James O'Neill 

7 January 2010

On Wednesday 5th January the great and the good flocked to Armagh Cathedral to pay homage at the funeral of Cardinal Cathal Daly.  As with most things in Ireland today, there were no dissenting voices. The Irish and British governments, Sinn Fein, even (slowly and begrudingly) the DUP came together to praise him.

Perhaps the greatest claim was that Daly's legacy was the end of physical force republicanism and the creation of a 'shared space' between Catholic and Protestant represented by the current political settlement.

There is no doubt but that Daly fought tooth and nail to close down the mobilization of nationalist workers and was the key figure in formulating church strategy over decades, writing the papal speech at the time of the pope's visit and playing 'bad cop' to his predecessor Ó Fiaich's 'good cop' in chivying the republican leadership to their final surrender.

As with many figures in the peace movement the message of peace was coated with a breathtaking personal venom, his tendency to end statements with a sharp sibilant hiss underlining his hatred for his opponents. 

At the time Daly was enormously successful. Working with the Irish government and the British, he helped render unto Caesar those things the church considered as belonging to the state - continued imperialist rule in Ireland and the capitulation of the republicans - and got back a great deal of those things belonging to God, or at least owed to the church standing in for God. 

The church was given direct access to the resources of the state, money to strengthen its control of communities and a strengthened and centralized hold of education. As a result it has been particularly blatant in religious discrimination, both in employment and in internal promotion procedures, openly demanding support for their mumbo-jumbo as condition of employment.

There is little to question about the claim to have helped defang the Provos. The claim that Daly contributed to a sustainable imperialist settlement is much more doubtful, given that he died with the DUP still unwilling to complete the devolution process and so wrapped in bigotry that acknowledging the death of a Catholic prelate, even one as unremittingly anti-republican as Daly, remains a problem. 

His death was immediately followed by widely doubted claims that the last paramilitary weapons had been decommissioned by the UDA. Whatever the truth or falsity of the claims, there is no doubt that the Catholic church yet again demonstrated moral turpitude by joining in a process of bribery and persuasion designed to reinvent these sectarian killers as an inbuilt element of civic society.

The decayed and moribund edifice of the political settlement in the North remains in place in the absence of a political opposition and that might well be a metaphor for Cathal Daly and the church he represented.  After all, part of the Daly legacy was the decades of cover-up of priestly sexual abuse while he served as the supreme authority in the Catholic church.

During his time working class support has gradually leaked away from the church but the full turn-out of representatives of capitalism and imperialism at his funeral shows their willingness to forgive and forget the crimes against children.

The traditional relationship of church and capitalism continues, two reactionary and decayed structures holding each other up.  Caesar supporting the church while the church supports Caesar. 

We may take solace from the basic historical reality that things change. Caesar did not live forever.  Neither will the church and its centuries of oppression in Ireland.