Print and be damned RELIGION: The paper's history with the Catholic Church has had its moments of trial JOE CARROLL

For the first hundred years of its existence, The Irish Times, as the acknowledged "Protestant newspaper", kept a watchful eye on the growing power of the Catholic Church and on how this might be encroaching on the civil liberties of the minority population. For almost the first 20 years it was edited by a Church of Ireland clergyman.

During the next 50 years, as the newspaper increased its Catholic readership, it became more ready to engage critically – but not in a hostile way – with the Hierarchy and individual bishops in defence of a liberal agenda.

There was a time when Fianna Fail was seen as a greater threat to Protestants than Maynooth. The newspaper warned in 1932 that "if Fianna Fail takes office, the Free State's carefully fostered prosperity will wither and she will become an Ishmael from that Empire which the ex-unionists, their sons and ancestors, have helped to mould." But this was the voice of an editor, John Healy, whom some saw as bigoted. Under him the paper had opposed the Cumann na nGaedheal Government's advocacy of a Catholic social agenda through new laws abolishing divorce and introducing book censorship.

Fr Stephen Brown S.J. in a survey of the Irish media in 1937 gave The Irish Times qualified approval. It "gives a good deal of Catholic news and, as a rule, avoids – at least as regards form and mode of expression – statements that would be offensive to Catholic opinion. It is much read by Catholics."

The editor by this time was R.M. Smyllie, Protestant of course, but he was opening up the newspaper to a Catholic professional readership that was growing less enamoured of the clericalism of the Irish Independent, yet not attracted to the Republican message of the newcomer, the Irish Press. When the new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, was appointed in 1940, The Irish Times magnanimously welcomed him. But he had less kindly feelings towards the newspaper and did not send it copies of his pastoral letters.

When The Fianna Fail government five years later rejected proposals from two bishops on vocational organisation and health insurance, the newspaper commented that the notion of the State being ruled by the Catholic bishops was hard to sustain. But there was a different tune when the "Mother and Child" controversy blew up in 1951 and the newspaper published the correspondence between the Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne and the bishops. Browne had supplied it.

Browne had been forced to resign because of the opposition of the Hierarchy and the medical profession to his scheme. The Irish Times deplored that "an honest and far-sighted and energetic man has been driven out of politics." But the editorial added that "The most serious revelation, however, is that the Roman Catholic Church would seem to be the effective Government of this country." Historians now see such a judgment as an exaggeration but the publication of the correspondence ensured that the Hierarchy would never again try to dictate to a government. The bishops were shocked to see their inner workings exposed to public scrutiny.

Dr McQuaid wrote to Cardinal D'Alton that the editorial was "unjust and typical – even though the writer is, I believe, honest."In a confidential report of the affair to the Nuncio, Archbishop Felici, Dr McQuaid revealed a deeper antagonism to the newspaper and its "calumnies." "Concerning The Irish Times, it has surpassed itself in injustice, first of all writing a most unfair editorial, at once when only one side, Dr Browne's side, has been published…secondly The Irish Times has opened its columns to very bitter letters and has kept up the disturbance by articles of unfair comment."

Dr McQuaid also told the Nuncio that "representative" Protestants had been critical of the newspaper's actions in the controversy "and these Protestants and Freemasons mean to deal with the Editor of The Irish Times in their own way." Whatever this may have meant, the editor lived on another three years. Dr McQuaid continued to be "paranoid" towards The Irish Times, according to his biographer, John Cooney. It is doubtful if the Hierarchy as a body felt the same sense of personal grievance but the other bishops were usually content to allow the archbishop with his influential political contacts take the lead in Church-State matters.

Under the editorship of Douglas Gageby, who took over in 1964, the newspaper's Catholic readership grew steadily and the "Protestant paper" image faded. The new religious affairs correspondent, John Horgan, was sent to provide extensive coverage of the last session of the Vatican Two ecumenical council. Clerical readers were sometimes gratified to find the full version of Papal encyclicals available the next day in The Irish Times, of all places.

The liberal line was taken editorially in the paper's opposition to inserting an anti-abortion clause in the Constitution in the 1983 referendum, an opposition which a number of bishops privately shared. It was notable also that the official Hierarchy statement on this referendum and the first divorce one in 1986 allowed Catholics to vote according to their conscience.

The Irish Times got its first Catholic editor with the appointment of Conor Brady in December 1986. He has written that when he took over, the arguments over contraception,divorce, abortion and gay rights were still going on and that when he stepped down in 2003 "these arguments had all been resolved.".

The newspaper, he said "had consistently argued that personal conscience and freedom of choice ought to be the principal determinants in these issues." The bishops had, however, already yielded much ground since the Mother and Child controversy and no longer sought to have Catholic moral teachingimposed through legislation. But the bishops, while conceding a freedom of conscience to Catholics, would not see it as a "principal determinant."

The Irish Times had to engage in 1992 with the personal life of a bishop in a way no other editor of the newspaper could have imagined. This was with the revelation that Bishop Eamon Casey of Galway had fathered a child with an American divorced woman, Annie Murphy. With her partner she decided to disclose this stunning piece of information to The Irish Times where there was much agonising over how to treat such a scoop. Conor Brady who consulted a clerical canon lawyer was warned that "if you're wrong or if you can't prove it, the Church will destroy The Irish Times."

The information proved correct and the newspaper was saved from a lethal belt of collective croziers.

The sexual abuse scandals involving Catholic clergy have greatly weakened the standing of the Church, now with only a shadow of its power compared to when Dr McQuaid ruled his archdiocese. One of his successors, Dr Desmond Connell, was even publicly rebuked by The Irish Times for misrepresenting its reporting of his comments on President McAleese taking communion in Christ Church.

There will still be areas, such as education and bio-ethics, where The Irish Times will keep a watchful eye on the policies of the Catholic Church. Its now numerous Catholic readers would not expect less.

Joe Carroll is a former religious affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent of The Irish Times