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GAZETTE
College Historical Society:
MORA L I TY L E G I S L A T I ON IS NOT THE
CHURCH'S SPHERE - SENATOR
Senator Mary Robinson said that for too long in this
country the whole area of sexual morality had been
regarded as the proper sphere of Church leaders rather
than of politicians. Too many politicians had been
prepared to allow the bishops to make the political
judgment of the relationships between law and morality.
Senator Robinson was speaking to the motion "That
the State shall not legislate for private morality" at a
meeting of the College Historical Society in T.C.D.
She said that facing politicians with their full
responsibility meant opening up a key debate in this
fundamental area. It meant freeing politicians from any
fear of Church influence and preventing them from
abdicating their own role. The essence of morality was the
assumption of personal responsibility.
When people began to fear the courts rather than treat
them as their servants, a monster was created. People
may fear the courts because only those with money or
with some standing in the community could safely and
comfortably approach them; or because the courts were
more and more identified with punishing sinners. If a
court penalised a man for being drunk and disorderly it
was supposed to be protecting other men, women and
children; it was not supposed to be punishing a sinner.
The idea that Courts were punishing instruments was at
the root of much of our troubles. "Once you admit that
Courts can punish sin, or wrongdoing, and thus shift the
emphasis from protection to punishment you leave the
way open for quite sterile debates, like, the debate about
legislating for private morality.
Legislation should protect the person
"We have to clear away the ambiguity of what the
courts are supposed to be doing and what they are
actually doing, in order to forstall such sterile debates.
You should ask about every piece of legislation, does it
protect the person, does it protect the people in general?
To decide such questions we employ lawyers and
politicians. And we pay them well. The first question of all
of them must answer is, does this or that law or court
protect or threaten.
"Too often, however, they have not answered the
question at all and have asked instead, will this law or this
Court help to keep us in power? There begins the
corruption of a state.
"It was through the political process that they had to
consider decisions about the extent to which the law
should regulate the availability of contraceptives; about
whether the problem of marriage breakdown would be
helped by providing the remedy of divorce; about the
operation of censorship; about whether they should
promote integrated schooling in a positive way; and about
the response of the evidence of high abortion figures for
Irish girls in Britain.
Politicians the arbiters of morality
"Politicians could not dodge their responsibility for
assessing and promoting the common good on this strife-
torn island. Morality was not confined to areas of sexual
morality — it permeated the whole political process and
should form a more conscious part in the general
approach of politicians to the whole range of political
options and decisions.
"So what are the standards and values which should
help us to work out proper relationship between law and
morality, and who should take the responsibility for doing
MARCH 1977
it?" she asked. "The second question is easier to answer
than thefirst: it is not the responsibility of Church leaders,
nor of philosophers, nor of lawyers, but of politicians.
"The assessment must be a political one and the basic
criteria on which it is formed will depend on a political
judgement of what constitutes the common good. This
may depress those who lack faith in politicians and in the
political process, but it is a vital factor "which has
extraordinary implication^".
Senator Robinson said that the relationship between
law and morality was a complex and difficult one, and
this difficulty had been compounded by problems of
language and by lack of definition of terms. Discussion in
Ireland had been influenced by the wording of the
Constitution, Article 40 of which guaranteed liberty to
exercise a number of basic rights, such as freedom of
expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of
association, "subject to public order and morality".
This qualification had led to a distinction being drawn
between public morality which was ambiguous and
ultimately unhelpful. There were not two moralities — one
identifiable as public and the other as private — but rather
two spheres of actions which may be performed either in
public or in private, she said.
A separate and further distinction had to be made
between those actions which should not be regulated and
controlled by the law. There were a number of examples
of immoral actions which we did not consider suitable for
regulation by the criminal law, such as a relationship of
adultery, telling lies (except under formal oath) or
excessive drinking).
Similarly, there may be very private actions which they
considered should be brought under legal control, such as
an attempt by a woman to procure her own miscarriage.
Court's duty essentially to protect the individual
The Rev. Desmond Wilson, from Ballymurphy,
Belfast, said the Courts and the laws were set up first and
foremost to protect the citizen as an individual and as a
member of society. In many countries the laws and the
Courts were used in such a way that they seemed not a
protection at all but a threat, another means of keeping
power, a means of controlling the population.
Fr. Wilson said the essential quality of law was that it
protected. The essential relationship between the
citizen and the Courts was one of comfort "Change that
and you have begun to sow the seeds of a bitter
revolution. That is what we have seen in Northern
Ireland. We have changed the Court from instruments of
protection to instruments of threat We did die same with
the church and the politicians".
Fr. Wilson said that those who were suggesting that
punishment was not a relevant concept in the laws or
courts were not just an unruly crowd of anarchists. They
were people who believed that the evolution of our
thought about how people behaved was moving us in the
direction of rethinking and perhaps eliminating the idea of
punishment from our laws and Courts; to any citizens this
would come not only as a surprise but a shock. The
strange thing was that more were shocked at the thought
of removing punishment than by the possibility of
lessening it. That itself says much about the kind of
society we have created.
"It would be a great pity if discussion about the
meaning of courts and about the meaning of sin, or of
private morality and the common good were to be
narrowed into discussion about contraception and its
related topics. This is to narrow the field far too much.
That problem is a very real one."
Private morality should not be legislated for. "We don't
need it", Fr. Wilson said.