YOU do realise, don't you, that the divorce issue is not settled? The Supreme Court comes back from the Whit vacation the day after tomorrow. Its decision in the case Des Hanafin brought, claiming that the Government's unconstitutional use of funds influenced the vote on divorce, and asking that the result therefore be declared null and void, due any day now.
I suppose you think it couldn't happen - that we couldn't possibly have to go through another referendum.
But if the Supreme Court sends the case back to the High Court for a full hearing, and the High Court finds that the result should be set aside, that is what would happen. I'm warning you.
In the meantime, the fact that legal proceedings were instituted very shortly after the referendum somehow stopped the discussion and absorption of what had happened. But I saw a film recently which reminded me that there are questions that are still unanswered.
One of the more obvious ones is about money. What the Government did with the State's money to bring about a Yes vote has been examined, in detail, in public. But what about the money spent on a No vote? Specifically, who funded the No Divorce Campaign?
We were told that we'd be told. The promise is on record in Donald Taylor Black's fascinating documentary film, Hearts and Souls, which is a fly on the wall account of the progress of the No Divorce Campaign from its first press conference to the day of the count.
This film, by the way, is unique in coming straight from that part of Irish life - activist Catholic conservatism, I might call it - which claims to be habitually misreported and which, whether for that reason or not, certainly is a mystery to many of us.
It is a wonderful thing that the No Divorce people - Peter Scully, Niamh Nic Mhathuna, Dr Gerard Casey, Mr Justice O'Hanlon - allowed the cameras access to their operation, thus opening a most important episode in our social history to scrutiny. And I'm sure they don't regret it.
The film is not at all snide, in the way so called documentaries can be. It is decent, well made and absolutely gripping. I saw it, by happy chance, thousands of miles from here, at a film festival in America. RTE - to its great credit - financed the film. But it transmitted it so that it began 20 minutes before the end of the match against the Netherlands at Anfield.
No one looked at the documentary. It will, however, be transmitted again on July 4th, and you might consider coming in from your barbecues to watch it.
TO return, however, to the question of money. Peter Scully, who directed the campaign, says in answer to a question about his spending, "They'll know after the referendum." Dr Casey, another executive, says, "We will publish our accounts after the campaign is over."
Dr Casey teaches philosophy in UCD. He uses words with precision. But if the No Divorce people have published their accounts, I haven't seen them. And I'd like to see them.
Because on the important Questions and Answers the Monday before the vote, Mr Justice O'Hanlon told John Bowman that he understood that very little money had come from America. But the No Divorce Campaign spent a lot of money, particularly on billboard posters such as the Hello Divorce, Goodbye Daddy" one. Where did the money come from?
Now I really know the answer to this question. Divorce is not an issue in America itself and it is not seen as a cause of abortion. But about Ireland - "the most Catholic country in the world" as it was described in the ads in America asking for anti divorce contributions - you can make a "floodgates" argument.
In the film, Dr Casey makes it. He implores an audience to reject divorce "for the sake of unborn life and of the elderly". If you see divorce as pleading to abortion, then it is perfectly reasonable to use anti-abortion funds - and they are substantial - to combat divorce.
So I'm not asking the money question because I believe that scandal attaches to the source of the No Divorce Campaign funds. I'm asking it because I would like to feel that we face into our post referendum future as reconciled as we can be, and thinking as well of ourselves as possible. All our selves. We need to feel that we dealt with divorce as honourably as we could.
The No Divorce Campaign was conducted in terms of religion and social morality. Holding true to the promise about publishing their accounts will be of a piece with that.
It will show what kind of people they are. And people were a very big factor in the divorce debate. "I don't want that shower running the country," was said about all sides. Donald Taylor Black's film gives us some insight into some of the people, as print never could.
THE No Divorce group - a very, very small group - almost bent the course of Irish history to its will. Here they are. They are saying prayers, and the phone rings. Will someone answer it? They coach a young woman in what she will say about her hopes on getting married. "I am a young person who will be getting married soon ..." They fend off highly determined inquiries from women journalists such as Una Claffey, Carol Coulter, Marian Finucane and Emily O'Reilly. The remarks about Jewish TDs are defended. The President, Mrs Mary Robinson, is resented. She makes a plea for what the judge calls "tolerance and whatnot."
If he were still on the bench, he muses, he "couldn't even do a Mary Robinson". I take it he means couldn't even hint at his own views.
At least as striking is that the judge pours Peter Scully his tea ("Thanks, Rory. That's loads") from a proper teapot. No paper cups with tea bags for these people.
Running through the film, presumably because it was running through the office, is a sub plot in which a young man called Clem Loscher makes phone call after phone call to Fianna Fail TDs, to get them to put their names to an anti divorce advertisement with the assurance that lots of other Fianna Fail TDs have already promised their names. This initiative meets its Waterloo in the form of Mary O'Rourke.
The last line of the film is memorable. "Go away, ye wife swapping sodomites," Una Bean Mhic Mhathuna famously shouts, and the camera catches an activist on the other side bursting into laughter and riposting: "If only we had that much fun in the campaign!"
But, of course, it wasn't fun. And the Supreme Court's decision won't be fun for some people, no matter what it is.
This film isn't funny. But it is human. Human beings, not abstract ideologies, shape our society.
I hope there won't be another battle for our hearts and souls. But if there should be I'm better able for it, after seeing Hearts and Souls.