IRELAND
National Secular Society (UK)
Posted: Mon, 27 Mar 2017
by Keith Porteous Wood
The reach and power of the Catholic Church has waned considerably in recent years in Ireland. But there are troubling signs that its undue influence over the country is returning, writes Keith Porteous Wood.
It is difficult to envisage now, but when the UK was formed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Dublin was regarded as the “Second City of the British Empire”. Ireland’s role in British political life was no less than that of England, Scotland and Wales from then until the progressive separations from Britain that started during the First World War.
The Catholic Church that had been suppressed by the Imperial power was quick to help fill the vacuum left by the British departure. The 1937 constitution was based on Papal encyclicals and presented on two occasions to the Vatican (a foreign state) for review and comment, and unsurprisingly accorded the Roman Catholic Church a “special position”, a position it certainly occupied in education at least. This formal status was repealed only in 1972, but was not of course matched by any reduction in the Church’s role in education.
The Church’s power came from its pervasive and anti-secular influence in the Government and Parliament, where the pious may well have been faced with conflicts of interest, and not only on sensitive matters of social policy such as divorce and abortion, but crucially on financial matters.
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