Sir, – Fintan O’Toole’s article “If the care referendum is such a progressive change, why was the process such a travesty?”(Opinion & Analysis, March 5th) reads less like an astute survey of Irish establishment and more like an attempt to justify an antipathy to parties which objectively are governing in line with his politics. The labels he attaches to Fine Gael (centre-right) and Fianna Fáil (nationalist and centrist) are simply not accurate. This is why we don’t get tax cuts from Fine Gael, the hallmark of centre-right parties, and why any nationalism in Fianna Fáil is as obscure as it is insubstantial.
Fine Gael claims to be a party of the “progressive centre”. Fianna Fáil’s leader describes himself as a social democrat.
The primary reason for the progressive left’s political victories over the last decade are not because it has broken through barriers or even pushed against open doors; it is because it has walked a path willingly beaten for it by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. There is no reason do doubt their sincerity. – Yours, etc,
SEAN O’SHEA,
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Enniscorthy,
Co Wexford.
Sir, – I am puzzled by the apparent contrast Fintan O’Toole draws between Catholic political theory and social democracy in his column discussing the forthcoming constitutional referendum.
Your columnist correctly discerns “a very broad consensus” among Irish voters “on the need for classic social democratic policies”, such as state investment in housing, healthcare and education. However, he suggests that the proposed constitutional amendments provide only a “tincture of social democracy in a lukewarm bath of 1930s Catholic social teaching”.
My concern lies in the implied division between progressive social democratic politics and what are portrayed as uniformly reactionary Catholic social ideals. It is important to note that many politicians who played pivotal roles in shaping the European social democratic landscape after the second World War were devout Christians of one denomination or another, hence the commonplace description of such figures as “Christian Democrats”.
Leaders such as Helmut Kohl in Germany and Charles de Gaulle in France, for example, explicitly acknowledged the role of Catholic social teaching in shaping their vision for a just society while instituting some of the most ambitious social reforms in modern history, many of which were subsequently undone by more secular successors. It is reductive to pit social democracy against Catholic social ideals as if they are mutually exclusive. Rather, they have coexisted and even complemented each other in the political landscape of modern Europe. Understanding this historical context might provide a more nuanced perspective on the relationship between social democracy and Catholic social teaching in Irish political discourse. – Yours, etc,
Dr SEÁN DONNELLY,
Warsaw,
Poland.