Bishops are citizens too

THE EDITOR: I have read with interest Rowan Braithwaite’s “Keep the Church out of Politics (Newsday Tuesday May 25). I take it that Rowan Braithwaite would agree that Catholics — including their Bishops — are citizens with the same rights as other citizens. If those who believe in abortion, same sex marriages and stem cell research on embryos may organise and lobby politically for their cause, why then are Catholics and their Bishops out of order when they politically lobby for their cause? Are they lesser citizens? I note that Rowan Braithwaite subscribes to the new political heresy, ie, that the separation between Church and State includes the separation between religious belief and action. The problem is that it is action — where it is relevant the vote — that is the evidence of belief even where that belief is ideological rather than strictly religious. Since I know of no religion nor indeed any political ideology which does not include morality, my vote is bound to include a moral choice.

To say that it does not is ideological mystification in order to present abortion or same sex marriages as normal and therefore outside of rational debate or political choice and embryos as the only source of stem cells. I vote for a particular type of society which is in keeping with my beliefs. If I think X or Y is inimical to that society I vote against it. If both X and Y are inimical then I establish a hierarchy according to my beliefs or abstain from voting. That is what democracy is about. The separation of Church and Stage cannot annul my democratic rights. Nor does it. The separation has to do with the separation of political power from religious power, ie, Prime Minister and Parliament are not Bishops and Priests and vice versa. Where however Prime Minister or Members of Parliament are, say, Catholic, they maintain the same rights and duties of any Catholic and as Catholics are subordinate to the religious power of the Bishop.

In the same way as the Prime Minister or Members of Parliament retain their rights as Catholics, the Bishop maintains the rights and duties of a citizen and as a citizen is subordinate to the political power of Prime Minister and Parliament. Anything else is at best confusion and liable to the worst intolerance of all: differing classes of citizens (defined by belief) with different rights. It would be ironic if a re-definition of a secular state reproduces what a confessional state was accused of doing. It is ironic that the free-sexers make sex the central issue in determining priorities for an election or in determining who is liberal or conservative while accusing the Church of placing the priority on sexual issues. After all Kerry voted for the preemptive strike in Iraq, his foreign policy is as hawkish as Bush’s and his economic globalisation policy is the same.

MARION O’CALLAGHAN
Woodbrook