath of the Cloyne Report last year, Enda Kenny referred to the Holy See as riddled with what he said was "dysfunction, disconnection and elitism".

The Taoiseach's polemic served to release an anger, formed over generations, which had until then only seeped out in an unsatisfactory manner since officialdom began a difficult process to catalogue, investigate and prove the whispered horror of child sex abuse within the Church.

The release was necessary. It will not be the end of it. Nor should it be. There is more detail to be known, more lessons to be learned and more forgiveness to be sought -- which needs to be given.

In that context, it seemed to matter little that Mr Kenny's powerful and deeply personal statement in the Dail, to the nation and to the world, erred a little in fact, what we might call his failure to have due regard to the niceties of diplomacy. But err he did.

The errors were pointed out by the Vatican in its response, some months in the making. But the people were not too concerned about that, which was also to be expected.

The people had concluded: the Roman Catholic Church deserved the denunciation, and nothing -- not a row over who said what to whom and when, and what should have been said and done -- would be allowed to detract from the essential truth of that.

For a while, many months in fact, the Taoiseach's speech appeared to mark a seminal moment. Yes, there was more to come out, more to be said and done, but in a very real sense it felt as if the first marking of a line had been drawn and a process of healing and renewal, on all sides, had begun.

Then the Government gone and went too far, as they say.

It announced the closure of the embassy of Ireland to the Vatican. There are many who would, and do, wholeheartedly agree with that decision, whatever the motivation, and their agreement can be understood at every level.

The motivation is said by the Government to do with costs. The closure of three embassies -- in Timor Leste, Iran and the Vatican -- will save the State around €1.25m a year, or about one-sixth of the expenses which TDs draw down every year in the performance of their functions.

Whatever motivation the Government seeks to put on it, however, the closure of the embassy to the Vatican is felt by just about everybody to be in some way related to the fall-out between Ireland and the Holy See in relation to, shall we just say, the sexual abuse of children within the Church.

There is a cohort who support the decision on face value: the saving of €1.25m is just that, a saving of €1.25m at a time of profound economic crisis.

Then there are those, of whom there are many, who shifted a little uneasily at the time the decision was announced -- a shift sparked by nagging doubt as to the accuracy of the Taoiseach's denunciation, the liberties with the truth he seemed to take to make a point which needed to be made.

In political terms, these are the people who might be referred to as "floating voters".

When they are added to those people of faith, undoubtedly shaken but always steadfast through the years of revelation, they make up what could be termed a silent majority, which is becoming vocal.

For all their faults, and there are many, the TDs and senators in Leinster House are a true reflection of society at large. They have their ears to the ground. They know what is going on. Before anybody, before the media, they are first to pick up and to make sense of what the people are thinking.

They began to pick it up around the time that an awful injustice was visited upon the cleric, Fr Kevin Reynolds, by the national broadcaster, RTE. It seemed to me that that injustice lit the touch-paper in how it said of all clergy: guilty until proven innocent.

The natural order had been turned on its head; this examination, which had turned into an attack on the Church, had gone too far. A sense of balance needed to be restored. But in truth, the first rumblings of discontent could be heard shortly after the Government came to office, certainly among those of true faith.

For example, a Labour TD and Senator, Aodhan O Riordain and Ivana Bacik, raised the question of the abolition of a prayer before daily business in the Oireachtas.

Both O Riordain and Bacik are what might be termed militant secularists.

More recently, O Riordain, a former principal at a Catholic primary school in north inner Dublin city, initially appeared to back a deeply uncomfortable motion to his party conference to the effect that civil servants be "screened" for their association with the Church.

Other less outwardly secularist Labour politicians have also helped to stake out the ground.

The Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, declared himself to be "in a hurry" to address an issue which his predecessor was less urgent on: the largely Catholic patronage of our schools.

Quinn felt that 50 per cent of schools could be removed from the patronage of the Church; the Church, which supports the suggestion per se -- indeed, first raised it -- has a 10 per cent figure in mind.

More broadly, Labour is suspected to harbour an intention to remove all reference to God in the preamble of the Constitution.

These and related issues have roused the Christian Democrat wing of Fine Gael, who have themselves been alerted by a section of society which is raging at the manner in which the Government has set about such matters.

A lay initiative, Ireland Stand Up, which is campaigning to have the decision on the Vatican embassy reversed, recently held an event to which all Oireachtas members were invited. In total, 61 TDs attended and six were represented: of those, 38 were from Fine Gael and eight from Labour. A further seven Fine Gael senators also attended, but no senator from Labour.

Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and the Independents, before the media, which is largely secularist anyway, have sensed this to be an issue which will cause a lot of trouble for the Government.

They are right, to an extent. But within that, there are also divides in Labour and Fine Gael. There are those in both parties who share the faith and those who have little or no difficulty with the emergence of a largely secularist state, perhaps a socialist secularist state.

Which in a way takes us back to Enda Kenny and his visceral denunciation.

If the Taoiseach is not careful, this is the issue above all which may leave the Government itself open to a charge of "dysfunction, disconnection and elitism". And we all know what happens when politicians everywhere are said to be just that.