Ireland’s new coalition looks set for a collision course with the Catholic Church after agreeing upon a program for government that will see a raft of liberal social reforms, including proposals on same-sex marriage and reducing the Church’s influence in education.
The document, Towards Recovery: Program for a National Government 2011-2016, also contains an oblique but ominous plan to “regulate” stem cell research, which some activists are reading as a “green light” for experimentation with embryos.
The center-right Fine Gael (Irish for Gaelic Nation) and the leftist Labor Party agreed upon the document after no party won an overall majority in the February 25 general election.
The plan will see the two parties take power for the first time in 14 years.
The last time the parties were in government together, a constitutional referendum narrowly overturned the country’s ban on divorce.
However, a later Supreme Court ruling found that the government had misused public funds to influence the vote in favor of a change.
The new program for government proposes holding a special constitutional convention to redraft the Irish Constitution, including plans to introduce same-sex marriage and remove the crime of blasphemy.
Some activists fear that all references to God will also be removed from the document.
Ireland is in the grip of the worst economic crisis since it won independence from Britain in 1922.
The outgoing Fianna Fáil (Irish for Soldiers of Destiny) party, which many people blame for lax financial regulation, suffered heavy losses, seeing its parliamentary representation shrink from 78 members to just 20.
The main victor was Fine Gael, winning a total of 76 seats.
However, Fine Gael fell just seven seats short of a governing majority, forcing it to coalesce with a resurgent Labor Party, which was buoyed up by a swing to the left that brought its representation from 20 to 37 members of parliament.
While the Fine Gael party is traditionally socially conservative, economic policy has trumped social issues in the program for government negotiations.
Labor has been forced to accept unpalatable fiscally-conservative policies, and in return, Fine Gael has acquiesced on most of Labor’s liberal-leaning demands on social issues.
The election campaign was dominated by the economy, with little debate on family and life issues. With unemployment stubbornly resting at 13.4 percent, many voters concentrated solely on the parties’ economic proposals.
Even the country’s Catholic bishops chose only to mention the defense of traditional marriage on page 19 of a 24-page pre-election pastoral letter, while abortion and the right to life were relegated to page 21 of the document.
But Labor didn’t get everything its own way, at least for now.
The issue of abortion, which Labor promised to legislate for during the campaign, has been placed on the back-burner for the time being. An “expert group” will be established to bring forward proposals on how the issue should be addressed.
Currently, abortion remains illegal in Ireland. However, disagreements over a controversial 1992 Supreme Court decision establishing a right to abortion when the life of the mother is at risk has never been resolved.
In December 2010, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Irish government must clarify the matter.
Pro-life groups are not mollified by the establishment of the expert group. Professor William Binchy, legal adviser to the Pro-Life Campaign, told Catholic World Report, “What we need is not another report or series of hearings—we need a referendum to restore full legal protection for the right to life of the unborn while ensuring that current best medical practice continues in Irish hospitals, where doctors protect both the life of the mother and the child.”
Binchy points out that Ireland, one of few countries in the western world where abortion remains illegal, was recently found by the United Nations to be the safest country in the world in which to give birth.
John Smyth, a long-time pro-life lobbyist in the Irish parliament, is also wary of the expert group.
“It’s obviously welcome that there is no plan to legalize abortion in the program,” Smyth said.
“But we don’t know what will come from this so-called ‘expert group,’ or even who will be represented on it.”
“What happens if that group recommends abortion legislation? Will the government accept that advice? We need more clarity on this,” he said.
There’s also precious little clarity on other bioethical issues in the program for government.
The document promises to “clarify the law surrounding assisted human reproduction” and to “regulate” stem cell research. Smyth is nervous of the words “regulate” and “clarify.”
“We know that Labor is in favor of destructive embryonic stem-cell research. Fine Gael said before the election that they were opposed to it. What is the position now, who has won?” he asked.
Much will depend upon who fills crucial health-care positions when government jobs are eventually divided between the governing parties.
A constitutional convention will be called to bring forward proposals on same-sex marriage.
While the Constitution does not explicitly define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, the Supreme Court recently ruled that since the Constitution was adopted in 1937, the original framers would never have imagined marriage to be anything else.
According to David Quinn of Iona Institute, a pro-family think-tank, the constitutional convention proposals on same-sex marriage will “considerably undermine traditional marriage.”
“It means the government will be orchestrating a situation where there is no longer any social institution aimed at encouraging men and women to raise their children,” Quinn explained.
“Currently opinion polls indicate substantial support for same-sex marriage, but this support is likely to be soft and much of it would evaporate when the issue is properly debated.”
In any case, it might not be all smooth-sailing for liberal reformers, and conflicts with more-traditional elements within the government are likely to emerge.
Several prominent Fine Gael legislators have privately expressed disquiet about proposals to introduce same-sex marriage.
Lucinda Creighton, the party’s frontbench spokesperson on equality, has gone public with her defense of traditional marriage, insisting, “I think marriage is primarily about children, the main purpose being to propagate and create environment for children to grow up.”
While Creighton’s party leadership is standing by her, the clamor from gay lobby groups for Creighton’s dismissal was almost deafening, with Hazel Cullen, spokesperson for the gay-rights group LGBT Noise, saying, “Ms. Creighton’s attitude to marriage is, frankly, bizarre in 2011.”
“The campaign against Lucinda Creighton is a direct attack on free speech, and is nothing less than an attempt to drive anyone who believes in traditional marriage out of mainstream politics,” said Dr. John Murray of the Mater Dei Institute of Education in Dublin.
“Supporters of same-sex marriage want to ban people stating their belief that children ideally should have a mother and a father who are married to each other. They want everyone to regard such a common-sense belief as bigotry. This agenda is extreme and radical and the vitriolic attacks on Lucinda Creighton prove this amply.”
Educational policy is also likely to be a key battleground for the new coalition government. Currently, Church-run schools and other religious institutions receive special exemption from employment equality legislation.
The exemptions ensure that religious groups are free to refuse to employ anyone they believe could undermine the ethos of that institution.
The new program for government promises to remove those exemptions.
When the European Commission sought to challenge the exemptions in 2008, Catholic bishops united with their Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic counterparts to counter the move.
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was forced to remove the proposal under pressure.
Ownership and management of schools will also prove to be a controversial issue.
During the election, Labor’s education spokesperson, Ruairi Quinn, spoke about the government seizing the title deeds of some Catholic schools to create greater diversity in education.
Currently only 3 percent of Irish primary schools are state-controlled, while the Catholic Church and other faiths and denominations run the remainder.
The Catholic bishops have called for more non-religious schools, but how that is to be achieved is quite a different matter.
The program of government softens the tone somewhat, speaking of a plan to “negotiate” the takeover of schools owned by the 18 religious congregations that were named in the government’s Ryan Report on sexual abuse.
A spokesman for the congregations refused to comment, but insisted that the congregations retained all their constitutional rights to private property.
Several congregations are currently involved in a High Court challenge to government plans to unilaterally rezone their lands, dramatically reducing the value of their property and the Church’s assets.
In a statement congratulating Ireland’s new legislators, the Irish bishops’ conference, perhaps motivated by the rise of the left, appeared to harden their commitment to traditional issues.
“Notwithstanding society’s understandable preoccupation with economic recovery, our obligation to defend the dignity of every human person and protect the common good must not be forgotten at the present time,” the statement said.
“Public policy should always support and protect the common good. Strengthening the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, as well as promoting and protecting human life at all its stages, is fundamental in this regard.”
The bishops do, however, enter the debate with one hand tied behind their back. More than 15 years of scandal have left many people in the Church exhausted and bishops’ moral authority diminished.
Some politicians, for their part, have never missed an opportunity to capitalize on the Church’s misfortune.
Ireland is undoubtedly in for some bruising battles on social issues, and the Church will have the difficult task of convincing the faithful that some things really are more important than the economy.
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