Democracy is best served by Mary McAleese’s second term in office

THE public opinion poll this week showing that 90% of voters are happy with the job that President Mary McAleese has been doing has exposed some of the chattering class as nincompoops.

It would have been absurd for any party to waste money in opposing her in the circumstances. They would have only been placing themselves on a par with the Monster Raving Loony Party in Britain.

Some twits have been denouncing the President’s unopposed re-election as undemocratic and they have called for a change in the Constitution. Whereas what happened really confirms the vibrancy of our Constitution.

The framers of the 1937 document astutely sought to block marginalised ego trippers from standing for the presidency.

Apart from a sitting President seeking re-election, any prospective candidate must be nominated by four county councils or 20 members of the Oireachtas.

Surely people have learned the danger of rash constitutional amendments from the debacle surrounding the unnecessary Pro-Life amendment, which has led to a series of other amendments in trying to undo the damage of the initial amendment.

Political life was distracted by constitutional controversies throughout the last century. The first third of the 1900s was dominated by the quest for Home Rule and independence. Then when we got that independence, there was the need to demonstrate that we actually had it.

In the early 1930s we still retained a number of British symbols and some people genuinely questioned our independence.

“Let us remove these forms one by one,” Eamon de Valera advocated in April 1933, “so that this State that we control may be a republic in fact and that, when the time comes, the proclaiming of the Republic may involve no more than a ceremony, the formal confirmation of a status already attained.”

The 1937 Constitution was a major step in that direction. A President was unanimously elected to replace the Governor General, and all of the forms of a republic were instituted in the 26 Counties. The State’s independence was demonstrated by staying out of the Second World War. The first Inter-Party Government formally declared a republic in 1949. De Valera’s opponents thereby proved that he had kept his 1933 promise, because the declaration of the Republic merely changed the name. Everything else remained the same.

This country was already a republic in all but name. The Republic was hardly declared, however, when there was a symbolic development that brought it into question. That came with the appointment of Archbishop Ettore Felici as Papal Nuncio to this country in 1949.

Archbishop John Charles McQuaid upstaged President Seán T O’Kelly by inviting the new nuncio to a reception before he had presented his credentials to the President. In terms of protocol the Archbishop of Dublin was establishing his primacy over the President. O’Kelly attended the Mass that preceded the reception, but he then walked out in quiet protest. Bolstered by this symbolic victory, Archbishop McQuaid dictated to the government in relation to the Mother and Child Bill two years later, and the government betrayed the republic by surrendering to the hierarchy.

“I, as a Catholic, obey my Church authorities and will continue to do so,” Taoiseach John A Costello told the Dáil.

“All of us in the Government who are Catholics are, as such, bound to give obedience to the rulings of our Church and our hierarchy,” added Seán MacBride, that paragon of republican hypocrisy.

These figures tended “to prove conclusively that Rome did rule, which I had already learned from my experience in cabinet,” observed the ousted Minister for Health Noel Browne.

Efforts to demonstrate that the Catholic hierarchy was not dictating from behind the scenes were frustrated for most of the next four decades.

As late as 1989, the bishops sought to block the sale of condoms. Their behaviour was as crazy as it was irresponsible. They were effectively trying to hold the young people of Ireland hostage to AIDS. Nobody should really have been surprised at such irresponsible behaviour in the light of the frightening disclosures in the 1990s of the decades of clerical sexual abuse. Children were actually taken from parents and placed in Church-run institutions where they were physically and sexually abused.

The bishops even called for more children to be placed in institutions like the one in Baltimore - not in the interests of the children but just so that those running such institutions could get more money from the State. This money was often obtained under false pretences, because the children were frequently not fed properly, and they were not suitably educated either.

If the British had done this, we would never hear the end of it, but it was our Church authorities who were responsible.

RATHER than face reality, we covered up their reprehensible behaviour for decades. In 1997 many people feared that Mary MacAleese would be a mouthpiece for the hierarchy, because she was “the bishops’ woman”, according to the late Tomás Cardinal Ó Fiaich. The bishops had selected her as their spokesperson at the New Ireland Forum.

Nobody could be blamed for thinking that any woman that they selected was unlikely to have a mind of her own. She was only weeks in office, however, before she proved that she is an independent-minded woman and damn sight braver than our male politicians.

Cardinal Desmond Connell, the Archbishop of Dublin, denounced her for taking Communion at a Protestant service at Christ Church Cathedral, but she essentially told him to mind his own business by publicly stating that she would do so again.

The Archbishop had insulted the wrong President. A public opinion poll found that 78% of the people approved of her stand.

Figuratively, this was the greatest kick the Irish bishops ever got. The presidency may only be symbolic, but she has been symbolically magnificent, in startling contrast with most of her predecessors. Mary McAleese showed good instincts in standing for ecumenism and helping to build bridges between the divided communities in her native North.

She also struck a magnificent blow in standing for the rights of women at the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan. Officials wished to exclude all women from the service, but Mary insisted on taking her place with the other heads of state. She was brilliant in addressing the Mexican parliament in fluid Spanish, and she was superb in expressing this nation’s indignation on the day of the 9/11 attacks.

From the 1970s to the 1990s the presidency was never far from controversy, whether it was about the scheming to have Rita Childers replace her late husband; the crisis surrounding Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’s resignation; the attempts to put Jack Lynch out to pasture in the Park; Paddy Hillery’s real or imagined marital difficulties; Mary Robinson’s staff problems.

Although the President symbolically represents the people, some presidents were woefully detached. In his book, Yes, Taoiseach, Frank Dunlop describes the drive through Cork with Jack Lynch during Erskine Childers’ campaign in 1973.

The crowds were cheering, as Childers sat passively.

“Wave, Erskine, wave,” Lynch told him.

“But, Jack, I don’t know these people,” he replied.

We’ve come a long way. We got rid of the Crown, but for now, at least, we do have a jewel in the Park.