THE REACTION to every speech is always in the ear of the hearer.
Some
will inevitably dismiss Enda Kenny’s remarks during Wednesday’s Dáil
debate on the Cloyne report as a populist attack upon an increasingly
unpopular institution or as being motivated by political rather than
policy considerations.
The speech has already been dismissed by some as a
polemic rather than as a contribution to debate.
To do so is to
miss the point.
The purpose of Kenny’s speech was not to persuade or to
debate, neither was it a comprehensive treatment of Government policy on
church- State affairs, or on relations between Ireland and the Vatican.
What
it was, above all else, was a clear statement of attitude.
The new
Government of Ireland has given notice that it is adopting a new and
less deferential attitude to the Catholic Church and to the Vatican.
That is a very healthy development.
Of course the Taoiseach’s speech was political – he is the country’s top politician after all – but it was not cynically so.
The
Taoiseach and his advisers will have been conscious that his remarks
would be portrayed as populist grandstanding by those who don’t want to
accept the point he was making.
By playing it straight in media
management terms they did much to undermine that suggestion.
Instinctively,
political handlers might have preferred to ensure that the press
gallery and the Dáil benches were packed for the speech.
They could have
ensured this by ringing around in advance.
They did not do so.
They
also resisted the temptation to trail the speech and its significance by
leaking snippets to one of that morning’s newspapers.
Instead they let
the speech takes its place in the chronology of a news day that
everybody expected to be dominated by the euro crisis and other stories.
The absence of hype or advance billing gave the speech greater impact.
Others
have criticised Kenny’s text on the basis that it was unfair to the
current papacy or that the tone was wrong.
Again, however, they miss the
point.
The current Vatican regime carries responsibility for the errors
of its predecessors.
Kenny’s tone if anything was too soft in the
circumstances.
If, as is clear, this Government has made a
strategic decision to adopt a more confrontational posture towards the
Catholic Church leadership in general and the Vatican in particular,
then the publication of the Cloyne report was the proper occasion for
that change in approach to be marked.
The venue was appropriate.
Kenny was right to do it in the chamber of parliament itself rather in a
media statement or some kind of formal diplomatic demarche.
The
fact that it was done at the level of the Taoiseach rather than by the
Minister for Foreign Affairs or Minister for Justice was also
appropriate.
The revelations in the Cloyne report and previous such
reports require that the church and the Vatican be confronted at head of
government level.
Coming from Kenny it had the added dimension of
coming from a senior politician who is also a practising Catholic.
Since he was advancing the official Government position it should not
matter whether the speaker has any faith, Catholic or otherwise, but in
reality it does and it was Kenny himself who chose to emphasise that
dimension.
It would have been easier for those who wished to dismiss the
speech to do so if it had come from a more secular politician or a
non-Catholic.
While Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen condemned child
abuse by priests and cover-ups by bishops in equally trenchant terms,
they were more cautious in their critique of the church senior
management here and in Rome.
The tone and language used by Kenny is in
stark contrast to that used by Brian Cowen in December 2009 when the
Murphy commission report into the Dublin diocese was published.
As
I noted here at that time, Cowen’s most high-profile intervention as
taoiseach in the intense public debate following the publication of that
Murphy report had the effect of defending the Vatican’s actions rather
than adequately communicating this country’s outrage at the church’s
connivance in the covering up of crime.
It did not require much
courage to say what Enda Kenny said this week.
The institution against
which he directed his remarks is no longer a political force.
His views
chimed with the overwhelming majority of Irish public opinion.
However,
unlike his predecessors, Kenny had both the inclination and the
confidence to set aside the diplomatic niceties and state baldly the
contempt that the people of Ireland have for the manner in which the
Catholic Church has responded to these revelations.
In years to
come, passages from this speech will be cited as marking a watershed in
the relationship between Ireland and the Vatican.
Historians will also
be interested, however, in exploring how this speech came to be made.
It
will be fascinating to see if the Taoiseach and those involved with him
in the preparation of his text chose to consult in advance with Irish
diplomats at the Holy See or with other officials. One suspects that if
they got such an opportunity the Irish permanent government advised a
more cautious approach.
If that was the case then Kenny was right to
ignore it.
In his collection of 50 Great Irish Speeches the
historian Richard Aldous makes the point that such speeches can be
divided into two types: those of the head and those of the heart. Many,
he says, display remarkable powers of analysis, “setting out rigorous
arguments to influence opinion by sheer force of intellect”.
Others, he
says, gain their authority from the passion and context of their
delivery and because they capture a public mood.
Enda Kenny’s
speech this week clearly fits into the later category.
It seems destined
to make the cut for Aldous’s future editions.