CORI and ‘freedom of conscience’

The Conference of Religious of Ireland’s (CORI) recent statement on the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill includes views which I could share.

I take issue with them here in respect of their special pleading in the matter of freedom of conscience.

“Elected representatives, of all political persuasions”, they say, “ought to be allowed a free vote and the option to abstain from participation in a legislative process that could introduce [sic] abortion to Ireland.”

Its absence they see as ‘totalitarian’. Abortion is already practised in Ireland, albeit not under a framework of Acts or Statutory Instruments.

When British figures for the termination of ectopic pregnancies are proportioned to Ireland — for Ireland doesn’t publish its data — around 800 ectopic pregnancies are ended each year here.

Religious congregations represented by CORI assert that it is the responsibility of government to ensure the right to conscientious objection is guaranteed to all within Irish society.

Aye, but not to institutions in receipt of public monies. The religious, I respectfully suggest, should practise what they preach.

I recall a lay nurse employed by a Dublin hospital under the control of religious but essentially State-funded, being dismissed for refusing to lay out religious artefacts to facilitate a Catholic funeral rite; she had a conscientious objection to it.

Of greater significance is the provision in Article 44.2.4 of the Constitution which guarantees the right of any child to attend any school in receipt of public money without attending religious instruction at that school, and to do so without being affected prejudicially.

This right has been more often met in the breach than in the granting. The so-called integrated curriculum effectively subverted the right of conscientious objectors to avoid being indoctrinated.

The right has been mistakenly interpreted as a right of a child to withdraw from religious classes (into the hall or corridor, or to suffer other humiliating experiences on a daily basis).

There is, it seems, no money to provide classes to conscientious objectors in schools run by religious or by the RC bishops, who hold an effective monopoly over our national schools.

But Exchequer monies are available, by way of grants or taxes foregone, to enable Church interests to ‘advance religion’ — an overhang from our imperial past.

This is tantamount to State discrimination on grounds of religious profession, belief or status, in contravention of the Republic’s Article 44.2.

John Colgan

Leixlip

Co Kildare