Fair play to the Taoiseach for giving the arrogant Church a long overdue & well earned slap. Church & State must be separated. Never thought I’d hear a Taoiseach deliver such a speech & I am very pleased he did.

We have a long way to go but Edna took a big step yesterday. I must commend him considering his own religious persuasion.

Good start , now to follow it up !

I couldn’t agree more, the church has no business in politics or state business. Enda made a great speech and delivered it perfectly.

To people who say “it was just a speech”, it was just a speech by the head of the Government, who make legislation. Actions speak louder than words, but as a statement of intent it was remarkable. I’m not a fan of Kenny or his politics, but I was impressed by it. The “Church and State” section was no less than a call for true secular democracy – coming from a conservative, centre-right “Christian Democratic” party, in a country which such a blurred line between Church and State I think it was very encouraging. Let’s see what happens next.

Excellent & well said. “The fallacy that is cannon law” is correct. One commentator compared it to being like the rules of a golf club. Yes – their assets ought to be taken off them to pay for their misdeeds. Yes indeed.

BRAVO!!!! I have waited a long time for the wind of change to blow……and now its a hurricane……and nothing is ever the same after one of those!!!!! time to build anew…..hats off to the Taoiseach….but remember…talk does not cook rice, according to the Chinese….so please Mr. Kenny…..keep your eye on this particular pot.
Molan on obair an fear……..the work praises the man.

let’s hope it changes it.

I would have liked a “I hope so! option to vote for – because it about time the church orgs got the hell out of politics and state business completely.

Time for the G.A.A to cut ties also, there was a time while all this was going on that the bishop threw in the sliotar on All Ireland Final day, sport should also be separate from religion.

You’re right Gareth. I can’t get my head around the fact that most of these “church people” who abused children are free out there despite a long and precise list of names…In the real world anybody accused of physical/sexual abuse on children is arrested and put in jail (almost) immediately. It’s like the catholic church and the Vatican don’t consider sexual and physical abuse a crime and the state let them away with it! Furthermore, I think that anybody else that knows what went on and just decided to close a blind eye in the name of their fecking religion’s rules (excuse my language please) should go to jail too, popes included.

Hopefully. Time to uncouple the state from the encumbering influence of Iron Age mysticism.

It was a very good speech and it said everything that needed to be said. However you cannot get rid of the churches influence on society from just a speech. How many organisations, boards, GAA clubs are priests the automatic presidents of? If we want a real republic we must learn to do things for ourselves. Our communities can no longer be run by the parish priest, the bank manager and the garda sergeant. Due the cover ups and scandals, people have lost faith in all 3 of those institutions. We need to take control of our communities, have faith in ourselves, if we really want to effect change in our society and achieve a real republic.

Excellent development, I am getting sick of crazy religious right wing groups (Iona Institute I’m looking at you) trying to meddle in the formation of state policy and legislation, so I am all for a significant and lasting separation of church and state.

Definitely need an “I hope so” option in that poll!

Yes, it’ll end it for the better (I hope)!!!

Unfortunately, I don’t think it will have much effect whatsoever. Actions, as the saying goes, speak louder thant words, and all that Enda offered yesterday, while welcomed, were long overdue words. The government has yet to act directly against the Vatican’s belligerence.

The State needs to take a more forceful approach to the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. Seize assets that the Church is unwilling to contribute as compensation for a start.

If there’s a question over rule of law, the Vatican had no compunction in flouting our laws when they felt it didn’t apply to them, so we should act accordingly.

Enda Kennys speech was great, and it was important that it was made by a Taoiseach in the Dail. The reporting of the speech is almost as interesting, with almost all focus on his rejection of the actions and attitudes of the Vatican, and very little focus on his statement that ‘for too long Ireland has neglected its children’. Now that we are clear on how Church-State relations should proceed, can we ‘Republic of Ireland 2011’ agree to ‘protect the sacred space of childhood and to restore its innocence’?!? If the government is clear that ‘Safeguarding (childrens) integrity and innocence must be a national priority’; can we now seriously consider the treatment of children in state care, the resources we allocate for those under 18, the efficiency of the DPPs office in dealing with cases of abuse, domestic violence and neglect. Otherwise we will find ourselves, as a State, the subject of further reports and enquiries in 20 years time, as our children say to us … ‘it was in plain sight – how could you have turned a blind eye’.

Lets hope so. The years of a Catholic influenced Ireland are long gone. The Church needs to realize its place in modern Ireland. And also be aware of the atrocities which it was a party to in the past 100 years.

The state is just catching up with the people. I think It is over 20 years since the majority of people dropped the subservient position to the church. Enda know he was pushing an open door with his speech. Why tell us he is a practicing catholic?

Leaving aside all talk of expelling Papal nuncio and the typical promotion of atheism / anti-theism you get on this topic. It’s pretty simple as far as I see it. If you break the law, you are subject to punishment irrespective of what creed you follow. As such all who have broken the law should be brought to court irrespective. That’s the basic step that would show anyone that no institution can break laws and get away with it.

The Church must modernize !

its time for one of those historic splits with the Vatican – its been done before, it can be done again. New People (not exclusively men), new ideas and above all a respect and return to the basics.

During the so called “celtic Tiger” years you say the Irish lost their spiritual dimension and became focused on wealth and success. WHEN, if ever, has the Roman Catholic Church been anything else but exactly this. It thrives on wealth and power and is corrupt to the core.
The problem lies NOT with the IRISH CHURCH but with the Roman Catholic church and its perverse domination of other countries. It is within the Vatican you will see the “hard inhuman face” that you mention. The Christian message does soften this side of human nature but you will not find that , nor true Christianity, in the Vatican.
Ireland will never be spiritually free until it releases itself from the shackles of ROME.

Is it not time for our TDs to stop saying the daly prayer everyday before the dail sits.

I completely agree with separating the church and state. It worries me that so many people are ashamed to admit they are still practicing Catholics for fear of ridicule or being seen to support an evil organisation. We should all be free to believe what we want, I just hope we can reach a point where people can be proud of the church and not ashamed of it.

i hope it does put the relationship between the state and the catholic church, and indeed all churches, into the correct alignment. the state is the authority here, and the catholic church is a self-serving, money-grabbing, power-obsessed throwback to feudal times which needs to be stripped of all influence here. Its time to take the churches assets to pay their bill in full for the compensation paid to their victims. Its time to stop the church from having any influence on the state’s provision of education to our children. Its time that the state asserted the dominance of its law over the fallacy that is canon law.

who cares what church you are a member of.what they did was so wrong and its a shame for the real members of the church.then again if I WAS A MEMBER AND KNEW WHAT THE PERVS have done to children all over the world I would think its now time to worship elsewhere. R.I.P. ROME YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED!

The Angelus on RTE should get a revision also, a twice daily reminder if tuned in of the grip the church has had over the decades, would like to see the record of these meetings that decided church bells should be allowed over the airwaves of our National Broadcaster.

Make the churches pay tax like everybody else period!!!

Fair play to Enda.I hope his strong words are followed up with action. The Catholic Church in Ireland has got away with the soul destroying abuse of her young for more than a century because of the silence of a submissive faithful and the inaction of knowing successive subservient governments grovelling to her Church masters.

Seems like all talk and no action to me.if he was really taking this seriously he would expel the papal nuncio from Ireland

who said ‘religion is the opium of the masses’?
society moves away from one addiction, and onto another! (i’m a cynic)

The speech as a stand alone will not change much…however the ball it starts rolling will hopefully impact in a big way and remove Iron Age goat herder superstition from our state runnings. The vatican response and how we / The State react to this response will be the clincher.
Good start Enda and co. Now please follow through

Am pleasantly surprised by his speech. The Catholic church has been the curse of Ireland since patrick set foot here. Please can we now have a secular united country

Words are nice, but if the state is not following the money the religious orders have, it is hollow rheoteric. We have all had enough of that havn’t we?

Makes me proud to be a Protestant!

If Enda follows this up by reviewing both gay marriage and abortion laws perhaps then it can be believed, otherwise he is still allowing religious dogma shape his political decisions. FG entered the previous election under the guise of a Christian democratic party ie. a crypto-fascist party, and thus, in my opinion, this speech represents nothing more than a populist attempt to gain political capital.

Fuck ‘em all.

And not before time either.

Sad to see such ignorance and hostility on here.

Enda is a wet blanket ,anyone could have made that speech and made it sound good .Trouble with Enda and all the other politicians is they have no stomach for the fight , CAB should go in and seize the assets of the church and compensate the injured properly and stop fucking about. I would hate to think what these priests are up to in the third world where they can hide behind ignorance and fear .

Enda should take the plank out of his own eye – it was his generation that venerated the church in Ireland and were fully complicit by their silence.

But he didn’t go far enough. First he should frozen all their assets and it would go a long way to servicing the national debt after all the victims of clerical sex abuse had been well compensated. Then he should round up every Army truck that is available and load the whole lot of them up, from the cardinal down and head for the ferry to France and leave them to the Muslim’s over there to sort them out before they made their way to Rome and any one of them that refused to go, make sure the Army were well supplied with plenty of ammunition and let them have it with rapid fire.

Why do we still have any church-state relations in this country? The Catholic Church have basically prooved they can’t handle the power that they are given, so why are they encouraged by even being dealt with at all? At this point we should just through the Vatican under the bus, and make a move before a real secular society.

And the whole prayer time in the Dail thing is completely beyond me…why are we still encouraging the practice of witchcraft in the 21st century….

Brave words Enda, especially when the foreign power ain’t got no legions. You must be reading up on Stalin’s bio. But it got me thinking about the Dublin / Monaghan bombings back in ’74 – u know, a foreign power subverting the rule of law in a republic, etc. U think he’ll be as brave for that one?

I didn’t even read the bloody speech, but voted no. It’s all just words. This country is a beauracratic nightmare and it will take something pretty damning (in the realm of unprecedented natural disasters on a massive scale or equally as bad) for things to eventually right themselves here, politically.