We should all welcome Canon Cecil Cooper's remarks about the Taoiseach's relationship with Celia Larkin, if only because it pierces the suffocating piety of non-judgmentalism which has become the unchallengable orthodoxy of modern Ireland. The issue isn't the fairness of his comments, but whether or not a clergyman has a right to make a public statement about the appropriateness of a Taoiseach living with a woman who is not his wife; after all, what are clergymen for if not to make observations about such very matters?
The utter public silence about the Bertie-Celia relationship speaks as loudly as the dog which didn't bark. A decade or so ago such a relationship would have made elected office of any kind impossible. Has the liberal consensus on such matters effectively bullied people into speechlessness? For surely it is worth discussing, not merely in the context of Celia Larkin being presented as Bertie Ahern's sort-of wife, but also in the broader context: for what other prime minister takes his (or her) unmarried consort on state visits?
Affair of state
Canon Cooper says the Taoiseach's private life is his own affair, and that he simply made an observation about an affair of state, as he is entitled to. That is the point. Is it wrong for this clergyman to open a debate about the most extraordinary feature of our first minister's both private and public life, yet one that is simply not talked about, other than in terms of will-he-won't-he make an honest woman of her? This historically unique relationship remains publicly undiscussed. Why? Is it because the fear of not wanting to be seen to be reactionary, conservative, or fuddy-duddy is the new intellectual tyranny of Irish life?
The boot has changed feet indeed, for the primary begetter of tyrannanical moral orthodoxy in modern Irish life was the Catholic Hierarchy, which, with the assistance of some perfectly despicable methods in the 1980s, won two referendums (and, as we now know, lost the war). The abortion "debate" in 1983, with its accompanying campaign of intimidation of individuals opposed to the constitutional amendment, especially in rural areas, stood at the time as the singular, towering landmark of Catholic intolerance and intimidation over the decade.
But of course it turned out not to be singular at all: the Catholic church was set on building a constitutional Kuala Lumpur, and three years later we were treated to the second vile skyscraper of the 1986 divorce referendum, with nuns warning children that if divorce were tolerated, their fathers would promptly run off with some young ones, and they'd be ejected from the family farm, etc., etc., etc. This was, of course, before the KL earthquake, before the Annie Murphy affair, before we knew the degree to which the Hierarchy had protected child-abusers, before we knew what we now know about Father Michael Cleary's private life.
No judgments
Now it is surely not inappropriate for us remember that the Fianna Fail electoral machine, formally or otherwise, and with Bertie Ahern a rising eminence within it, was used on both these occasions to impose the mark and morality of one church on the institutions and laws of the State. A decade and more later, and the rules have changed. Now, far from intruding one's morality on others, we make no judgments all: like the residents of Laodicea, we blow neither cold nor hot about anything, provided that "anything" is in agreement with the new non-judgmental Laodicean ethos. In the new "tolerant" ethos, the only intolerable people are those opposed to the ethos of unquestioning tolerance.
Of course, this conditional tolerance is intolerance by another name: it belongs to the no-free-speech-for-fascists school of liberalism, which in its own way is far more dangerous than the crozier-wielding bishops of old. At least we knew where we were with that crowd. They stood on naked authority. But how do you respond to liberals who define tolerance as tolerating what they find tolerable, and call that reason? How do you respond to liberals who say that clergymen may be clergymen, certainly, but only liberal clergymen, asking our sorts of liberal questions, and showing our liberal attitude towards sexual morality?
Traditional values
Needless to say, I find nothing remotely objectionable about Bertie's arrangements with Celia Larkin; but I find nothing objectionable either about a clergyman, in contemplating their relationship, being moved to the public contemplation of traditional Christian values. Moreover it is, as Noreen O'Carroll recently observed, curious that Judge Rory O'Hanlon's private membership of Opus Dei should cause him to be excluded from one part of public life, the Law Reform Commission, yet no mention at all may be made about the Taoiseach's private life.
We are dipping our feet in treacherous waters and we do not seem to know it. If judges are to be excluded from Law Reform Commissions because of membership of Opus Dei, does membership of Amnesty International, or the National Council for Civil Liberties, or the Anti-Apartheid movement, or the Release the Birmingham Six Committee, or the Women's Movement or the Northern Ireland Civil Right Association, disqualify also? Three words: sauce, geese, ganders.