Enda Kenny: the best Taoiseach that secular Ireland ever had

It is easier for politicians to attack the Church and go along with the secular agenda, writes David Quinn

What are Catholics to make of Enda Kenny’s time as Taoiseach? This is a very broad question because the answer doesn’t depend solely on his attitude towards the ‘institutional Church’ or to some of the big social issues like the right-to-life or the family.

Catholics will have different opinions as to his record on the economy, the environment, immigration, our relationship with the EU and with Britain and so on.

A Catholic, or a Christian, must ask themselves whether or not a politician has strengthened the common good. They must ask themselves what he or she has done for the poor.

The Catholic Church is not prescriptive when it comes to how the poor must be helped. Some Catholics will believe that the poor are best helped through income redistribution, others through creating a strong, pro-jobs environment, or maybe some combination of both. Enda Kenny opted for a combination of both.

Complaint

The complaint is that austerity cut too deep. The defence is that we were so deeply in debt, and so beholden to the Troika, that we had no choice.

There is no definitive Christian position on immigration. Immigration policy has to balance the needs of immigrants with the needs of the local population.

Environmental policy has to protect the environment in a way that does not damage jobs.

There is no definitive Christian position on globalisation or the EU. Again, it is a question of balancing various goods.

There is no ambiguity about helping the poor even though there is ambiguity about how best to do that in policy terms. On questions like the right-to-life and the family, however, this is no ambiguity either way. On both counts, Enda Kenny’s record is awful from a Christian point of view.

As we know, he became the first Taoiseach to oversee the introduction of abortion legislation. He did this under pressure from our media, from elements inside his own party and of course, from his Labour coalition partners.

At an absolute minimum, he should have allowed a free vote. The fact that he expelled the seven Fine Gael TDs and Senators who voted against the abortion law of 2013 was just appalling.

There was absolutely no excuse for this. If he had allowed a free vote, and even voted against it himself, he would not have had to take ownership of it.

The fact that he did not allow a free vote means he was absolutely determined to see it pass and was content to see the political careers of honourable people ruined as the price of that. It was the ultimate triumph of ruthless expediency over principle.

Some people will insist that it would be unrealistic for a Taoiseach to vote against his own Government’s position on an issue, well, isn’t this what Liam Cosgrave did back in the day when a bill liberalising access to contraception was before the Dáil?

Enda would have been roundly condemned in the media, but what of it? At a certain point, principle has to win out and a sure sign that you have principles is that you are willing to pay a price for them.

Under Enda Kenny we also had the referendum to radically change the definition of marriage and the family. A ‘gender recognition’ law was passed that allows people to ‘choose’ the sex (or ‘gender’) they want to be without any regard whatsoever to their physical body.

Irish law now pretends that your body is totally unrelated to the sex you are, that there is no difference between mothers and fathers and that the natural ties are of little or no consequence. These are pure legal fictions passed in the name of ‘choice’ and ‘autonomy’. So radical is this ideology that increasingly we think ‘choice’ surpasses the right to life and that we get to choose our gender regardless of the sex we are born as.

Then there are the continual attacks on denominational schools. Enda stood by while successive Education Ministers chopped and sliced away some of the rights of such schools, for example, their right to employ teachers who will respect their ethos.

The attacks are ongoing and will probably continue under Enda’s successor, presumably Leo Varadkar.

It is unlikely Enda held any animosity as such towards faith schools, but for pragmatic reasons he was content to see them attacked and undermined.

Similarly, I doubt if he is particularly pro-choice, or even pro-gay marriage. He came late to the latter and basically let Labour and his liberal party colleagues get on with it. He had no desire to stand up either to them or to the media on any of this. He calculated that the price would be too high.

But he seemed to enjoy those speeches in which he roundly attacked the Church and old Catholic Ireland, starting with the attack on the Vatican in summer 2011, which resulted in the closing of the Embassy to the Holy See.

The scandals that led to this attack have taken place in other countries, but no national leader delivered a speech like that, let alone allowed the Embassy to the Holy See be closed.

Needless to say, both the speech and the closing of the embassy went down extremely well in anti-Church quarters and in the media where he was praised for his ‘bravery’. But there is nothing brave about winning the praise of our media.

I struggle to remember a significant word of praise for Catholicism or for Christianity generally, from Enda during his six years in office. British Prime Minister, Theresa May has several times praised Britain’s Christian heritage.

All in all, I believe that Enda Kenny was the best Taoiseach secular Ireland ever had. The fact that he is probably not ideologically secular himself, or especially liberal, makes this all the more noteworthy. He was the ultimate pragmatist and in the current, media-dominated climate it was easier to attack the Church and go along with the secular agenda than to do the opposite.