Catholic priests would be more effective in their pastoral work if they were allowed to marry, according to the former Fine Gael Minister, Mr Ivan Yates. Mr Yates said he believed Protestant ministers who were married were "better armed" to deal with family problems that arose in their parishes. He was speaking at the 1997 Religious Press Awards, at which the main award went to the veteran broadcaster and writer, Mr Sean MacReamoinn.
The award for the best article on a religious topic in the secular media went to Mr Paul Cullen, Development Correspondent of The Irish Times. His article, published in February, was about the killing of an Irish Franciscan missionary, Brother Larry Timmons, by a Kenyan policeman.
Mr Yates, one of only two Church of Ireland TDs, ail, said there was not enough understanding of the extraordinary difficulties priests faced. Their life was often marked by loneliness and priests found it difficult to preserve their privacy in the community.
He said an end to the celibacy rule in the Catholic Church was probably inevitable anyway. Priests should be paid a stipendiary salary to increase their independence from the parishes in which they live.
Mr Yates said the church was "very mistaken" to have contested social issues, such as contraception, divorce and abortion information. "The church is least effective when depending on the civil law to defend its beliefs." As a result, it had damaged itself in an area where it could not win.
"It is important to recognise that politicians are in a different business from the church. They reflect public opinion, or lead it in a direction in which it is already going."
Asked for his view of the media treatment of the personal problems of the Bishop of Ferns, Dr Brendan Comiskey, he said it had been "disgraceful".
"There was a rush to judgment which was unfair. The salacious element to the coverage was titillating and appealed to the worst instincts."
Mr Yates said progress in ecumenism had "plateaued" in recent years and people had become complacent. He called for the introduction of inter-communion between the Catholic and Church of Ireland faiths.
The main challenge for the churches, he said, was to provide new media for those people who were ethical and spiritual but who were no longer regularly attending religious services.
Noting that the personality of Northern and Southern Protestants was "completely different", he said Northerners tended to be "more committed to their denomination than to their Christianity". This was "a bad thing".
The former Minister also defended the role of the religious in education and warned against any "statist approach" to reforms. "We should not throw out the baby with the bath water. It is important that we preserve the tremendous record of the religious orders in education."
Mr Yates said the Protestant community should be very grateful for the positive discrimination that existed for their schools.