Church still has a vital role to play in modern Ireland

The Germans have a suitably long word for it: Ver gangenheits bewaltigung, which means `coming to terms with the past'. Events such as the recent 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid offer us occasion to reflect on Ireland's recent past and draw lessons for the future.

In the media at least, Dr McQuaid has become an icon of a church and an era which no longer exists but still exerts enormous influence on life in the body politic. More accurately the influence they exert is increasingly perceived to be of a negative nature: they represent all the things to which Ireland does not want to return.

This applies in particular to what is perceived to be the relationship between the State and the Catholic Church symbolised by that between Eamon de Valera and Archbishop McQuaid. It is the merit of John Cooney's recent article in this paper to show that that relationship was more complex than the stereotype usually assumed.

These were two giant figures of our history, both with independent minds, acutely aware of their different responsibilities at a historically crucial time when the new Irish Free State was still in its infancy. The question for us is: are we mature enough collectively to assess their merits and demerits with objectivity?

The principle of the separation of church and State is fundamental to de Valera's Constitution. It is also one of the principles of Catholic social teaching, with its origin in words of Jesus: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." Government practice and legislative history is, to a large extent, a history of how successive generations interpreted that principle.

Rightly or wrongly, it is generally perceived that in the era represented by Archbishop McQuaid the separation was nominal: the church effectively set the agenda for the State. Recent developments are marked by the total rejection of any church influence.

That the agenda is now set by the media is accepted without demur, but the State must be, and, more importantly, be seen to be, separate from the church. Personal contact would seem to be reduced mostly to ceremonial occasions; and legislators, far from being in the pockets of the church as has been claimed about the past, now seem embarrassed to incorporate religious or moral concepts into the framing of legislation, and the results of this are there to see.

With few exceptions, Irish Catholic bishops tend more and more to withdraw to the sacristy, timid and diffident in making any public statements, except when constrained to do so - as when faced with a referendum - and even then not without a certain ambiguity.

The result is a situation that must be unique in a Europe where co-operation and ongoing dialogue between church and state seem to be the norm, as we saw last year in Britain when the Catholic bishops' document, The Common Good, became widely regarded as a voice of sanity and conscience in the run-up to the British general election.

Historians will eventually debate how the current crisis of Catholic silence came about. Apart from the influence of the Troubles in the North, the most significant factor must be the contemporary dim perception of what the church was like in `the McQuaid era', a perception fed by writers like Frank McCourt and by documentaries revealing such horrors as those experienced by women in the Magdalen laundries.

While facing up to these allegations is very important in order to come to terms with the past, it can also do great damage to people and institutions that are essential to the well-being of the State. The damage is done in part by demonisation, in particular when the church is demonised and forced to take the full blame for all that was wrong in the immediate past.

Bright light produces dark shadows. Today we only see the dark shadows of Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. They are pretty grim, and no one can deny it. But today it is hard to convince anyone that there was any light at all.

Occasionally the collective memory is jogged by such books as Alice Taylor's To School Through The Fields or the CD, Faith Of Our Fathers when a certain nostalgia is felt, only to be swamped by further grim revelations. The result is often bitterness, resentment, hatred, all of which distort both ourselves and our perception of the past, all of which are forms of self-hatred.

All attempts to forge a new self-identity as a nation based on a collective self-hatred can only result in alienation, from our past and from each other. Today we can see the result of this in the alienation that has replaced the sense of community and identity which characterised Ireland of the 1940s and 1950s. Then there was `fear of God'. Now fears of a different kind are legion, especially fear of our fellow-citizens, who are no longer checked by an inward sense of right and wrong. The end-result can only be the police state.

Since religion as cult is not something abstract but part of culture, indeed the source of culture, and since Christianity is by nature institutional or communitarian, the church is both a cultural force and a human institution of divine origin. But insofar as it is human it is subject to change and to all the other imperfections that mark our historical existence. Hence it is the object of historical study and judgment, even condemnation, at times.

But the church is also more: it carries a message of divine origin and exercises a divine power: forgiveness of sins. Both of these are needed by every generation and both are needed by the State. In the name of separation of church and State, a new Ireland is being forged that is essentially secular in the extreme sense: it excludes the church, but also God, from the public square, as recent recommendations by the Constitution Review Group indicate most dramatically.

There is a possible historical parallel here for the Irish Catholic Church. In the wake of our independence as a nation, the voice of the Church of Ireland was effectively silent for many years; only recently has that voice been rediscovered. The Catholic Church is perhaps now going through a similar transition.

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s its voice was strongly heard, and heeded. Now in the wake of cultural change in the 1970s and 1980s that voice is struggling to speak in a way that can be heard. It often falters and makes mistakes. But were it to be silent during future decades a vital dimension of our understanding of values and of ourselves would be lost.

Indeed there is much to be said for a coming together of the Christian churches, and indeed other religions, to articulate confidently the concerns of Christian and non-Christian alike for a just and moral society. While there will be disagreement among the churches about issues of great importance, there will be agreement on basic spiritual values. Come together they must, if voices for selfishness and elitism are not to prevail.

One could view the present effective exclusion of the Catholic Church from the public square as an inevitable stage in the process of Ireland's coming-of-age as a sovereign State. The child rejects its parents in the process of finding its own feet as a young adult. But maturity usually brings with it a new relationship of mutual respect and cordiality.

The church, too, has changed radically from that represented by the great Archbishop McQuaid. One example of a new, more mature approach to church-State relations appropriate to this stage in our history is the thoughtful response by the present Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, to the report of the Constitution Review Group, in the Examiner recently. Dr Connell wants an open and frank discussion of the issues which touch the heart of what we are as a nation.

Public debate is the lifeblood of democracy, and the church's primary role in the body politic today is to promote that debate. If the debate takes off, and if it is open, then we will have found the way forward for the new self-confident Ireland.

Father Vincent Twomey lectures on moral theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth