Last Monday Enda Kenny
visited Bobbio in northern Italy to see one of the great shrines of
Irish Christianity, the tomb of St Columbanus, who brought the message
of the Gospel back to continental Europe during the Dark Ages, 1,400
years ago.
Kenny was in Italy to meet the
country’s prime minister, Enrico Letta, as part of his duties during the
Irish EU presidency , but he went out of his way to visit Bobbio with
an old school friend, Fr Tommy Murphy, a Columban missionary who was
head of the order for the past five years.
Just
two days later Kenny spoke passionately in the Dáil about how he
reconciled his duties as a political leader with his religious beliefs.
“I am proud to stand here as a public representative. As a Taoiseach who
happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic Taoiseach.”
Kenny was speaking in the context of the
fierce criticism being levelled against him and his Government by
leading members of the Catholic hierarchy over the Protection of Life
During Pregnancy Bill, which provides for abortion in cases where a
woman’s life is in danger.
The fact that he is a
practising Catholic in an increasingly secular society is what gave
Kenny’s statement such force. It stood out in stark contrast to the
speech to the Dáil on April 12th, 1951, of his Fine Gael predecessor as
taoiseach John A Costello, who famously said: “I am an Irishman second, I
am a Catholic first, and I accept without qualification in all respects
the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.”
Ireland
was a very different country when Costello made his response to the
hierarchy’s objections to the mother and child scheme of Noel Browne,
which was abandoned by the government.
Ire of the hierarchy
Ire of the hierarchy
Costello’s
was the most open political capitulation to the hierarchy but it was by
no means the only one. Successive governments were terrified of
provoking the ire of the hierarchy.
Eamon de Valera’s Constitution of 1937 was drawn up in consultation with senior Catholic Church
figures. That was reflected not only in the article conferring a
special position on the church but also in a range of other provisions.
Things
are very different now, and the political clout of the hierarchy has
been in decline for decades.
Still, during the 1980s it threw its weight
into the scales against Garret FitzGerald’s liberal crusade and helped
to ensure that the pro-life amendment was incorporated into the
Constitution in 1983 and divorce rejected in 1986.
In
1992 the hierarchy helped to scupper Albert Reynolds’s attempt to
remove the suicide issue from the abortion debate by encouraging people
to vote No to a constitutional amendment of the Pro-Life clause.
While
it took a different view in 2001 when Bertie Ahern’s government made a
second attempt at it, a number of conservative Catholic groups helped in
the campaign to defeat the measure.
The irony is
that had either of those two referendums been passed the question of a
threat of suicide as a ground for abortion would not have arisen.
However, the decision of the people not to remove it left successive
governments with the quandary of finding a way to deal with the 1992
Supreme Court decision in the X case.
The vehemence of the reaction to the Coalition’s
solution from certain members of the hierarchy has come as a surprise to
the political world.
The Coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh and the next
Catholic Primate, Eamon Martin,
delivered an uncompromising message to politicians during the week,
asking them how they could “legislate for something which will interfere
with the inviolable right to life of every human person”.
The
decision of the hierarchy to depict the legislation as akin to abortion
on demand, rather than the highly restrictive piece of legislation it
actually is, has not had the desired effect. Far from intimidating TDs
it is actually provoking the opposite reaction from many of those who
consider themselves good Catholics.
The bishops have also completely misread Kenny’s character if they believe they can pressurise him on the issue.
One of Kenny’s outstanding characteristics
is stubbornness; that is why he is in the Taoiseach’s office today after
enduring years of being belittled by political opponents and the media.
In
any case it is not as if there is public pressure on him to change his
mind on abortion.
The Irish Times poll during the week confirmed that
there is overwhelming public support for the legislation to allow
abortion where a mother’s life is in danger.
The poll did disclose a
degree of uneasiness about the suicide issue but it also showed there
would be support for far more liberal legislation than that outlined in
the Government’s legislation.
One way or another,
the Bill will be passed by a massive majority even if the Government
loses some backbenchers along the way.
Kenny will have the distinction
of having openly faced down the Catholic bishops on a major issue of
controversy, something none of his predecessors managed to achieve.
Humiliating the church
Humiliating the church
The irony is that Kenny, as his visit to Bobbio showed, is no ultra-liberal with an agenda aimed at humiliating the church. He comes from the Catholic heartland of Fine Gael and has been pushed by circumstances into taking his stand on the abortion legislation.
Crucially though, his
long political experience has taught him to differentiate between his
political responsibilities and the injunctions of the Catholic
hierarchy.
Kenny is in good company.
Back in 1837
Daniel O’Connell, the pioneer of Irish democracy, told the Commons that
the time was coming when “the unholy union of church and state will be
permanently severed in all countries professing the Catholic religion –
to the securing I am confident, of the purity of the one and the
consolidating safety of the other”.
It seems O’Connell’s aspirations have finally been achieved in his own country.