We should break the link between church and state

THE Ryan report raises serious questions about the Catholic church/state relationship in Ireland. It is apparent that the church has been riding on the back of the Irish state like a giant octopus for a long time.

The tentacles of this octopus have reached into every crevice of Irish life to the detriment of many people. Nowhere has this been more apparent than the area of human sexuality where the church’s warped views have been forced on people from pulpit, confessional, papal bull, bishops’ pastorals, etc.

The “churching” of married women after childbirth was a classic example of guilt induction for women. It was a “cleansing” ceremony for the mother before she could return to normal church proceedings.

The idea that women were somehow unclean after childbirth – or maybe it was the conceptual sex – was an affront to all women and was the brainchild of some controlling misogynist “father” of the church. Of course this was in line with the thinking that created the dogma of the Virgin Birth.

The most important platform the church has used to inculcate its ideas into generations of Irish people is primary education.

If religions want to do their particular brands of inculcation (it can’t be called education), they should do so outside of primary school curriculum time, using their own personnel, time and money. This would leave our primary schools available for children of all religions and of none.

This was the original concept of primary education in Ireland until the 1937 constitution handed control to the religions.

We need a new constitution for a modern Ireland that will finally give us full separation of church and state. The 1937 constitution gave us a theocracy under the guise of democracy. There is no need for Irish people to look askance at countries like Iran where clerics rule. We had our very own supreme leader in Archbishop John Charles McQuaid who helped to write the 1937 constitution. A democratic republic is something we never had. Instead we had a priest-ridden people in a church-controlled theocracy.

Ask the abused from the Ryan report, which is the tip of the iceberg. A report on our primary schools would reveal another tsunami of mental, physical and sexual abuse suffered by children under the patronage of the church.

It should apologise to the generations of Irish adults who ended up in asylums and mental hospitals thanks to the guilt induction brainwashing, under the guise of education, foisted on the people with the connivance of the state.

Paddy Phelan

Toureagh

Ballymacarbry

Co Waterford