Attempt to provoke a last bang of the crozier failed to work

HIGH Commissioner elect Mary Robinson was, I think, well described only last week as a latter day version of the "Castle, Catholic" of old (one who disowns the more embarrassing commitments of their Catholic faith for the sake of social and political advancement).

I see, not without amusement, that my little protest in the Letters page of this newspaper has provoked a solemn disavowal from a cabal of brother priests (April 12th), whom I can only regard - alas! - as Aras Catholics (if not Aras lickers).

Is it possible that those clamouring for a free church can simultaneously be opposed to free speech? (Shall those campaigning for human rights now repress civil liberties?)

But who, or what, pray, convened this motley meitheal group of clerics? What clarion, I beg, summoned them to succour La Robinson? Where, I wonder, the Achilles of these myrmidons - and where the Achilles' heel?

Does this attemptedly daunting washing line of names and orders represent the big (or mediumsized) guns of the Irish politico ecclesiastical establishment? If so, are they self appointed, or do they, too, "have a mandate"? To bully into silence or to make voices heard"?

They are contemptible. Their would be grave and terse rebuke hardly seems worthy of a single author, let alone a chorus. Sadly, I am not acquainted with any of the subscribers.

Old priests tell me they were once the up and coming generation. Does it threaten them that somebody like myself, a neophyte of 28, now rejects their complacent, characterless and crumbling compromise between Church and modern Ireland?

I have clearly trodden on a particularly sensitive corn in the Irish bodies politic and ecclesiastical. Can it be that I have, inadvertently, prodded some sacred cow of modern (post) Catholic Ireland? Or is it merely a golden calf, which, like Aaron, the Levitical lackeys and poltroon priests of today (or yesterday) worship, too, for fear of the people? (And thus, Mary, I hazard, only for public consumption.)

Unjust? What can they mean? Is it, mayhap, the epithet "cheap", which appalls them? I fear that this poor adjective has itself been cheapened by the hypocritical hysteria widely affected against it during the past week.

Some have gone so far as to insinuate that a more substantive companion term was missing. I, of course, must disclaim responsibility for the suggestible imagination among Irish Times readers. It was not that Mrs Robinson looked cheap, bedizened in her Kelly green (apart from the week, Mary, you looked divine!), and what she wore would have been perfectly acceptable on any other occasion - no, she was cheap.

We call a person good because their actions are good. We call a person evil because their actions are evil. We call a person cheap not because they look cheap, but because their actions are cheap. I call the President of Ireland cheap because her behaviour in Rome towards her host, the Bishop and Church of Rome, was a cheap travesty of respect and a cheap personal propaganda stunt from start to finish. I shall attempt to explain.

(i) The deferral of the visit until the last minutes of a dying presidency was cheap. (Such hypocritical nonsense about waiting to be invited!) One of Jacques Chirac's first engagements within six months of election as President of the French Republic - a democracy hardly less progressive than our own - was a state visit to the Vatican, carried out with customary French elegance, from which brash, modern Ireland has much to learn.

(ii) The en passant, ad hoc nature of the visit was cheap. The Vatican, to protect her sovereignty, naturally does not permit dignataries visiting organisations in the Italian Republic to make a simultaneous state visit of the Estates of the Church. Mr Chirac came to Rome solely to visit the Vatican: Mrs Robinson reluctantly popped in with a poor grace, as an afterthought to campaigning in Rome yet again for a UN job.

(iii) The prior whipping up of the media against the Church concerning the President not being decorated by the Pope was cheap. In default of a state visit, this question did not arise.

(iv) The unprecedented absence of an accompanying priest chaplain in the President's entourage at the Vatican was cheap. One asks why, if the Rev Dr McDonagh is in receipt of a State salary in his role as President's chaplain, he was not enabled to discharge this duty. In his absence, the failure to delegate one of the Irish clergy resident in Rome can only be seen as a deliberate snub - particularly to the Rector and staff of the Pontifical Irish College.

(v) The wilful flouting of established protocol (something on which our President is notoriously insistent towards herself) concerning dress was cheap. The universally observed dress code for all private audiences with the Pope (and does an unofficial visit usually arrive by cavalcade and police. escort?) is simply, for both sexes, abito scuro (literally, sombre dress black, grey or navy, and little or no jewellery). Such figures as Mrs Clinton, Diana, Princess of Wales, Queen Elizabeth, Mrs Netanyahu, Mrs Reagan (all non Catholics) each wore black or dark grey - is Mary Robinson more modern perhaps, than Hillary Clinton or Benjamin Netanyahu's third wife? Head dress, for either sex, is today entirely optional. Mrs Robinson went barefoot for her Muslim fellow citizens: was it too much for Catholic fellow citizens to hope that she might wear even navy?

(vi) Wearing mimosa was cheap. Let me put it quite plainly. Mimosa is like holly - not shamrock. It is for decorating places, and things - not people. Mistakenly wearing mimosa for International Women's Day is to Italians what wearing holly at Christmas would be to us - slightly bizarre, if seriously meant. In Italy, around March 8th, mimosa is presented to women as a gift (I have done so myself), to be displayed in a vase, never worn. In six years I am unable to recall even one instance of an Italian woman ever wearing mimosa - they simply have more style. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, by all means - not as they don't.

(vii) The behaviour of members of the President's party while in the Vatican was cheap. Certain individuals distinguished themselves, in the words of one of the press corps, by swaggering disrespect, forced mockery and an almost adolescent sneer.

(viii) The inexcusable omission of the customary visit to the tomb of the Apostle Peter was cheap. This is the raison d'etre of the Vatican, and of any visit by a Christian thereto - not the Pope.

(ix) The incredible, defensive, on the run claim that the President wore green as the national colour was cheap. This is, of course, an insult to the intelligence of the Irish people, who know, no less than Mrs Robinson, that the national colour is, in fact, the colour of the Garda uniform, of the national arms and of the Presidential standard which flies over Aras an Uachtarain.

(x) The sudden, improvised announcement of the President's retirement within days of the visit was cheap. This was clearly a move cynically calculated to stem unforeseen criticism at home of Mrs Robinson's behaviour and to consign it to oblivion by a welter of perfunctory and unavoidable eulogy.

AS President, Mary Robinson claimed to represent those of "all religions and none". Do non Catholics desire to be represented before the Pope? Surely, when our President meets the Chief Rabbi, she represents, above all, Irish Jews. When, she received the Dalai Lama at Aras an Uachtarain, she was without doubt representing, above all, the growing Irish Buddhist community.

I, however, as an Irish citizen, and a Catholic, did not feel represented by her in any way at the Vatican. I felt that my faith option was excluded by this paragon of inclusiveness, whose pluralism was too petty, apparently, for any courtesy towards "male dominated" papism.

Mrs Robinson's openness has closed her mind; she has become so inclusive that she now represents only her own agenda. Thus what she represented in reality at the Vatican was nothing other than her own personal animosity towards Catholicism as interpreted by Pope John Paul II (a clear case of very cross dressing).

The cheapness of such a blatant display of private prejudice by an elected representative performing a public, State funded function need only, surely, be explained to bigots and sycophants. Indeed, the President's ostensible inability publicly to contain her personal feelings in this matter makes me suspect, as I have already suggested, that her much vaunted intelligence is but another spin of the Robinson road show. (There are, of course, different forms of intelligence: bookishness is clearly not savoirfaire.)

A truly intelligent, anti Catholic, female President of Ireland would have swallowed her resentment, put on a grey dress like Hillary [Clinton], and the whole thing would have been a non event - precisely what some had hoped. A foolish, strident and obvious one, however, was sadly incapable of detecting the fine line between going and not going too far, and has thus provoked an ongoing, six week debate.

But I suspect, as is widely rumoured in Irish circles here in Rome, she had at last to meet the Pope, hoped to manipulate the situation by provoking the Vatican either to turn her away on account of her dress (as happened to Princess - now Queen - Paola of Belgium in 1962), or at least to condemn modern Ireland in her presence for recent socio legal trends.

This, then, in either case, might fruitfully be represented to the Irish people as the ultimate bang" of a crozier for all that post Catholic Ireland has become, and the last gasp of a desperate, discredited, rigid, reactionary and patriarchal regime.

THE result? Mass hysteria in favour of Mary, the final collapse of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and all live happily ever after. I equally suspect, however, that the Vatican was wise to the machinations of our President, for evidently this plan wholly backfired. (Cheap tricks, like all cheap things, tend to disappoint.) Mary wanted John Paul to give her a black eye; His Holiness serenely turned her a blind (albeit "twinkling") one. She wanted to cut a provocative, modern dash; he left her looking like a crank. No reaction from the Pope, and heavens! - distinct negative reaction to Mary at home.

Doubtless, if things continue as they are going, there will soon be a day when no one will care whether one appears before the Pope in the guise of a go go dancer. But sadly, Mary, for you, that day has not quite arrived, and, with exquisite irony, we have only you to thank for proving it. In your over eagerness to signal the demise of the Church, you have made a fool of yourself, provoked the first public demonstrations of papal loyalty in Ireland since 1979, and perhaps pushed the day you obviously yearn for just a little further away! Too bad, Excellency, too, too bad. And I say it again - cheap, cheap and unworthy, if not of you, at least of our President!

I might lastly add, for the benefit of those who cleverly see but foolishly let slip the non ordination of women as a major factor in Mrs Robinson's disgraceful behaviour, that it is not the Pope who is responsible for this (he is quite powerless in the matter - as will his successors be), but Jesus Christ.