The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, recently launched what was described as "the first structured talks between the State and religious leaders to discuss areas of common concern", writes John Horgan.
This is not the first time that the State and religious leaders have engaged in structured talks: the New Ireland Forum some two decades ago probably broke new ground in this regard, and introduced the Irish public to the novel sight of bishops answering questions put to them by politicians.
This development, however, is not quite the same. At one level, it looks like an extension of the inclusive policy which the Taoiseach is advancing as a counterweight to the increasing fragmentation and atomisation of a consumption-driven society, and one which recognises the important role of religion generally in our social fabric.
So far, so good. But it can also be argued that this well-meaning gesture is in fact a retrograde step, one of whose foreseeable effects will be a reversion to, and perhaps even an enhancement of, the old, much-criticised relationships between religious leaders and politicians, which had the power to corrupt religion as much as the power to undermine the democratic process.
The context for this is a Dáil statement by the Taoiseach last year in which he pointed out that the Constitution gave some churches a "structured position": the inference was that other religious groupings were in some sense disadvantaged, and that a new structure needed to be created to take this into account.
Ahern is not too young to remember that more than 30 years ago, on the occasion of another constitutional amendment, the late Cardinal Conway said he "would not shed a tear" at the removal of the phrase in the Constitution which recognised the "special place" of the Catholic Church.
So why are we now creating special "structures" to recognise, again, a role we cheerfully dispensed with at that time, and to extend it to a larger but unspecified group of religious leaders?
My doubts about what is happening are not expressed from a secularist viewpoint, but from a democratic and a Christian one. Governments are elected to govern and to be responsive to the electorate, not to encourage the formation of new pressure groups or intermediate agencies who may or may not be representative of their members.
Corporatism can take many forms, and it can be argued that even inclusiveness can have its down side. For example, although it is unarguable that the involvement of unions and employers' organisations in successive national agreements has contributed substantially to national economic progress, it is also noteworthy that this process seems to be one of the factors contributing to a downgrading of the Oireachtas as a forum for debate and decision about many aspects of social and economic policy.
There has been an associated growth of cynicism about the important business of democratic politics - although politicians themselves have made no small contribution to this process.
Religious leaders may well feel flattered by this concern, on the part of the Government, to listen to their voices, but is this the right way forward? Many committed Christians - and, I am sure, members of other faiths also - believe that the primary way in which they should influence society is through the ways in which they live out their values within that society.
Many religious leaders, too, see their primary function as the nourishment of those values within the communities of believers they serve, and not as seekers after power and influence at the level of the State.
The emperor Constantine thought that he was doing Christianity a huge favour when he made it the official religion of the Roman empire. Many Christians are still trying to escape from the historical and theological legacy of this well-intentioned but deeply flawed decision. The new relationship between Catholic Christianity and the world, as expressed in the Second Vatican Council's document Gaudium et Spes, was expressed more in terms of service than in terms of domination. Do we now risk turning the clock back?
And what right or competence have the Christian churches, in particular, to be talking to the Government in private when talking to each other, in public or in private, is still probably more urgently needed?
In an important new book*, challengingly subtitled "Essays on post-Catholic Ireland and the Christian future", the Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath, Richard Clarke, makes the deceptively simple but radical proposal that the time has come for a synod of all Irish Christians, which could discuss matters of common concern and not least, one would assume, the role of Christianity in the Ireland of today. Easier said than done, of course: but are we capable of it?
* A Whisper of God by Richard Clarke, Columba Press.
John Horgan is former professor of journalism at Dublin City University, and was religious affairs correspondent of The Irish Times 1965-1973