Shedding No Tears

One symbolic stumbling block to unification of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic is Article 44 of the Republic's 1937 constitution. It recognizes "the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens."

The religious clauses of Article 44 have long been an embarrassment to both church and state. All three parties in the Irish Dail (Parliament) have favored their repeal for the past five years. Ireland's Catholic primate, William Cardinal Conway, has declared repeatedly that he "would not shed a tear" to see them go. Two months ago, Prime Minister Jack Lynch cautiously decided to put the question to the Irish people in a referendum.

Bearing down hard on the theme of unification--"YES for a new Ireland,"--Lynch argued that a decisive yes vote would counter the "misrepresentations" being made in the North and in Britain as to the position and influence of the Catholic Church in the republic. The referendum took place last week at a time when public opinion was aroused against the illegal Irish Republican Army for extending its campaign of terrorism from Northern Ireland to the Republic (TIME, Dec. 11). The man who leads the I.R.A.'s militant Provisional wing, Sean MacStiofain, whom the government apprehended and jailed two weeks ago, remained weak from a hunger strike, though he had begun to accept liquids. In the days before the referendum, the government refrained from taking further action against the I.R.A. leadership.

Despite the fact that Cardinal Conway and most of the church hierarchy supported the referendum, many Catholic priests and laymen feared that repeal would have a sort of moral domino effect, leading the country toward permissiveness and degeneracy. "Do the fathers and mothers of Ireland want to see their children reared in an Irish-type St. Pauli, Soho or Pigalle?" demanded Dublin Accountant Desmond Broadberry, father of 17 children and member of the committee to "Defend 44." (He was referring to the pleasure zones of Hamburg, London and Paris.) "We urge a massive yes to a new Ireland, but no to a Godless Ireland," wrote a group of Catholic students in a joint letter to the Irish Times. As it turned out, the referendum won by a landslide; the Irish electorate voted to repeal Article 44 by about 5 to 1. Among those voting was the Republic's father figure and President, Eamon de Valera, now 90.

In Northern Ireland, the referendum attracted relatively little interest. To most Ulster Protestants, repealing Article 44 was a minor matter that left untouched the church's interest in preserving the tough laws on divorce, contraception and censorship of books and movies. Northerners were also preoccupied with another burst of the mindless violence that has taken 656 lives since 1969--including 445 in 1972 alone.

In what police described as "one of the most ghastly murders yet," the unclothed body of Patrick Benstead, a 32-year-old Catholic from Belfast's East End, was found dumped in an alleyway. He had been tied up, beaten, shot and branded with the letters "I.R.A." Within hours, in what police assumed was an act of reprisal, a middle-aged Protestant in the same district was shot through the head. Appalled at the rising wave of murders, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, set up a special army and police task force to track down these "psychopathic killers."

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