ANALYSIS: Their lordships are not for turning on
this one.
Anyone who thought that, cowed by almost two decades of
scandal and with such wounded leadership, the Catholic bishops would now
be grateful to ignore the abortion issue and simply slink off into that
good night was sorely mistaken. It is not so.
But who would have
expected them to take to the streets?
It is unprecedented for a
group of Irish bishops to take part in a street protest. And with the
support of their colleagues on the Irish Episcopal Conference.
But
that’s what happened on Tuesday night outside Leinster House.
There,
Archbishop of Tuam Michael Neary, Bishop of Kilmore Leo O’Reilly,
Bishop of Killaloe Kieran O’Reilly, Bishop of Ossory Séamus Freeman and
Derry diocese administrator Msgr Eamon Martin attended the Pro-Life
Campaign vigil with thousands of others.
Between them they
represented the four metropolitan sees in Ireland – Armagh, Dublin,
Cashel and Tuam – and were led by Archbishop Neary, whose Tuam
archdiocese includes Castlebar, Co Mayo, of which the archbishop is a
native, as is Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
It is not as if there wasn’t ample warning of a vigorous response from the bishops.
Last
August, Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady threw down the gauntlet to
the Oireachtas on this issue. Then, anticipating publication of
recommendations by the expert group on abortion, he spoke to the Edmund
Rice Summer School in Waterford.
He said it was “important as a
church that we prepare with others to defend the equal right to life of a
mother and child against any effort to introduce abortion to a country
which is one of the safest places in the world for mothers who are
expecting a child”.
“The recent judgment of the European Court of
Human Rights on A, B and C v Ireland did not oblige the Irish Government
to legislate for any form of abortion in Ireland. I believe any
attempt to do so, even by way of a ministerial directive, will be
vigorously and comprehensively opposed by many.”
That was two
months before Savita Halappanavar’s death, since then we have been
repeatedly assured Ireland “is one of the safest places in the world for
mothers who are expecting a child”.
It was three months before
the expert group on abortion published its proposals, which Bishop Leo
O’Reilly described yesterday on RTÉ as “somewhat flawed”.
He added that
“three of the four proposals by the expert group include abortion, and
that is not something that is acceptable in Catholic teaching, as
everybody knows”.
In an RTÉ interview subsequent to his Edmund
Rice address, Cardinal Brady went on to make it very clear what the
bishops intended to do on the abortion issue.
If the Government
decided to legalise abortions in the State, he said, “we would have a
media campaign, we would be lobbying public representatives and also
hope to write a pastoral letter on this situation, setting forth the
argument which we have always held and providing resources to priests to
preach on this topic in the pulpit”.
Their campaign has continued
apace. In October Ireland’s Catholic bishops called on “all who believe
in the equal dignity and beauty of every human life” to “join us in
calling on our public representatives to respect the humanity and life
of children in the womb and to reject abortion”.
A special
pastoral message was read and distributed in all Catholic parishes on
the island beginning a month of prayer on the theme “Choose life!”
One
Minister who publicly recognised the significance of the cardinal’s
words last August was Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural
Resources Pat Rabbitte.
In response he said a direct involvement by the
Catholic Church in political campaigning on abortion would be a backward
step for Ireland.
“I would be somewhat surprised at the
cardinal’s reference to lobbying and engaging with, canvassing public
representatives and so on on the matter,” he said. “I don’t have
any objection to any of the churches stating its position and making it
clear but I think it would be a retrogressive step if we were to go back
to the days of the Catholic Church dictating to elected public
representatives how [they] should address an issue that a very large
section of our society believes that governments in the past ought to
already have done."
Well, it is happening.
Some
might have thought that Ireland’s moral civil wars – fought so
ferociously through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, over issues such as
contraception, homosexuality, divorce and, above all, abortion – were
over.
They continue.
This, however, is shaping up to be the mother of all those battles.