The call for "absolute respect" for human life from conception to death is more valid than ever, the Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland Dr Diarmuid Martin has said.
Speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal today, Dr Martin noted the current debates on the "right to life" and said he was surprised a High Court judge was facing a decision on the constitutional significance of the human embryo in "an almost total legislative vacuum".
"We have discussions going on today on in these days about what I heard someone recently describe as 'the contentious issue of the right to life'.
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"I would have expected that that the right to life was uncontentious matter in any democracy. This is not simply a playing on words," Dr Martin said.
"If the right to life is such a primordial principle, the real basis of democracy and the rule of law, then the debate on how that right is legally interpreted should be wide and mature.
"I for one was surprised to learn that the Irish constitution might consider a foetus not protected in Irish law if there was an indication that its life after birth might be short.
"I am surprised that a judge will have to make a decision on the Constitutional significance of the human embryo in an almost total legislative vacuum, and in the absence of a broader public debate. I do not deny that in the real world decisions on such matters have to be reached. My point is that such decisions require much more open debate."
Asking where the Catholic Church stands in these areas, Dr Martin continued: "Where is the Church in these areas?
"The Church draws its teaching from the message of Jesus Christ, but that teaching is read and mediated within the realities of life and of science and may lead one to read these realities in a way which is different to others, but nonetheless to a reading which is valid within a democratic process where no philosophy has a monopoly.
"As a Catholic Bishop I have every right to stress views, even if they are not shared by all. I have every right to present my church's position with vigour, even if this is said by others to be divisive. If there is no clear unity of vision, every position could be called divisive. The church will not impose, but it has every right to propose its position and to be countercultural."
Dr Martin said that affirming a right to life "from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death" is appealing to an ideal, a vision which is not unscientific, but an affirmation of the uniqueness of every human individual, which is not ours to play around with.
"In a world in which the possibilities to play with life have grown, the call to absolute respect for human life is more valid than ever."
Dr Martin also told the summer school it is important to remember that the "Catholic Ireland" of the past was "not just marked by power-seeking, abuse of children, scandals and censorship but it was also a history of the lives and dedication of many extraordinary people of whom we should be proud and to whom many of us are personally indebted".
He said the Catholic school, for example, was "not the place of indoctrination and repression, of conformism and of moral rigidity it was often presented as".
"The Catholic school was a place where people were enhanced in their creativity. It was a place where so many of the less fortunate were given an opportunity to get on and from where they did get on."
He said that far too little attention was now given to the "extraordinary work" that is being done today in Catholic schools today in welcoming children of many nationalities into one school community.