Ireland: Parting ways with the Vatican

Relations between Ireland and the Vatican have been faltering ever since the Cloyne judicial report about the sexual abuse of Irish childen by Catholic priests was published in July.

It’s “an unholy spat,” said Kevin Doyle and Niall O’Connor in the Dublin Herald. Ireland shocked the world last week by abruptly announcing that it was closing its embassy at the Vatican. The government claimed that it was shuttering the expensive facility “for financial reasons,” but it was obviously a snub of the Holy See. Relations have been growing steadily colder ever since July, when the Cloyne judicial report showed that as recently as 2009, the Vatican had cruelly and deliberately covered up priests’ sexual abuse of Irish children. In the wake of that report, our own columnist Fergus Finlay urged the government to pull its embassy out of the Vatican, saying, “Diplomacy that is based on obsequiousness in one direction, and lofty disdain in the other, is more than meaningless, it’s damaging and corrosive.” Now the government has heeded his advice.

But at what cost? asked Mary Kenny in the Irish Independent. The pope is one of the most powerful men in the world, and his reach is only growing. In the past decade, many countries “once cut off from Rome for reasons of political ideology” established full relations with the Holy See. Russia is among them, and China may soon follow. “Does it serve Ireland’s best interests to distance itself from a diplomatic network whose universal reach is matchless?” The anger over the clerical abuse scandal is entirely justifiable. But “you don’t have diplomatic relations with another state because you like it or approve of it—diplomatic relations exist to serve the best interests of your country.”

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