FUTURE church historians may look back on the bail referendum campaign as a time when the Catholic Church leadership missed a small but significant opportunity to regain some lost credibility by becoming the voice of the weakest and most marginalised sectors of Irish society.
The church's first intervention in the bail debate was promising.
Bishop Eamonn Walsh's criticism of the Government's proposal to tighten up bail laws a fortnight ago was the first time the public took notice of what had up to then been an almost invisible campaign.
The auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, a prison chaplain and a trained barrister, made a number of strong points: the constitutional amendment had a superficial "quick fix" appeal and its deeper implications had not been sufficiently thought out; it could result in an influx of remand prisoners into already overcrowded jails; the existing powers available had not been exhausted; and it was no coincidence that the vast majority of those in prison came from poor working-class areas.
Bishop Walsh's intervention was welcomed by priests and community leaders in Dublin's deprived areas. It was followed by an equally strong statement from the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, which advises the Hierarchy on justice issues. The ICJP warned that the proposed change would undermine the presumption of innocence and lead to a form of internment without trial.
Certainly other church groups weighed in behind Bishop Walsh and the ICJP. The Catholic prison chaplains warned that, with the numbers now in custody, Ireland was already in breach of the UN's minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners.
The Franciscans warned that the proposed change would work against the interests of some of the most vulnerable people in Irish society, including the homeless, drug-users and less well-off.
However, it was becoming apparent that the church's big guns were not going to come in behind its campaigning justice and anti-poverty groups. The key change seems to have occurred on the weekend of October 16th-17th.
On the previous Friday the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Connell, had given his backing to both Bishop Walsh and the ICJP. He emphasised that his personal concern went deeper than mere legal reform, to the need to combat "the weakening of moral convictions" in society.
Dr Connell's comments were reported by RTE that evening as the archbishop endorsing a No vote.
This clearly upset Archbishop Connell. On the Sunday, he called reports that he had called for a No vote "completely untrue".
It may have been coincidental that on Monday, Bishop Walsh, through the archdiocese's press spokesman, Father John Dardis, told the Irish Times that an article on bail commissioned from him the previous week would not now be forthcoming.
The other main churches were noticeably absent from the debate. The Church of Ireland's overwhelmingly middle-class membership certainly would have had little sympathy with the arguments against toughening up the bail laws.
It was left to the Quakers to sound another warning note. In a letter to The Irish Times last week, the spokesman for the Dublin Quakers, Mr Michael Taylor, expressed the fear that "very serious issues of individual liberty will be put at risk by this proposal, while other more feasible and acceptable options to tackle the problem are available".