Boris Johnson The View
Martin Mansergh
A collateral benefit of religious observance is that, from time to time, if one is listening to the readings, one is able to identify the source of familiar sayings. One of the best known is, “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (St. Mark’s Gospel, 3. 24-5). It remains to be seen, whether this maxim applies to a Tory government deeply divided over Brexit.
An older version of Boris Johnson’s preference for having one’s cake and eating it is to be found in a reproachful letter in 1802 of the elderly British diplomat Sir William Hamilton to his wife Emma, of whom Nelson was so enamoured: “One cannot have eaten one’s cake and have one’s cake.”
The famous quotation on the Parnell monument from a speech in 1885: ‘“No man has the right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation. No man has the right to say to his country, ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no further’…” has a somewhat archaic ring to it. Could Parnell’s words have been consciously or subconsciously inspired by the passage in the Book of Job 38.11 (King James version of the Bible), where God spoke to Job about the creation of the world, asking who put limits on the sea, and commanded it: “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?”
Separation
The separation of Church and state is often invoked. Its meaning is seldom properly analysed. The context is always important.
Three references in the Bible stick out. One is from the Old Testament, two are from the New. In I Samuel 8, the people of Israel desire to have a king, despite the counter-arguments of the prophet Samuel, and, following divine guidance, he gives way. In modern terms, it represents the renunciation of theocracy.
The English radical Tom Paine twisted the passage round in his famous pamphlet Common Sense during the American War of Independence to suggest that God did not like kings.
Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, who were seeking to entrap him, whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Examining a coin engraved with Caesar’s head, he replied: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (St. Matthew 22.17-22).
On trial before Pilate, when it was put to Jesus that he claimed to be King of the Jews, he replied that this was suggested by others: “My kingdom is not of this world” (St. John, 18.36). The context for both statements was the spirit of revolt simmering amongst the Jews, which would eventually climax in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Jesus made it clear he was not leading a political revolt, and that the religious sphere was separate from the secular one.
To the local powers of the time, Herod and the Pharisees, he represented a threat to Church and state, with the power of Rome invoked to remove him, with, as we know, the opposite long-term effect.
In Irish history, from the Reformation to disestablishment, the union of Church and state was one of the principal instruments of oppression. Despite the population of the Irish Free State being well over 90% Catholic, the formal separation of Church and state was maintained, even if in practice the Catholic Church acted for most purposes as if it were a state Church.
It was at last able to enjoy its day in the sun. In a country that had been cruelly divided by civil war, it acted as a unifying and stabilising factor. It also, which is largely overlooked in public discourse today, helped provide services and charities, in teaching, health and social provision, at well below cost, at a time when the State had little money. In short, the Church contributed to the viability of Irish independence. Some, mainly of its own, chafed at the uniformity demanded, and there were costs on the underside that society and the Church are still coming to terms with.
The 1960s ushered in a new era, of greater prosperity and ecumenical openness, and this was followed by a pressing need to respond to the challenges of the northern conflict.
One Church leader, above all, who very directly addressed the challenge of Church-state relations, was Bishop, later Cardinal, Cathal Daly. He led a delegation of the Irish Episcopal Conference to the New Ireland Forum in 1984, which included Bishop Edward Daly, Bishop Joseph Cassidy, Auxiliary Bishop Dermot O’Mahony, and lawyer, broadcaster, and future president Mary McAleese. Cardinal Daly also treated of the subject in his memoir Steps on my Pilgrim Journey (Veritas, 1998).
Consequences
The context was on the one hand to refute the idea that the Catholic Church wanted Home Rule to be Rome Rule, and on the other hand, to assert its right to warn of negative social consequences of, for example, a divorce law, or in Northern Ireland a more liberal divorce law. He did not want a confessional state, nor did the Church necessarily expect civil law to replicate religious teaching.
That teaching, for much of which a secular case could be made, was certainly a factor that needed to be taken into consideration.
Church teaching is clearly a matter for the Church and its members. The ongoing issue in a changing and less uniform society is the degree to which its values and precepts should be enshrined in law. It is not just a question of what is desirable, but what actually it is possible to enforce.
Separation of Church and state works both ways. If the Church should not have the power to impose uniformity on the state, then the state equally should not demand that the Church betray its ethos.
Earlier governments fully respected rights of conscience, individual and collective. Attempting to override that runs the danger of pushing Ireland in the direction of an illiberal democracy.
Radical change, dialogue and pluralism should go hand in hand.