DÁIL SKETCH: Enda Kenny, with steely eloquence, has ended decades of government obeisance to Rome
THERE WAS never anything subtle about a belt of the crozier.
That would have defeated the purpose.
It
was the ecclesiastical equivalent of a kick in the shins, and
politicians feared it. The mere thought of a belt from a bishop was
enough to make the most powerful legislators bend the knee.
It didn’t do to upset the church, whose princes were all too ready to remind the lawmakers of this.
But in the Dáil, Enda Kenny, with steely eloquence, ended decades of government obeisance to Rome.
What
was most striking about this watershed moment was that nobody batted an
eyelid. He said what he said, and it was generally accepted.
Down
through the years, when clerical interventions came, they were
accompanied by controversy and breast-beating.
The Taoiseach’s political
intervention was accomplished with quiet determination and a
declaration of who has the right to run this country.
It had been a
slow afternoon in Leinster House: the Dáil winding down ahead of the
summer recess, deputies heading to lunch or busy in their offices,
crocodiles of constituents wending their way through the corridors on
guided tours.
The House was debating an all-party motion deploring
the Vatican’s role in the investigation into child abuse in the diocese
of Cloyne.
Not so long ago in the Irish parliament, such a motion would
have been unheard of.
The Taoiseach was first to speak.
His contribution wasn’t flagged.
Just
a handful of TDs were in the chamber to hear him. Some daytrippers
looked down from the public gallery. Few journalists sat in for the
speech.
“This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a
republic of laws,” said the
Taoiseach, in the course of a searing
rebuke of the Vatican.
As he read from a prepared script,
reporters monitoring the debate in their offices, pricked up their ears.
This was no safe speech, throwing out the usual condemnations and
hoping for better things to come.
Enda Kenny spoke in a controlled
manner, his voice tinged with anger and regret. He didn’t raise his
voice.
There was no attempt at grandstanding.
The words were enough.
Within
hours, his speech was making news around the world – the leader of
Catholic Ireland denouncing the Vatican in the strongest possible terms.
“Dysfunction”.
“Disconnection”. “Elitism”. “Narcissism”.
Was this really a Taoiseach
saying this on the floor of Dáil Éireann?
In a country where taoiseach
John A Costello once declared: “I, as a Catholic, obey my church
authorities and will continue to do so in spite of The Irish Times or
anything else, in spite of the fact that they may take votes from me and
my party.”
When Noel Browne, having resigned from Costello’s cabinet in
the 1950s after the rejection of his Mother and Child Scheme, publicly
said “I, as a Catholic, accept unequivocally and unreservedly the views
of the hierarchy on this matter.”
And the late Brendan Corish,
former leader of the Labour Party, once famously said: “I am, of course,
a Catholic first, an Irishman second.”
Bring it forward a few decades
to 2001, when Bertie Ahern was taoiseach.
He hosted a State reception
for Cardinal Connell, who had just returned from Rome with the red hat.
The
invitations came from the taoiseach – who was separated from his wife –
and his then partner, Celia Larkin.
A controversy ensued, and on the
big night in Dublin Castle, it was the taoiseach alone who joined the
receiving line to be greeted by the cardinal. Celia Larkin remained at
the back of the hall.
As clerical scandal built on clerical
scandal, there always seemed to be reluctance at government level to
stand up to the rule of Rome.
By the time the Cloyne report was issued,
the Vatican stood accused of subverting the Irish bishops in their
desire to bring the abuse cases into the open.
Into this situation
stepped Enda Kenny Wednesday.
If one were ever to predict who might be
the person who would, finally, lay down the law, his name would not have
been the most likely to emerge.
Taoiseach Kenny – family man,
father of the Dáil, cut from the cloth of old Fine Gael.
No.
One might
have expected one of the younger breed to make the call.
That it was
Enda issuing the challenge made it all the more compelling.
His speech
was well crafted and took little more than 15 minutes to deliver.
He
spoke of the downplaying of “the rape and torture of children” in
favour of upholding the primacy of an institution, its power, standing
and reputation.
“Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and
betrayal with St Benedict’s “ear of the heart” . . . the Vatican’s
reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon
lawyer.”
It was astonishing stuff.
All the more so because the
Taoiseach said he was speaking “as a practising Catholic”.
Earlier, he
had been jousting in the Dáil with Opposition leaders during a lively
Leaders’ Questions and Questions to the Taoiseach.
He had a
crucial summit in Brussels to consider.
In the middle of it all,
when the House had gone quiet and was almost empty, he rose to make the
speech which will be remembered as a highlight of his time in office.
When
he concluded, there was silence.
Then the Fianna Fáil leader rose to
echo his sentiments, followed by a raft of speakers who spoke in favour
of the motion.
Enda had done what needed to be done – and no amount of swinging croziers can undo it now.