THE CATHOLIC Church's "compassion agenda" in providing services such as schools and hospitals in Ireland was a form of "utalitarianism", primarily employed to increase its own authority and control, according to the Trinity College Dublin Historical Society team in the final of The Irish TimesDebate 2008.
The victorious debating team of Chris Kissane and David Kenny also argued that the church's moral authority has now gone, "because we know the truth".
The pair were opposing the motion that "This House believes that Ireland owes a debt of gratitude to the Catholic Church". They received the Demosthenes trophy from the presiding judge, The Irish Timesmanaging editor Eoin McVey, following the event in UCD on Friday night.
The Christina Murphy Memorial trophy, awarded to the individual winner, was presented to Stephen Boyle of UCD's Literary and Historical Society.
Mr Boyle also opposed the motion.
The Catholic Church does not believe you have the ability to be a good person, to make good choices "without them looking over your shoulder, telling you what to do", Mr Kissane argued in his speech. The church lied to us, and anyone who didn't go along with the society they espoused was shunned.
This included being told what you could read, say, watch, who you could dance with and who you could sleep with, where you could go to school and the medical care you received.
In this context, the church's most important priority was control, he said. But a community that relies on "shaming", on exclusion and on "guilting people" is not a community, he said.
Catholicism is the "stickiest religion there is" , whose genius is that they "get you while you are young", and convinces us all that we are "bad Catholics", team-mate Mr Kenny said.
The church had usurped the identity of this country, while its so called "compassion agenda" simply allowed it to increase its own authority. "That's the genius of Catholicism," he said. "They suppressed all dissent and they controlled every aspect . . . of society."
Borrowing a phrase he had heard elsewhere, Mr Kenny said this was a mix of utilitarianism and totalitarianism, which he branded "utalitarianism". But in the wake of the systematic covering up of sex-abuse scandals, for example, its moral authority is gone, he added.
In his winning speech, Mr Boyle argued that in providing schools and hospitals, the price which the church demanded in return was a lack of regulation.
On issues such as censorship, women being forced to retire from the civil service once they married, divorce and abortion, what the church tried to do was to assert a "moral authority".
Anyone who opposed this was denounced from the pulpit, he said."All of the institutions that they ran fed into a culture of authority and a culture of control. The church took no decision out of pure altruism. The minorities never had a place . . . the minorities were the ones that suffered." When there is a culture of control, this allows for abuse to be covered up in order to maintain the church's position in society, he said. But people have since realised the extent to which they were willing to go to maintain control.
While all of the night's winners opposed the motion, the discussion - which included several contributions from the floor mid-debate - also saw speakers launch a strong defence of the church's role. Among the arguments espoused by those proposing the motion were that citizens of a democracy had allowed the church to have control, and should take responsibility for this rather than seeking simply to blame the church.
The fact that 87 per cent of the Irish population continue to define themselves as Catholic was noted on several occasions, while others argued that the church had stepped in to fill a void in Irish society. This in turn had laid the foundations for our recent economic success, and had helped to encourage a unique Irish identity which also existed outside of the island.
Similarly, the role played by the church in helping the most marginalised such as the elderly and immigrants was highlighted, while elsewhere the role played in the Northern Ireland peace process by a Catholic priest was underlined.
A total of 12 speakers took part in the final, which was hosted by UCD Law Society.
The three winners will represent Ireland on a three-week debating tour of the US.
Runners-up in the team category were Ross McGuire and Marguerite Carter of UCD Law Society, who opposed the motion. The runner-up in the individual category, supporting the motion, was John Gallagher of TCD's Historical Society.
Friday night's event was chaired by Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Labour Party.