A former Government advisor has slammed Senator John Crown for an “illiberal and sectarian” article in last 
weekend’s Sunday Independent.
Writing in the Irish Catholic, Gerry Howlin accused Senator Crown, who suggested that those who opposed to the Government’s abortion legislation should be required to take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, of displaying “astonishing ignorance”.
Senator Crown had accused TDs and Senators who opposed abortion legislation of attempting to “overthrow and discard our constitutional system of republican government”.
He continued: “A cabal of insurrectionists, sympathetic to the agents of a foreign state are, as you read this, plotting and executing a coup d’etat.
“The conspiracy goes to the very top of our political structure, with TDs, senators and at least one minister indicating that they might thumb their noses at our Bunreacht and vote against constitutionally mandated legislation.” He suggested that Senators and TDs should be required to swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution.
In response, Mr Howlin said that Senator Crown appeared to be unaware “of how oaths were systematically used to exclude Catholics, Presbyterians and Jews from office and enforce established opinion”.
He said: “That would be historical nicety were it not for his crusade to enforce a new ideological hegemony and exclude people from public life on the basis of conscience.”
He noted that a Bill for the reform of the Seanad proposed by Senators Feargal Quinn and Katherine Zappone’s Bill advocates that Irish emigrants and people from Northern Ireland should be allowed to vote.
“[U]nionist participation would be stymied by a requirement for such an oath,” he said, adding that “any oath would be contentious, exclusionary and illiberal in effect”.
He asked: “Did Senator Crown think through the consequences of requiring a political oath to the constitution? When Chief Justice O’Higgins ruled for the majority against David Norris in his Supreme Court case in 1983 he specifically relied upon the preamble to the constitution as a basis.
“How could the newly elected Senator Norris in 1987 have taken Crown’s oath? The Supreme Court, Crown’s supreme arbiter, had ruled Norris’ criminality as an active homosexual was constitutional.
“The last time such compulsory oath-taking was used to oppress personal, as distinct from political conscience, the Seanad Chamber was the Duke of Lenister’s ballroom.
“Sitting in that room, unaware of the significance of its history and oblivious to it’s contemporary resonance Senator Crown might at least recall the recent historic visit to Seanad Éireann of the Orange Order. It is a pity he didn’t ask the Grand Master if he, an Irishman, would take Crown’s oath to Bunreacht na hÉireann.”