No formula has yet been proposed by the Government for its promised forum for formal dialogue between the State and its various faiths, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said yesterday.
Repeating that he would welcome such a forum, he said he believed "such dialogue would be a positive step forward towards a new mature relationship between Church and State in Ireland which would accord true recognition by each and would delineate the rights of each".
This would be done within what he would call a "co-operative regime of separation between Church and State", he said.
"Separation of Church and State means the Church does not interfere in the role of the State but also that politicians respect the legitimate authority of the church," Dr Martin added.
Delivering an address at St Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Killala, Co Mayo, as part of this year's Humbert School, which commemorates the French invasion in 1798, he said: "The real invasion of Ireland today is a cultural one."
He continued: "It is that of a crusading secularisation determined that it has it right, rather than entering into a genuine engagement in mutual respect and mutual enrichment of cultures."
Secularisation had a positive meaning and was in its own way a desirable thing, he said. "Indeed, to add insult to injury, I would say to my secularist friends that perhaps the most significant factor in driving a secularisation of Irish society was the Second Vatican Council. Vatican Two brought secularisation out of the enclaves of the elite of Irish life, through a church which reaffirmed its specific mission but with a different model of presence in society."
But he went on: "There is a form of secularisation in Irish culture which, like any other invading force, has its desire to dominate and to take over, to completely replace what went before it. There are those who would wish to reduce religion entirely to the private sphere, to the sole domain of individual conscience, and to keep religion out of public life."
Rejecting this, he said that one of the fallacies of the cult of secularisation was the tendency to believe that religion has had its day and that enlightenment and prosperity bring with them the definitive instrument for the reduction of people's interest in religion. "But religion is in no way exhausted and God is not dead in international public life, either in the east or the west, in developing countries or the United States."
What was needed was a modern, mature and transparent relationship between church and state, between religion and life. This required both sides to abandon their domination tendencies and realise that our world needed genuine engagement in mutual respect. Religious institutions had the right to be involved in various aspects of social and national life, Dr Martin added.