Trinity College Censoring the prayer activities of the Trinity Catholic Laurentian Society is “not good for the image” of a “progressive, modern and liberal university”, a prominent former politician has said.
Former Fianna Fáil politician and Minister of State, Martin Mansergh, writing in The Irish Catholic, advised representatives of public institutions, including students, that a “minimal knowledge” of history is necessary to avoid raising “ghosts of the past”.
Historic relationship
Mr Mansergh details a memorandum he recently found, which outlines the historic relationship between Trinity College and Catholic students. In it, a brief history of Trinity is established, which sees an initially exclusively Protestant institution gradually opened up to Catholics.
The obligation placed on Catholic students to attend Sunday Mass in order to avail of rooms is noted, with the Memorandum saying, “Trinity College is thus, probably the only University in the British Isles in which a Catholic can, by statute, be deprived of his rooms for not hearing Mass on Sundays”.
As a result, Mr Mansergh observes, Trinity College was seen for generations as a safe place for parents to send their children.
Vulnerable position
In light of this, “the memorandum throws light on the extraordinary lengths the college then in a vulnerable position was prepared to go to counter longstanding Catholic suspicions” – lengths which now stand at odds with the Central Societies Committee’s stance towards the Catholic Laurentian Society.