MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern has rejected criticisms of him by name made by a priest at Mass in Drogheda last Sunday. He also dismissed suggestions that in approving civil partnership legislation he was supporting what Pope Benedict XVI said is evil.
Addressing the congregation on the Civil Partnership Bill at St Mary’s Church, Drogheda, which is in the Minister’s constituency, Fr Hogan said “Catholic members of the Oireachtas cannot support it while remaining in good standing with the church.”
In the congregation was Meath East Fianna Fáil TD Thomas Byrne.
Mr Ahern said “I am a republican. My party is a republican party. As always from the foundation of the State, there has been a very definite line between issues of church and State and that is exactly my position.”
Speaking on LMFM radio, he continued: “When I legislate, particular as a Government Minister, I don’t bring whatever religion I have to the table.”
Fr Hogan was echoing criticism of civil partnership legislation made last November by Cardinal Seán Brady. Dr Brady said that the Government was undermining the will of God if it didn’t protect the special status of marriage in the Constitution.
“Those who are committed to the probity of the Constitution, to the moral integrity of the Word of God and to the precious human value of marriage between a man and a woman as the foundation of society may have to pursue all avenues of legal and democratic challenge to the published legislation,” he said.
Three weeks later, at a press conference in Maynooth, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said others on the Irish Bishops’ Conference might have put the matter differently. “While stressing . . . the Christian teaching on the mutuality of the sexes as fundamental to the understanding of marriage, I am fully aware of the need to protect the rights of a variety of people in caring and dependent relationships, different to marriage,” he said.
Last Sunday, Fr Hogan quoted from a 2003 Vatican document on such legislation, promulgated by then Cardinal Ratzinger now the pope. It said “to vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral”.
Defending his homily, Fr Hogan said that “as a Catholic priest I am bound to Christ’s church’s teaching on this issue and I have a duty to remind the faithful of this teaching”.