Vatican’s politicking here is intrusive and hypocritical

For weeks, the Vatican’s men in Ireland, its bishops and nuncio, have been politicking in respect of the Government’s Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill.

Foreign states that seek to intervene in the internal government and politics of Ireland are castigated. Here, in contrast to conventional political parties, the institutional Churches are classified as ‘charities’ for tax purposes.

They can propagate what politics they will, while feeding their activities off taxes foregone by the Exchequer, taxes that would be paid by organisations not charged with ‘the advancement of religion’.

Not all citizens want to subsidise the unaccountable institutional Church and obscenely rich Vatican.

All this, while the Constitution states that “the State guarantees not to endow any religion.”

And “the State shall not impose any disabilities, or make any discrimination, on the ground of religious profession, belief or status”. [Article 44.2.2]

The Vatican’s ambassador, Charles Brown, said (Sunday, Jul 8) that “the teaching of the Catholic Church is very clear; a person has the right to act in conscience and in freedom, so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience.” He said, too, that Ireland’s Constitution “explicitly states that freedom of conscience is guaranteed to every citizen”; yes, but the exercise of it is subject to public order and morality [Article 44.2.1]. In a Republic, it is for our courts to be the final arbiter of what limits public order and morality put on a citizen’s rights.

Let’s look at the Catholic Church’s record in Ireland in the matter of freedom of conscience, and civil rights: the Constitutional right of any child to attend a publicly-funded school without being indoctrinated in religion, and to do so without being made a pariah, or otherwise disadvantaged, is more often met in the breach than in the granting, in national schools under the aegis of Roman Catholic bishops.

This is particularly the case with the so-called ‘integrated curriculum’ (1970), created without so much as a by-your-leave of our Parliament.

As the Church has, in the past, bullied its way into a virtual monopoly of schooling, there is no choice for pupils whose parents are content with morality without religion, and the State is failing to provide autonomous moral education to them.

Twenty five years ago, Eileen Flynn, an unmarried teacher, was dismissed by her convent school for becoming pregnant and carrying her baby to term; she lost her livelihood, in a publicly-funded school, to satisfy the harsh demands of the religious. Ironically, had she had an abortion across the water, she might have held her job.

In the Mater Hospital, Dublin, another religious-controlled institution that is publicly-funded, a lay nurse was dismissed for refusing to lay out religious artefacts to meet the requirements of a Catholic funeral rite. She refused on grounds of conscience.

In St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, three priests were dismissed for declining to don their priestly garb.

Many ordinary Roman Catholic priests have been silenced by the cabal of Vatican mandarins, for seeking to exercise their freedom of conscience and freedom of expression.

That is an enormous cruelty.

Are all four of these examples not characterised by the totalitarian harshness of controlling religious interests and, when the courts played a role, pre-eminence given to the interests of the Church, despite the predominance of public funding?

Both Church and State have some way to go to escape the mantle of hypocrisy.

John Colgan

Dublin Road

Leixlip

Co Kildare