Voluntary religious organisations such as pregnancy counselling agencies and adoption agencies should not be forced by the State to act against their ethos, according to Minister of State, Martin Mansergh.

Minister Mansergh (pictured) was speaking at Trinity College Chapel on Sunday. He also said that republics such as Ireland are not required by republican ideology to adopt a radically secular view of society based on “the post-1789 French model”. This relegated religion to the private sphere and in its most militant phase violently persecuted the Church.

Referring to religious freedom, he said: “My view is that voluntary agencies set up to respond to public needs in a way that reflects distinctive religious values should not be forced to act contrary to those values, for example, by being required to refer people to agencies that will help arrange abortion, or, a UK example, to give children for adoption by gay couples.”

Five years ago there was a row when the Crisis Pregnancy Agency forced Cura, the Catholic bishops’ pregnancy counselling arm, to give women the contact details of pro-choice agencies as a condition of receiving public money.

In the end, Cura was able to reverse this policy and still receive public funds. Minister Mansergh championed Cura on that occasion.

However, Minister Mansergh said he believed “State officials are required to implement the law, without reference to their religious beliefs. To act otherwise would imply that religious beliefs should be allowed to take precedence over State impartiality and in effect to discriminate through a la carte implementation of the law. No one is obliged to be or to stay a public official, if a conflict of belief occurs.”

This was a reference to calls to give civil registrars a conscience opt-out so that they cannot be obliged to officiate at civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples if that is against their religious beliefs.

It is still not clear whether Minister Mansergh believes private providers of goods and services such as printers or photographers should be given an opt-out, or whether religious organisations and their propertiesshould also be exempted.

In the US a Methodist church was successfully sued for not renting out its hall to a lesbian couple wishing to host their civil union reception there.

Referring to republican philosophy, Minister Mansergh said: “It is up to the people to decide what weight we wish to give to organised religion in our affairs. I would certainly hesitate to claim that an Islamic Republic is not a real Republic, or deny that Israel, which often describes itself as a Jewish State, is one.”

He continued: “There are many possible gradations, from a State or established Church; to a de facto one, as in the original 1938 Constitution, or the French Constitutional Charter of 1830, where the Catholic religion is recognised as the church of the majority; to the liberty of conscience and of religious practice underpinned by the neutrality of the State and the separation of Church and State with lay public authority and education, as set out in Article 13 of the 1946 Constitution of the French Republic. Ireland, having repealed part of Article 44, according formal primacy to the Catholic Church, is at present somewhere in between, a pluralist, even multicultural, society, but still far removed from a secular decatholicized or dechristianized Republic.”