In Ireland today, it takes courage to be Catholic in public. Not so in Britain.

WHEN you write a book, you always hope for two things. The first hope is that the book will be published coming up to Christmas, because that’s when people who never normally buy books purchase them by the sack-load as gifts for others.

The second hope is that a coincidental controversy will erupt around the date of publication, thus attracting readers who might otherwise buy a safe bestseller by a brand-name author.

The guy who wrote David Blunkett’s biography can’t have expected either. He got both.

As soon as the Blunkett affair story started to bubble, the publishers moved the publication date forward, hoping to get the thing out in time for stocking-stuffing. When the issue turned into fast-tracked Nanny visas, lies and e-mails, the coincidental controversy was delivered. With bells on.

The final bow on the parcel was provided when extracts from the book surfaced, in which Blunkett rubbished his colleagues in the Blair government. Here he is, sitting THIS far out on a branch of his career, weighed down by scandal, DNA tests and questions about his judgment, and he takes a power-saw to the branch by removing any support his colleagues might have been minded to deliver to him. A death-wish doesn’t begin to describe it.

A melt-down as spectacular as that is always going to take the shine off the appointment of a successor, especially when the successor is a relative unknown. However, the coverage given to Ruth Kelly, the 36-year-old who now carries responsibility for Britain’s educational system, is instructive on two fronts.

The British media noted that the new minister was the youngest MP since Harold Wilson to achieve Cabinet status. They observed that she’s smart enough to steer between Blair and Brown without being painted into the camp of either. They portrayed her as quintessentially New Politics (rather than New Labour), in the sense that she’s a manager, rather than an ideologue.

She gets through the work during work hours and leaves it behind her when work hours cease. (Those sighs you hear are emitted by politicians all over Ireland, who would wish to do the same, but who know the survival of their seat depends on them working during most waking hours and convincing their constituents that even in sleep they dream of nothing but local interests.) In addition to describing the new minister as diligent, disciplined and able, the coverage of Ms Kelly also frequently mention her strong Roman Catholic faith.

Nearer home, when Mary Hanafin became Minister for Education, her religious beliefs didn’t get anything like that number of mentions - which was probably helpful to her.

Given public perceptions of her family background, any discussion of her church-going tendencies - assuming she has such tendencies, outside of the normal funeral-attendance required of politicians - would have stitched her into a negative stereotype.

It’s odd that in Ireland, at the moment, to confess to owning religious beliefs is to be assumed to be a) dangerously right-wing and b) incapable of rational thought. Respected commentators, during the near-Presidential election, seriously suggested that Mary McAleese’s overt Catholicism was in some way dangerous to the Presidency. Floating in the liberal thought process was the idea that Catholicism would prevent her representing multi-cultural Ireland as properly as a faith-free President might.

The truth is that many liberals in this country, in the absence of a real threat to pluralism, have a need to go back and dig up the dead horse of Catholic triumphalism and give it a few kicks. It gives a fleeting sense of nostalgic courage. A spurious sense of courage.

The fact is that many dioceses are on the verge of bankruptcy because of payments related to clerical child sex abuse, that nuns and brothers are a more endangered and diminishing species than any of the beasties the World Wildlife Fund defends, that Desmond Connell was lucky to get out of the Dublin job alive, and that if opinion polls hadn’t indicated the need for a sweeter, kinder, more socialist Budget, Brian Cowen wouldn’t have paid a blind bit of attention to Fr Sean Healy, assuming he DID pay attention to him.

Even the Reverend Ian doesn’t waste his breath, these days, trumpeting the “Rome rule” shibboleth, because he knows it’s an empty threat. Yet in the 26 counties, it now takes courage, in public life, to be Catholic and proud of your beliefs.

You automatically have to fend off the assumption that by owning a belief you diminish the beliefs (and rights) of others.

In that context, it’s something of a relief to see Ruth Kelly making no secret of her Catholicism. Those who know her say that her religious beliefs helped bring her into politics. Yet nobody has suggested that her beliefs will destroy diversity in the British education system. It does help, of course, that those of her children old enough to attend school are attending state schools, rather than fee-paying institutions run by religious orders. But the fact remains that her religion is seen as an interesting, but not a defining, characteristic.

It doesn’t work that way, in Ireland. The quite proper need to keep Church and State separate has moved close to a view that religion should be kept out of politics, which is not the same thing. Ireland tends to be at best embarrassed, at worst suspicious, when politicians like George W. Bush claim and practice their faith. The word ‘fundamentalist’ bubbles up in comment. The phrase ‘Bible-belt’ quickly follows. We don’t mind someone having a spiritual life, as long as that spiritual life is non-specific. In one sense, our warm acceptance of the vague is justified: it’s difficult to imagine the Feng-shui and warm stones brigade ever getting organised enough to pose much of a threat to anyone. More seriously, however, it could be argued that Ireland isn’t that tolerant if it can’t cope with someone who believes that Christmas actually commemorates the birth of the son of God and that, 33 years later, he ascended into heaven.

The other aspect of the media discussion around Ruth Kelly’s appointment relates to her multiple motherhood - all four of her children are under seven- partly driven by photographs of her with her newest baby, and asks how she’s going to juggle her domestic responsibilities with her political career. Yes, sisters, the old Juggler question. The question that never gets asked of a male politician. The most fervently fecund male politician is asked about what he’s going to do and how he’s going to do it. He’s never asked how he’s going to get the kids to the crèche. Mothers, on the other hand, always get the Juggler question, closely followed by mention of their supportive husband.

Which goes to show that media, which used to lead and drive public opinion, is now dragging behind it.

Straight competence is not enough. Media prefers its female politicians to have a bit of baby spit-up on the shoulder.