Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has expressed surprise that only a judge would make a decision on the constitutional significance of the human embryo and has criticised the absence of a broad debate on the issue.
Dr Martin said he was surprised to learn that the 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 alone will have to make a decision on the constitutional significance of the human embryo in an almost total legislative vacuum and without broad 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 a much more open, participative and broad debate. It is not simply a question of trying to find out briefly what people think. It is to create a much more participative understanding of democracy, and if we do not do that on these issues and others, then our democracy will become empty and people will run away from their responsibilities."
Dr Martin said there were currently discussions about what he had heard somebody recently de- scribe as "the contentious issue of the right to life". He would have expected that the right to life was the most uncontentious matter in a democracy. "I am not simply playing on words here. 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."
Speaking on the theme "Secularisation and Loss of Religious Identity" at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, he continued: "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. The church will not impose, but it has every right to propose its position and to be counter-cultural.
"Affirming the 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 said there was now an extraordinary vitality in the Irish Catholic community.
"There are parishes which have never been so active and participatory in their history. There are in the periphery of Dublin examples of church-inspired care and working together which are showing how to turn the suburban 'social deserts', left by the planners and developers of the decades gone by, finally into forward-looking, hope-filled and flourishing communities."
He said that while he would love to be able to dedicate himself to the most satisfactory dimension of his ministry, sharing with people the freeing power which comes from following the teaching of Jesus Christ, he had to spend huge amounts of time trying to identify in greater detail the extent of the failings of the church and the ways an institution had lost track with what was essential in the Christian faith. "I take this task very seriously. It is too important to be left to polemics on either side of the fence. There is no substitute for detailed examination of the facts insofar as these can be accurately gleaned from documentation or personal narrative."
The Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, the Rev Ken Good, said that modern Ireland was like a teenager, appearing to throw off some of the long-established family values, boundaries and belief systems which it now felt to be overly restrictive. It was opting instead for a more do-it-yourself system of individually-selected life choices, many of which could be seen to be chosen on the grounds of short-term individual gratification and expediency rather than for any longer-term social or corporate benefit.
"My personal conviction is that the main challenge to the Christian church today in this country is not from any external threat, be it secularism, materialism, consumerism or post-modernism. The main challenge is the internal one of ensuring that the integrity, the reality and the relevance of the church's life and worship, its teaching and communication, must strike a meaningful chord in a society that still has an appetite for spiritual reality."
Prof Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, dean of theology at the Gregorian University in Rome, said that secularisation was not only a question of the social decline of religion but a larger drama of the shrinking of spiritual horizons.