Church & Politics: Lessons from the Irish General Election

There was something ironic in how it was while being interviewed in Salford Cathedral that Rebecca Long-Bailey MP sparked controversy by saying that her Catholicism had helped form her politics and that abortion law in the UK discriminates against the disabled by allowing for the abortion of disabled foetuses right up to birth. 

However matters will turn out for Ms Long-Bailey in the Labour Party leadership campaign, it is curious that this is hardly the first time Catholicism has been a controversial issue in Salford. Back in 1906, for instance, Hilaire Belloc braved criticism of his Catholic faith when he stood for the Liberal Party in that constituency.

“Gentlemen, I am a Catholic,” he declared at the first public meeting of his campaign as he reached into his pocket to take out his rosary beads. “As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.”

Across the Irish Sea, voters in the Republic of Ireland went to the polls yesterday in a general election to appoint a new Dáil, and while the Church in Ireland is no longer the dominating voice it has been in decades past, it continues to make a vital contribution to Irish civic society; it is worth looking at what Ireland’s bishops have said in attempting to show how Catholicism can form politics even today.

Social justice and the common good

While the Church does not support or align itself with any particular party, Irish bishops have spelled out the importance of voting as a practical opportunity to “advance the fundamental politics of the common good”, in the words of Raphoe’s Bishop Alan McGuckian, who chairs the Irish hierarchy’s Council for Justice and Peace. 

In a statement calling for all politicians in any new government to prioritise the common good ahead of political point-scoring and spin, Bishop McGuckian highlights a number of topics voters might raise with candidates, ranging from issues around housing and homelessness, threats to the environment, intolerance and prejudice towards migrants, precarious working conditions for young people, and Brexit.

Quoting Pope Francis, the bishop recalled how political office and responsibility “constantly challenge those called to the service of their country to make every effort to protect those who live there and to create the conditions for a worthy and just future”, and said: “If exercised with basic respect for the life, freedom and dignity of persons, political life can indeed become an outstanding form of charity.”

Cherishing human life and dignity

Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin and his auxiliary Bishop Michael Router similarly put forward a short statement noting how Brexit is of intense concern to the archdiocese which straddles the border, and sketching out how Irish voters and politicians should think about housing and homelessness, intolerance and care for migrants, healthcare, and the need to build a consistent culture of life.

“Our politicians, and all who serve the common good, have an important, but challenging, responsibility to support laws which uphold the dignity of every human person made in God’s image – even when this is not the popular opinion to hold,” they wrote, stressing the importance of opposing on grounds of both faith and reason “fundamentally unjust” laws and policies such as those violate the life and integrity of any person at any stage in life.

“We must make it clear to all those seeking our vote that we expect them to support the sacredness of all human life, the dignity of the person, and the centrality of the family,” they wrote, adding that such a concern entails pushing for meaningful progress on climate change “in solidarity with those marginalised and poor people in the world who are disproportionately affected”.

That such superficially unrelated topics might be jointly considered in terms of a consistent culture of life has long been Church practice. In 1995, for instance, Pope St John Paul II cited the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes on a range of threats to human life and dignity.

“Whatever is opposed to life itself,” he quoted, “such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed.”

He continued: “They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator.”

Everything is connected

Indeed, noting how Pope Francis insists in his encyclical Laudato Si’ that “everything is connected”, Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin in the west of Ireland maps out in a detailed pre-election message the importance of caring for the most vulnerable, whether they be the sick and elderly, the homeless and those struggling with crushing rents, the poor in the developing world, migrants and refugees, children, young people caught up in drug culture, and the unborn. 

Noting that for Catholics to fail to vote, unless physically unable to do so, is an abdication of personal responsibility for the common good, Bishop Doran notes how the Second Vatican Council praised those who were willing to devote themselves to the service of the state and the burdens of office, cautioning political parties against giving sectional interests priority over the common good.

Calling for “joined-up thinking”, the bishop cites healthcare as an area where this is desperately needed. With Ireland’s health service in a “permanent state of crisis”, he links difficulties in accessing healthcare with the demands of modern market economies. “An economy which assumes that every able-bodied man and woman will be part of the ‘work-force’ is, by definition, an economy in which it is no longer possible, as it was in the past, for the elderly and the sick to be cared for at home,” he writes.

Bishop Doran similarly notes that if Ireland’s housing crisis, which has left over 10,000 people homeless and many more on the brink of homelessness, is to be tackled it is not enough to trust the market to resolve matters. “The rush to build new office blocks in the centre of our cities over the past ten years, in the midst of a housing crisis, demonstrates a lack of willingness to prioritise this most fundamental of human rights,” he observes.

Recalling how Pope Francis has in Laudato Si’ underlined how the poor suffer the most when the natural environment comes under pressure and how children tend to be aware of this while paradoxically being raised to be the next generation of consumers, Bishop Doran says public policy on the care of our common home “must be effective and realistic”, and that difficult decisions have to be made.

Welcoming and protecting our sisters and brothers

Bishop Doran acknowledges that the arrival of refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere pose a challenge to solidarity, but says that relatively speaking their numbers are small and that “in the final analysis they are people like us, who laugh and cry, who love and bleed and feel hunger”. He expresses particular concern about small numbers of activists “who appear to have a narrow nationalist and racist agenda” have been stirring up resistance to the arrival of refugees and migrants, and says of these activists: “Some of them profess to be Christians.”

With Bishop Doran noting that his brother bishops share his concerns in this area, it is worth especially reading Bishop McGuckian’s words on this topic.

“War, authoritarian regimes, economic deprivation and climate change continue to force people to take dangerous and arduous journeys seeking hope and a better life on farther shores,” he wrote. “In Ireland, we are not strangers to emigration which has for centuries dominated our history as a people. Our ancestors were grateful for opportunities to escape famine and destitution and to be allowed to contribute through our work, talents and values to the enhancement of the new societies to which we travelled. Refugees and asylum seekers now arrive on our shores. As Christians, we should seek to welcome them as our sisters and brothers.”

Turning to the subject of education, Bishop Doran says that “the primary purpose of Catholic schools is to serve parents who wish their children to have their education in an environment of faith”. With the vast majority of Ireland’s primary schools owned by Catholic dioceses and parishes, Bishop Doran says that “all our Catholic schools welcome, on a basis of equality and respect, children of all faiths and of none”, and says that changes in school patronage must be planned in consultation with parents, as the primary educators of their children. 

“Likewise, there needs to be a commitment that schools which remain under Catholic patronage are free to be Catholic in their inspiration,” he continues. “This is not just about the time that is allocated for Religious Education. It is about working together in an environment which affirms Catholic Christian values on questions of life and death, family and relationships.”

Bishop Doran, who chairs the Irish bishops’ Council for Life and its consultative group on Bioethics and Life, observes that “the right to life is the foundation on which all our other human rights depend”. Although abortion has now been legalised in Ireland on a broad basis, it still remains true, the bishop says, that “every human being without exception has an inherent right to life which comes from God, in whose image we are all made”.

Maintaining that “no seriously committed Catholic can simply accept that human life is disposable, at any stage” Bishop Doran says the that if the 2018 abortion legislation is ever to be reversed, and if the legalisation of abortion is to be prevented, “our first step must be to ensure that we elect public representatives who are committed to the right to life, from conception to natural death”.

Traditional party loyalties should not override this, he writes, noting that “it seems to go completely against the common good for any committed Catholic to vote for a public representative who, in the outgoing Oireachtas, voted for abortion.

“It is also worth asking what exactly some elected representative intended when they abstained on such an important question as the right to life,” he concludes.

Propositions, not impositions

It is a cliché of modern political discourse that religion should play no part in politics, and lazy stereotypes abound in Ireland about bishops trying to give their flock “a belt of the crozier”, but such tropes should be recognised as attempts to narrow our political discourse and limit the contribution of religious faith to our political space. Just as today’s humanists maintain a right to have their ethical beliefs determine their political views and actions, so to Catholics and other citizens of faith have the right to bring their beliefs to bear in the ballot box and the chambers of parliament. Indeed, if failing to do this would entail acting against their consciences it could be said that they have a duty to do so. 

Just as Catholics have the right to express their faith when voting, so too do they have a right to be helped in doing this by bishops, clergy and others tasked with leading them. Today’s Catholics, it should be remembered, are increasingly Catholics by conviction and not simply by convention; nobody is forced to be Catholic today, and as such guidance for Catholic voters needs to be understood as propositions, not impositions.