The other day Eamon Gilmore was asked point-blank by a voter
whether Ireland
is ready for an atheist Taoiseach. 
His answer, in summary, was that religion is
a private matter.
Later in the day, Pat Rabbitte said it isn’t a politician’s religion
that matters so much as his or her values. I agree. But the question Gilmore
and Rabbitte should really have been asked is whether they believe politicians
should have to leave their religious values aside when legislating?
As quoted in The Irish Daily Mail, here is what Gilmore had
to say in response to the (wrong) question from the voter: “Well I think religion is a private matter.
I think we have to be tolerant. This country has changed a lot over recent
decades, we’re a country now of different religious persuasions and people who
have no religion.”
He then spoke of the need to show tolerance towards each
other’s beliefs, adding: “I think that Ireland
is ready for a Taoiseach that is elected, irrespective of what religion that
person holds, what private views they hold.”
Later, Pat Rabbitte claimed Gilmore’s religious views do
not matter.
He said: “What matters are one’s values…It is the value
framework that matters.”
It’s a pity neither Gilmore nor Rabbitte were asked the
right question. The right question isn’t really whether a person believes in
God or not, but whether they think religious values should be permitted to play
a part when our elected representatives are legislating.
Dermot Ahern, for one, thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to
play a part. He thinks politicians should leave them to one side. John Gormley seems
to be in the Ahern camp to judge from his instruction to the Churches to keep
out of ‘State matters’.
What do Gilmore and Rabbitte believe? Rabbitte is right to
say that what really matters are “one’s values”.
But if religious values are to be excluded from the
legislative chamber, and secular values only are to be allowed in, that would
amount to exactly the sort of aggressive secularism the Pope and other
religious leaders have warned against.
Dermot Ahern also believes that politicians shouldn’t let
religion ‘cloud’ their judgement. Do Gilmore and Rabbitte believe the same
thing? Do they believe this is all religion can do? (Could bankers cloud a politician’s judgement, or trade unionism for that matter?).
It’s a pity Dermot Ahern wasn’t asked to justify his belief
that politicians should leave their religious values to one side when
legislating. Is it that he believes such values are divisive?
If so, it shouldn’t only be religious values he leaves to
one side because every value system is divisive at some level.
Is it because he thinks religious values aren’t amenable to
reason? But to give just one example, the traditional belief in marriage is
certainly amenable to reason. Christians doesn’t rely for their defence of
marriage on quotes from the Bible alone. There is abundant evidence that suggests the marriage of a man and a woman should receive special support.
So again, why does Ahern single out religious values in this
way, and again what do Messrs Gilmore and Rabbitte think?
In my view any set of values that don’t rely on an appeal
to authority alone for their justification should be allowed to influence the
political process, and that includes both religious values, and the
quasi-religion of socialism.
(For the record, I thought Gilmore was an agnostic. That’s
what he told Hot Press in 2007).