Letter of the Day

Church and State – both perspectives must be addressed

The State has itself been let off the hook (and enormous expense) for many years

Letter of the Day
Letter of the Day
Mon Sept 16 2024 - 05:00

A chara, – “Statements expressing sorrow from religious orders who ran schools implicated in past child sexual abuse will be ‘hollow words’ if they are not followed by commitments towards redress for survivors, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said” (News, September 4th). At the Fine Gael think-in in Tullamore on 11 September, he went further: “Before I get into adversarial language, I would encourage organisations that consider themselves to be Christian to act in the values of Christianity. We are the sovereign government of Ireland. Of course, we have levers at our disposal. The Government of Ireland, the Oireachtas of Ireland, of course, can take action. Lessons must be learned from the past when, quite frankly, the church was let off the hook. Let’s be honest, (it) was let off the hook.”

Amen to that.

Before I get into adversarial language, I would encourage the sovereign government of Ireland to act in the values of the country they are elected to serve. Article 44 of the Constitution of Ireland states: “The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.” To inquire selectively into just one religious denomination, while there are many other institutions, State, secular and religious, also involved in schools, seems like discrimination which does not respect that constitutional mandate. It is unjust to any children who experienced abuse in such other schools to fail to acknowledge that.

Let’s be honest. The Taoiseach must also acknowledge that the State has itself been let off the hook (and enormous expense) for many years, as his predecessor acknowledged at the Capuchin Day Centre in August 2018: “People of profound Christian faith provided education to our children when the State did not, in the open air next to hedgerows and in the schools and educational institutions they built. They founded our oldest hospitals, staffed them, and provided welfare for so many of our people. We think of the many wonderful organisations today who continue that work, like St Vincent de Paul to name just one. It is easy to forget that the Irish State, founded in 1922, did not set up a Department of Health or a Department of Social Welfare until 1947.”

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It’s not either/or. Both perspectives must be addressed. – Is mise,

PÁDRAIG McCARTHY,

Sandyford,

Dublin 16.