In 2018, should religion, and just Christianity at that, still be given an elevated position above all other beliefs?
The Republic goes to the polls today to elect a new President, but voters will also be asked whether the offence of blasphemy should be removed from the Irish Constitution. Paul Hopkins reports from Dublin
In 1703, a minister was fined £1,000 and jailed for a year when he denied the divinity of Christ
In a Republic now premised on separation of Church and State, such a crime is irrelevant
For those who adhere to such matters, the second of the 10 Commandments forbids “impious or profane speaking of God or sacred things”. The Irish Constitution, under Article 40.6.1.i, bans “the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter”; offences “which shall be punishable in accordance with law”.
Today, as well as voting for a new president, people in the Republic are being asked to vote in a referendum which proposes to amend the article by removing the word “blasphemous”, so it would simply read: “bans the publication or utterance of seditious, or indecent matter”.
The article was enacted by the people on July 1, 1937 and, while the 1961 Defamation Act prescribed maximum penalties of seven years’ “penal servitude” for blasphemous libel, or two years’ imprisonment and a £500 fine, the move still did not define the exact offence, leaving it somewhat in a limbo for learned lawyers to argue.
Not that they ever needed to, for, between the years 1855 and 1955, there were no prosecutions on the matter.
In 1855, in Dun Laoghaire (then Kingstown), a Protestant Bible was burned by a Redemptorist priest, one Fr Vladimir Pecherin, originally from the Ukraine and then chaplain at Dublin’s Mater Hospital.
He was charged following a complaint from a Methodist minister, Rev Robert Wallace, but the case was thrown out when Pecherin claimed he had “not intended to include a Bible (even a Protestant one) in his bonfire of bad books”.
There had been one successful prosecution for blasphemy, back in 1703, when a Unitarian minister, Thomas Emlyn, was fined a whopping £1,000 and
imprisoned for a year when he denied the divinity of Christ.
During the contentious campaign for a referendum on divorce in 1995, three cases were brought by one John Corway, a Catholic, who claimed an editorial in Hot Press magazine and cartoons in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent were blasphemous.
One cartoon showed three Irish TDs refusing Holy Communion at Mass, as divorced people were denied that sacrament by the Catholic hierarchy. The cases were thrown out by the High Court and the Supreme Court, following an appeal.
In 2008, a joint Oireachtas committee said that, following on from Corway’s cases, the reference to blasphemy in the Constitution was really “a dead letter”.
The committee reported: “In a modern constitution, blasphemy is not a phenomenon against which there should be an expressed constitutional prohibition.”
Then-Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, brought in a law “to remove the possibility of prison sentences and private prosecutions for blasphemy, currently provided for in Irish law”. He said the “only credible alternative” to this was a referendum, which “I consider, in the current circumstances, a costly and unwarranted diversion”.
Only in Ireland could a minister introduce a law which prevented prosecutions for blasphemy, but also “complied with the Constitution” when the Defamation Act 2009 introduced a new offence of “publication or utterance of blasphemous matter” which carried a maximum fine of €25,000.
Which brings us to where we are today, but not before the infamous Stephen Fry matter on Gay Byrne’s The Meaning of Life on RTE in 2015, when the English actor (left) ridiculed a God he did not believe exists: a God who would allow children to die of cancer.
Two years later, a man complained to gardai in Ennis, Co Clare, about the programme. Gardai were beside themselves frenetically investigating, but, two days later, were unable to find “a substantial number of outraged people” to bring an action.
Fry later said he was contacted by the man who had complained, who told him he had done so to show how the law on blasphemy was “really an ass”.
The multi-talented thespian thought this a “wonderfully Irish solution” to the problem of outdated legislation.
Polls suggest the majority of people have little interest in this referendum. Almost 30% of people do not know how they will vote today. The latest Amarach/Claire Byrne Live poll for TheJournal.ie found that the majority of people (54%) would vote to remove the offence of blasphemy from the constitution, compared with just 17% of those who said they would vote against.
Around 29% said they did not know how they would vote, including over a third of women and those aged 35-44 (both 35%). A Yes majority today will allow legislators to amend the 2009 Defamation Act.
Primarily, we see blasphemy as outdated, just not tenable in a modern Ireland. The “crime” emerged during an era when Church and State were seen as a single entity; when defaming the established religion was nothing short of committing treason.
In a Republic now premised on separation of Church and State, such a crime is irrelevant.
Following a long, sad and shameful history of collusion between Church and State, the repression of women and children, notably in industrial schools and Magdalene laundries, we are, thank God, moving out of that awful era, as shown by the referenda on marriage equality and abortion.
If we are to learn anything from our history, we should be fearful of retaining a law that provides an elevated position for religion (and, frighteningly, just Christianity at that) above all other beliefs.