Over the weekend, Cardinal Desmond Connell complained that Ireland was now suffering from what he called "religio-cultural amnesia". He had in mind the loss of our "Christian memory and heritage" in an increasingly secular society. The phrase however also applies in another sense, argues Fintan O'Toole
In much of the debate around church and state which has been sparked by the extraordinary deal giving religious orders indemnity from the financial consequences of institutionalised child abuse, something else is forgotten. It is the extent to which, until recently, the church was the state. It wielded the kind of power that is normally the prerogative of a government.
Because we have such a young population and things have changed so rapidly, many find the recent past literally incredible. They simply cannot comprehend a society in which both public and private behaviour were confined within limits set by the church. Yet, without understanding that power, it is impossible to understand just how disingenuous is the claim that the State was largely responsible for the abuse because it didn't supervise church-run institutions.
Let's look, for example, at the relative positions of the church and of the Department of Education and where moral authority really lay. Leaving aside the situation of children, let's consider the situation of responsible, educated, articulate adults. The vast majority of teachers had no choice but to work in Catholic schools, yet all but a token amount of their wages were paid by the State. Who controlled their working lives? The church.
Look at the contracts which secondary teachers had to sign well into the 1980s, which is to say the contracts under which teachers in their 40s and older are still employed. A few provisions make stark reading.
One is that the contract specifies, in effect, that the church will control not just the beliefs and practices of the individual teacher, but that of the trade union, the ASTI: "There shall be no objection to a lay teacher becoming and remaining a member of the ASTI, or any such professional organisation, while such association . . . conforms, in its aims, constitution and activities, to the accepted doctrine and moral practice of the Catholic church."
So if the moral practice of the church meant turning a blind eye to abuse, the ASTI had to accept this or the bulk of its members had to resign.
Another provision of the contract, one which remained in place even after 1973 when the marriage bar was lifted in the public service, is that: "Upon the marriage of any lady lay teacher, it shall be lawful for her headmaster or headmistress to give to her notice terminating her contract of employment." So married women teachers remained in an ambiguous legal position, forced to sign contracts which made marriage itself grounds for dismissal.
Teachers could be sacked for misconduct, a concept that was not defined in the contract but clearly included, according to rules for applicants for teaching posts in Catholic schools, a failure to offer "witness to and support for the Catholic ethos of the school".
There was an appeal procedure. The dismissed teacher could throw him or herself on the mercy of the appeal authority, defined as either the local bishop or the major superior of the religious order. Either of the latter had absolute power to "delegate jurisdiction to one or more persons to hear any appeal". The church, in other words, had complete control over the appeal process.
What stands out in these documents is the total absence of State power over those whom the State paid to teach children. Everything is wrapped up. The ASTI can represent the teacher, but only so long as it is, in effect, an obediently Catholic organisation. The rules for what constituted unacceptable behaviour were vague and since they were to be informed by "the Catholic ethos" they could, by definition, be clarified by the church alone. The idea of an outside authority to whom an appeal might be made is recognised but then completely disarmed by the giving that role to the bishop.
Since this was and, to a large extent, still is the situation, even in mainstream secondary schools, how exactly was the Department supposed to exercise control over the more enclosed industrial schools? That it had a moral and political obligation to protect the children in these institutions is clear and unquestionable, but the notion that a civil servant could simply tell a religious order to behave itself is, in the context of Catholic Ireland, laughable.
The entire structure of education was and, to a large extent, remains, one in which the church governed and the State provided the money. To talk now as if the State was really in charge of what went on is to distort the truth.
The reality is that the church demanded authority to run institutions dealing with education and morality, enforced that authority on those employed within the institutions, and fiercely resisted any attempt to dilute its power. Convenient lapses of memory about these basic facts surely constitute a "religio-cultural amnesia" no less damaging than the unwillingness to recognise the more positive aspects of Ireland's Christian heritage.