Flat on their faces

John Horgan

Dublin Historians delving into the recently-released Cabinet files for the 'twenties and 'thirties in what was then the Irish Free State have found fascinating evidence of the beginnings of a debate between Catholic bishops and Catholic politicians about legislating for morality. Specifically, they unearthed a splendidly autocratic memorandum of March 1923 in which the then Archbishop of Dublin, Edward Byrne, made plain his opposition to the introduction of divorce legislation. While many citizens of the new state were Protestants, he admitted cheerfully, he had a responsibility for protecting their morals as well as those of his own flock—and the fact that they did not accept his authority did not absolve him of the duty to save them from occasions of further sin.

This week, as bishops and politicians exchanged the latest polite salvoes in a battle about the need to legislate for divorce, it seemed that the passage of fifty years had changed very little. One of the substantial differences, however, is that a debate which was formerly carried on in private is now being carried on in public. Nor is the outcome by any means as certain as it would have been half a century ago.

In the old days it used to be said that the difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail was that when the bishops spoke Fianna Fail would go down on their knees, but Fine Gael would fall flat on their faces. Today the roles seem to have been reversed.

The first shots in the latest campaign were fired by Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Labour Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, who described the lack of adequate legislation on divorce and contraception in the Republic as 'sectarian'. His speech was the first sign that the more liberal members of the Cabinet were emerging from the catatonic state into which they appeared to have lapsed in 1974, when a Bill to legalise the sale of contraceptives, brought into the Dail by the Minister for Justice but made the subject of a free vote, was defeated by the votes—among others—of the Prime Minister, Mr Cosgrave, and the Minister for Education, Mr Burke.

The Bishop of Limerick, and former President of Ireland's major seminary at Maynooth, Dr Jeremiah Newman, counterattacked strongly, deriding Dr O'Brien's status as a 'self-confessed agnostic'. Later he went on to declare that the state had a perfect right to impose Catholic morality on all its citizens, to prevent a descent into the sort of decadence normally associated with the last days of the Roman empire. Last week it was the turn of Garret FitzGerald, the mercurial Fine Gael Minister for Foreign Affairs, who in a major speech called for specific changes in the Constitution to permit the enactment of divorce legislation of some kind, and also called for new thinking on the issues of contraception and multi-denominational education. The bishop, he suggested, had not satisfactorily discharged the burden of proof that the proposed changes would have the disastrous effects he contemplated.

On the ecclesiastical side of this debate, there has in fact been a distinct change of emphasis in the past few years, dating back to the time when the first unsuccessful attempt to change the laws on contraception was made in the Senate. At that time, under the leadership of Cardinal Conway of Armagh, the bishops slowly abandoned the terminology of sin and theology, substituting for it a more modern vocabulary which leant heavily on semi-sociological assertions (if rarely on sociological research) about the damage that the projected changes would do to the Irish 'quality of life'. The late Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin was virtually the only major ecclesiastical figure to refuse to adopt such a modernist line: almost his last public statement was a

ringing denunciation of proposals to change the law on contraception, in language of which Archbishop Byrne would have been 'proud.

The hierarchy faces a parliament which i is notoriously and traditionally weak and

divided when it comes to confrontation' with the Church. Each of the two larger parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, is seri ously split on the contraception issue (there.

are many Fine Gael members who voted 1111 favour of a change only in the mistaken i belief that their leader was about to do thel same). On divorce, the divisions no doubt run even deeper, and even the Labour Party, which was the only party to .deliver 1 all its members into the right lobby on contraception, might well face some defections on the second issue. Fianna Fail, which did nothing about these problems when in government, has managed to do even less la opposition, and in fact played a significant. part in the defeat of the proposed law °II the sale of contraceptives.

The legislators, in fact, have shown therir selves to be markedly more timid than the

judiciary, which last year struck down soli of the more absurd sections of the anti-,' contraception law as unconstitutional. Bill, reforming the law through the judiciary 15a hit-and-miss affair at best, as both O'Brien and FitzGerald have publicly acknowledged; While the difficulties in the way 0' . achieving the necessary consensus in the legislature remain formidable, they have in some sense been reduced by the courage0115 action of the two Ministers concerned. In the meantime, of course, the electorate as a whole—which, when polled, has shown 3 heartening willingness to accept at least some changes—uses whatever loopholes the courts or medical ethics provide. People al. ke 1 marrying at an ever earlier age, but the bill" pattern has not increased commensuratelY, indicating that the practice of contracePti°11, is on the increase, despite the chaotic ana unsatisfactory condition of the law. ill! divorce problem is in a sense more serious' there are some 4000 women in receipt of the Government's deserted wives' allowance; and several thousand more either do it° apply for social reasons or are excluded IV the rigidly-applied means test. To add to the

chaos, Irish Catholics who obtain decrees of ' d d nullity from their own Church may be, ane

frequently are, remarried bigamously in tilA Republic. The state does not prosecute, all''' the law is brought into contempt. The relevance of all this to the Northern Ireland situation does not need to be 0'11; , lined, although it is less than is frequenl,(, supposed. Only a very naïve southern 11°,"5 tician would argue that by making chanbil, the republic will conquer northernOtte pathy to the idea of a united Ireland; t..se tlitii c

consequences of refusing to make

changes, however, inescapably add toad weary burden of suspicion, intolerance itc fear by which the island is divided 11111 more surely than by any line on a mar).