A priest broadcasts Mass on Facebook amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Photo: CNS 
To many secular eyes, the very idea that anyone would seek participation in public worship of God is alien, writes Declan Ganley
On Wednesday of last week, just before America relaxed for its annual Thanksgiving holiday, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Governor of New York’s Covid-19 related ban on public worship. The full judgement makes interesting reading (and for those interested it can be found on the internet) but as part of his opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch summed up the situation in New York as follows: “the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers ‘essential.’ And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?”
Justice
In that short paragraph, the Justice captures the modern world’s perception of what is important, and what is not. To many secular eyes, the very idea that anyone would seek participation in public worship of God, is alien, odd, and unworthy of serious consideration. In a sense, they are right – it is not of this time. It is, in fact, timeless. Our need to engage in public worship stretches back beyond history itself.
Catholics do not need to be told the central importance of public worship and access to the sacraments. And that importance was not lost on those that drafted the Constitution, who had the foresight to include this line in the opening paragraph: “We, the people of Éire, humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial…”
And later, in article 44, went on to write: “The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.”
Article 44 continues: “Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen.”
Notably, these are stronger and more specific guarantees of the right to public worship than provided for in the U.S. constitution, which was the basis for last week’s US Supreme Court ruling.
On Friday, the Government here announced that the ban on public worship would no longer apply as of this week and Catholics returned to Mass on Tuesday.
We will, they say, be ‘allowed’ to return to Covid-mitigated public worship. This was a great relief to many Irish Catholics, and to those of other faiths, who yearn to return to safely managed public worship, and receive the sacraments.
But this was never something that is the Government’s gift to give. The ban itself – and any return to level 5 or any further ban on public worship – is clearly unconstitutional.
Legal ban
There should never have been a legal ban, nor even an ‘advisory’ ban. Under the Constitution, it should have been left to the sole discretion of churches and other religious groups to temporarily restrict, reduce, or otherwise mitigate against the risk of Covid-19. A job, which, to the Church’s great credit, it seemed by all evidence to be performing well.
The only circumstances in which the State would be within its constitutional right to impose a ban would be if there was clear, unimpeachable, evidence, that public order was threatened by the holding of religious services. No such evidence has ever been made public – likely because no such evidence exists.
Public worship
Because the State has not ruled out bringing back the ban on public worship, it is now a matter of public interest that the ban’s constitutionality be tested in the Irish courts in a similar manner to the way New York’s ban was tested in the US Supreme Court. That is why the case presently before the Irish courts seeks to do just that. In that case, we are asking the courts simply to reaffirm the rights that were written into the Constitution and adopted by the people.
Of course, some in modern Ireland might want to forget why these rights were enshrined in our Constitution in the first place. They may not even understand why such rights would be considered essential by so many of us.
And that’s why those rights are in the constitution in the first place – not for the days when there was no prospect of them being threatened, but because the people who drafted our Constitution had the foresight to realise that a time like the present might come. When it came, they wanted to ensure that the right to public worship was protected.
As people of faith, and Irish citizens, we have a responsibility to ourselves, and to future generations, to defend those rights today, so that they are there when they are needed by generations to come.
The Faith, the constitution says, “sustained our fathers through centuries of trial”. In this present time of trial, it sustains us still. And we must fiercely defend our right to practice it.
Declan Ganley is a Co. Galway-based businessman and his case challenging the ban on public worship is due before the courts again on December 8.
