FIONA GARTLAND

Confidential notes from officials working at the Irish Embassy to the Holy See reveal concerns over legislation liberalising the accessibility of condoms and disapproval of a speech made by the then minister for foreign affairs, Peter Barry, recently released State papers reveal.

The notes were found in the Department of Foreign Affairs embassy files for 1985.

In March that year, the Health (Family Planning Amendment) Act became law. It allowed for the sale of condoms without prescription.

In a note forwarded to Sean Donlon, secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs, dated March 25th, an unnamed official said he had a conversation with two desk officers at the Secretariat of State and the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, Fr Brian Farrell and Msgr Giuseppe Lazzarotto.

He said they discussed the Irish church's attitudes toward the law, including the views of two of the country's most conservative Catholic leaders, Archbishop Kevin MacNamara and Bishop Jeremiah Newman.

“Their assertion that Catholic legislators should always follow the direction of their bishops in certain matters would mean that either we would have a totally confessional, Catholic State, where the minority have no rights, or Catholics would have to withdraw from government,” the official said.

He suggested that Dr MacNamara’s “thinly veiled suggestion that Catholics might alter their voting patterns” if the government introduced the legislation, “was breaking very dangerous ground”.

He also said many Northern Catholics were offended by “lurid descriptions of hedonistic debauchery” which it was argued would flourish in a society where condoms were freely available.

The common good

The two

Vatican

priests countered that the bishops had spoken out not only because the Bill was against Catholic teaching, but also “the wider distribution of contraceptives, particularly to unmarried people, was not in the interests of the common good”.

The official said he told them the majority of people using contraceptives in Ireland were "actually baptised and often, regular church-going Catholics".

In a separate note, forwarded to the Department of Foreign Affairs in September 1985, another official outlined details of a conversation with Fr Farrell, this time about a visit to Ireland of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, secretary of state of the Holy See.

Mr Barry had given a speech at a lunch in Iveagh House in honour of the cardinal, in which he outlined the separation of church and state and said “if legislators do not follow the advice of one, or even any of the churches, it is important for everyone involved to keep any such disagreement in perspective”.

His speech had been criticised by Dr Newman, who said Catholic politicians were “not entitled to follow their consciences in a void, as though a teaching authority did not exist in the Catholic Church”. He said the minister’s speech sounded like “a lecture by the State to the Church”.

The embassy official said Fr Farrell had viewed the minister’s speech as a challenge to the hierarchy.

“He felt that if the bishops were pushed by the government, they would have to respond,” the official said.

"If the government sought confrontation there was a danger of an East European situation arising where the Catholic Church becomes completely embattled against the State."

He said the priest went on to say if the government “took on” the church, the country would be divided and the government would inevitably lose.