Church and State: The Case of Ireland

Extract

—The bishops and priests of Ireland have spoken, said Dante, and they must be obeyed.

—Let them leave politics alone, said Mr Casey, or the people may leave their church alone.

(James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).

The spectacle of Mr Casey waving the pope’s nose over the Christmas dinner table towards the irate Mrs Riordan seems a good place from which to approach the issues of Church and State, not least for its exposition of the prejudices, half-truths and common assumptions that will crown round and must be thought through: the Church is really the hierarchy; the bishops’ word is final in a Catholic country; religion should be kept out of politics. But it indicates also the way Church-State relations in Ireland are the product of a complex history, just as they are in most countries. Without proper attention to that history, it is impossible to analyse the present situation adequately. The description and analysis on offer here are bound to be sketchy and incomplete, yet it is possible and timely to pick out some of the key features of the historically moulded present and then reflect on the potential opportunities and challenges in the immediate future.

Historically a predominantly Catholic country, Ireland has known only one established church, the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. Since its disestablishment in 1869 no attempt has been made to substitute any other in law or constitution. This is one simple but important fact of Irish history which immediately sets it off from its nearest neighbours in England and Scotland. Its implications are manifold, something not always appreciated by the churches in Ireland themselves, who have sometimes behaved as if they did enjoy some kind of established status as churches of majority populations, Catholic in the South and Protestant in the North.