Draft of a letter to Professor John Crown

A response (in draft form) to this article.

Dear Professor Crown,

I write to you as a citizen and a Catholic Priest in order to take issue with a number of the points you make in your article in today’s Sunday Independent.  I find myself astonished that a respected parliamentarian could have penned an article that so profoundly misunderstands the nature of justice and democracy and that seems to be aimed at discrediting the participation of ordinary Catholics in the democratic process by branding their contribution as being at the service of a foreign power.

I’ll trust you not to simply dismiss this letter as being just the special pleading of an agent of a foreign state, but ask that you take me seriously when I say that your talk of coups and plots is profoundly insulting to Catholic clergy and ordinary Catholic people who have been lobbying their politicians on the abortion issue.  The depiction of Catholicism as being foreign and sinister was a familiar trope of English anti-Catholicism and it’s worrying to see an Irish parliamentarian try to imply something similar.  You may not agree with the position of the Irish Bishops, ordinary pro-life lobbyists or some of your parliamentary colleagues on the proposed abortion legislation, but on what basis can you seriously throw around accusations of sinister foreign influence and coup d’etat?
The people who lobby against this legislation and your fellow parliamentarians who oppose the legislation are Irishmen and women with a full stake in the past, present and future of Irish society and a concern for the common good.  It is this concern for the common good that causes them to express their concerns and participate in the democratic process articulating a vision of human rights and justice that encompasses a holistic concern for human life.  Yes, many (but by no means all) of those arguing against the legislation will have their views formed by Catholic teaching and the statements of the Holy See (not the same thing as the Vatican City State, by the way), but surely it’s absurd to suggest that the free diffusion of ideas between cultures is somehow antithetical to democracy or the progress of humankind.  I would not have thought you such a cultural isolationist.
Apart from suggesting that some Irish people and parliamentarians allow their thoughts and philosophy to be shaped by Catholic teaching – as is their right – I fail to see why you have reason to imply that the Vatican’s influence in the matter of abortion legislation is somehow sinister, unless it is your belief that no one should allow their thinking to be in any way informed by unIrish influences.

You were somewhat clearer in your explanation as to why you regard opposition to the proposed legislation as being contrary to our system of constitutional government.  However, I would argue that your understanding of the role of the legislator in a democratic society is fundamentally flawed.
You are unhappy with the fact that some of our parliamentarians see a huge injustice in the X-Case decision of the Supreme Court.  You point out that Article 34.4.6 states that “the decision of the Supreme Court shall in all cases be final and definitive.”  That means that there is no further recourse for any individual legal case in our domestic system beyond the Supreme Court.  However, what you fail to do is establish that the judgement of the Supreme Court in a particular case should somehow constrain legislators in their decision to vote for or against a particular Bill in the Dáil or Seanad.  That’s not in our Constitution and that doesn’t respect the separation of powers.  To suggest that an elected representative’s choice between the ‘Tá’ and Níl’ lobby can be controlled by the Supreme Court has no basis in our Constitution or our laws.
Legislators who hold that there is a grave injustice and faulty reasoning at the heart of the X-Case decision are perfectly entitled under the Constitution to propose and lobby for legislation – even though it does not seem to accord with the X Case – with the hope and expectation that the Supreme Court might re-visit its own reasoning should the new legislation come before it.  Our system of checks and balances works by allowing the Supreme Court to strike down unconstitutional legislation, not by tying the hands of our legislators.

Your understanding of the duties of legislators to the Constitution is belied by the fact that the Constitution itself is capable of amendment and such amendment always has its beginning in the Houses of the Oireachtas.  Loyalty to the Republic and the work of the legislator cannot be straitjacketed into a blind devotion to the Constitution.  Even though it expresses the basic principles according to which our State is run, making contentment with the Constitutional status quo a prerequisite to participation in the legislative branch closes the door to Constitutional reform and development.  I know that it is not your intent to exclude reforming voices and votes from the Dáil and Seanad, and yet it is unsettling that you seem to believe that some reforming voices should be excluded on the grounds of disloyalty to the Constitution.

The very fact that the Constitution is open to amendment should also make it clear that written law and court decisions are not the final determinants of what is just and good in our society.  Certainly they set the limits by which the machinery of State can operate in order to promote the common good and protect the rights of citizens, but the Constitution and court decisions are not irreformable and unchangeable.  The legislator, therefore, needs to have a broader understanding of rights and justice so that he or she might participate in the work of refining and improving our Constitutional system so that it better fulfils its role.  Of necessity, the legislator will take account of the representations his and her constituents, but will ultimately need to decide how to legislate, how to vote on particular matters, based on his or her understanding of justice and the common good.  Imposing some kind of litmus test that excludes particular understandings of justice and the common good from the Houses of the Oireachtas is a profoundly anti-democratic suggestion.

I would also take issue with a number of other points you raise in your article:

·         If you are able to discern the will of the Irish people from the failure of a Constitutional Referendum opposed by both Dana Rosemary Scallon and Ivana Bacik, then you have a greater gift of reading the intentions of the Irish people than DeValera claimed when he looked into his own heart.

·         The concerns of parliamentarians regarding the potential abuse of seemingly restrictive procedures in approving abortions are well-justified if one looks at the experience of the United Kingdom where supposedly restrictive criteria have become de facto abortion on demand.  Why should we suppose that things should go any differently in Ireland.

·         It is most unfair of you to throw mud at Cardinal O’Malley of Boston regarding child abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston, given the fact that he had no involvement in the Archdiocese until he was brought in to ‘clean out the stables’ after the disastrous tenure of Cardinal Law.

Professor Crown, I never thought that I’d have to write to an Irish parliamentarian to ask him to refrain from painting Catholicism as being a sinister, foreign influence in the country with designs on the integrity of our State.  I would have thought that a man of your intelligence would realise that such an absurd suggestion gives validation – inadvertently, I’m sure – to the crudest forms of religious bigotry.
Nor did I think I’d ever have to write to a man of your reputation in order to remind him that it is not an unhealthy thing for a legislator to develop an understanding of justice and the common good that is rooted in something other than blind devotion to the Constitutional status quo.  Indeed, it is to the credit of the legislator when he understands the extent of his responsibility to the common good and exercises himself or herself in seeking to understand the nature of justice and how our current system might serve us better.

Yours sincerely