It's a lie to talk about an all-embracing Roman Catholic voice in Ireland. "The clerics alone are the church," writes Michael McCarthy. Forget the laity: he believes that clerics are enveloped in "a cuirass of unpenetrable dogmatic theology . . . [They exercise] a depressing, stifling, choking influence which drives Catholic young men and women out of the country."
And why do young people leave? "They fly from Sham and Hypocrisy in search of Reality and Truth."
If the words sound familiar, but you can't quite place them, it may be because McCarthy wrote them almost 100 years ago in Five Years in Ire- land, his review of key events between 1895 and 1900. A practising barrister, he was a devout Catholic, but despite the then-current 1798 centenary commemorations, despite the rising profile of Irish-Ireland agencies and all that, McCarthy's biggest bugbear was clerical gridlock. That was what stopped progress in Irish society.
McCarthy had a point - and may still. The conventional wisdom about the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is that it facilitated the development of a national identity in the emerging State, and that its authority began to wane when prosperity and education gave people enough spunk to think for themselves. Such wisdom, of course, conveniently forgets the persistent objections of writers and artists from James Joyce to Sean O'Faolain. But on the basis of current evidence, clerical gridlock is set to strangle pastoral energy all over again. In the century since McCarthy wrote, the institutional Catholic Church has absorbed barely one whit of the requests made by its laity, and has instead focused on deifying its own provenance. Quite literally, the Catholic buck never stops, because the institution itself always puts the onus for responsibility on to others. God knows best, ordinary people are responsible for the failures of the church, and somewhere in between the powers-that-be truck on regardless, clinging to their ever more rigid rituals with ever-decreasing levels of sensitivity.
During the last month alone, two more practices involving lay participation have been banned from the altar, the signing of the marriage register and delivering the eulogy at funerals. The message is clear: laity keep off.
Made-to-measure change happens when it suits the institution. Thomas Aquinas's teachings on the justification of keeping slaves are now conveniently forgotten, seeing that many of those subject races will form the Hierarchy of the future, yet his teachings on the subordinate status of women are continuously reaffirmed. The Pope has silenced theologians who do not take the party whip.
Many nuns and priests working within communities are wringing their hands at the impossibility of their own positions, but still their bosses do not listen. And although increasing numbers of ordinary people study theology or spend years contributing to parish committees in the hope that things will change, little does.
Because of its self-proclaimed divine provenance, the institution is insulated from self-scrutiny and can therefore comfortably argue that the world has gone wrong, not the church. Thus vocations are falling, not because the institution is out of touch, but because ordinary people just can't hack it. Everyone, it seems, is blamed for religious disputes and shortcomings save the institution itself.
The effect of such phenomena is that the institution is allergic to change, and unable to hear dissenting voices. During a recent interview too extensive to be published in full with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Connell, I asked him why he thought a survey taken at the height of the sex-abuse scandals showed that his priests identified church leadership as the greatest source of stress in their lives. His reply was revealing. "Of course, you get that in every organisation. I don't want to seem to be denigrating the survey, it's an important survey and I want to pay very special attention to that survey, but always remember that it's a little bit like writing your own autobiography. Anyone who does will be the hero of his own autobiography."
In other words, they would say that, wouldn't they? Yet the topical notion that there is in fact a legitimate Catholic voice, which is about to find expression in a new way, excites many media pundits. Opportunistic journalists and newspaper editors are realising that a right-wing Roman Catholic voice may be the order of the day: after all, Dana Rosemary Scallon won 13 per cent of first-preference votes in the presidential election; former barrister-to-the-bishops Mary McAleese returned the Child of Bethlehem to the centre of her inaugural address.
So far, so good. Catholics are as entitled to express themselves in a democracy as much as any other group. Either way, the idea that Roman Catholicism might free itself from the maw of history and actually engage in significant social dialogue is an interesting prospect. But is it realistic?
If recent rows about inter-Communion tell us anything, their lesson is that, despite any claims the Hierarchy may make, no single Catholic voice speaks with both authority and credibility. The institutional church may claim to support democracy outside its own walls, but its mandate to represent its members within the democratic process has little basis in fact. That's why the prospect of "the Catholic voice" needs to be handled with great political caution. For practical purposes, its appeal is highly suspect.
But are there votes in it? Not necessarily. Dana's Catholicism may mean much to her, yet her voter appeal derives not from her faith but from her homespun, good-ol'-gal communication skills, a brand which worked even better for Ronald Reagan. She might as well be a Baptist as a Roman Catholic, and if she were, her political beliefs probably would not differ substantially.
Dana's Ireland is founded on luxury, the sheer escapist bliss of imagining an Ireland where we are all kind to each other, and where we can neutralise the effects of such awkward problems as marriage breakdown or unwanted pregnancy without having to make difficult decisions. A compelling vision, but hardly reality. Certainty will always attract uncertain voters, but it won't develop the democratic process.
Sure, the image of being Catholic is shifting. The time may come when it will in fact be cool to be Catholic. But for now, image and reality don't match. Like those dreamy Kerrygold ads which brought butter back to the kitchen table, the Catholic image works best for the nostalgia it generates, for the idealised reality it represents.
And unlike Kerrygold, it spreads thinly: Roman Catholicism butters us up all the better to let us down. With a bang. Now, McCarthy's reality-seekers don't flee the country, they simply flee the church.