Ireland is one of a number of European countries with laws limiting freedom of conscience according to a leading watchdog on religious intolerance.

In a new report, the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians details 41 examples of national laws with adverse effects on Christians in more than 15 European Countries.  

It mentions a number of specific Irish laws which infringe on freedom of conscience.

The report referred to Justice Minister Alan Shatter’s mandatory reporting legislation, which makes it an offence punishable by up to five years in prison for a priest to refuse to reveal information about child abuse where it is disclosed in a Confessional.

This is despite the fact that priests are forbidden under Church teaching from revealing anything that they are told in the Confessional.

The report also referred to the code of conduct for pharmacists, which requires that all pharmacists sell everything that is lawfully available in the state.  

This includes the ‘morning after pill’ which can act as an abortifacient.  

The report says: “The Irish constitution has strong religious freedom protections, but if a pharmacist is unwilling to sell the morning after pill he would have to take his employer to court and plead for his constitutional rights. This could be very expensive and therefore most pharmacists with an objection to abortifacients in practice either sell them or quit their job.”

It also mentions the failure of our civil partnerships legislation to protect the conscience rights of civil registrars who refuse to carry out same-sex civil unions ceremonies. Civil registrars, the report points out “could go to jail for up to six months for refusing to officiate at the ceremony of, for example, a same-sex couple”.  

“While churches are not forced to actually perform such ceremonies directly, they might face fines if they refuse to rent out halls for same-sex couples who wanted to use it for their reception following a civil partnership,” the report says.

The report also refers to proposals made by members of the Labour Party and scheduled to be debated at their party conference suggesting that senior civil servants should be “screened” to ensure they do not show “inappropriate deference” to the Church and to make it illegal for Catholic schools to give preference to Catholic pupils.

Launching the report, Dr Gudrun Kugler, the Director of the Observatory, said: “Sometimes I get asked, how can a majority be discriminated against?

“Well, it is not the nominal Christian who is fully aligned to society’s mainstream, who suffers discrimination. It is those to strive to live according to the high ethical demands of Christianity, who experience a clash. Those are not the majority.”