Greg Daly
Minister of State John Halligan TD 
Controversy around John Halligan being barred as a Confirmation sponsor has revealed serious confusion in Church practice, writes Greg Daly
Minister of State John Halligan TD may not be a hypocrite but his comments last weekend about the supposed pettiness of a Church refusal to allow him act as a Confirmation sponsor point to him being, at best, a profoundly muddled thinker.
The avowed atheist, who is Minister for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, has accused the Church of “petty, pitiful tactics” after Waterford and Lismore’s Bishop Phonsie Cullinan blocked him from sponsoring his godson at a Confirmation Mass in Waterford city.
“I was contacted by the parents of my godson on Thursday to tell me that they had been approached by a member of clergy and told that I could not stand as sponsor at the ceremony on Sunday and that this was the view of the Bishop,” Mr Halligan said in a statement.
“When the parents contacted the Bishop, they were told this is because I am an atheist and because of my views on abortion,” he continued, going on to say that he was not being a hypocrite on the issue.
“I fully accept that, as an atheist, I do not meet the criteria set down by the Catholic Church that a Confirmation sponsor must be a practising Catholic,” he said. “The reason I had said ‘yes’ to my godson when he asked me to be his sponsor was because of the close bond I have with him. Regardless of my own beliefs, I would very much have liked to attend the Mass with him on the day.”
There should, of course, be no question of Mr Halligan being barred from attending his godson’s Confirmation Mass, but this is an entirely different matter from his suitability to stand as sponsor for the boy’s reception of the Sacrament.
The Code of Canon Law is, after all, very clear on this matter. People invited to be sponsors must be suitable for the role and have the intention of fulfilling it, with the sponsor’s function being “to take care that the person confirmed behaves as a true witness of Christ and faithfully fulfils the duties inherent in this sacrament” (CCL 874, 892, and 893).
A sponsor, the code says, should ordinarily be at least 16 years old, and a confirmed Catholic who has received the Eucharist “and who lives a life of Faith which befits the role to be undertaken”.
Atheists – or indeed Catholics who have ceased to practice their Faith – are, therefore, not regarded by the Church as suitable choices to be sponsors.
Common sense
Lest people be tempted to dismiss this as a pettifogging detail of Church law, a moment’s thought should reveal it to be common sense. Godparents and sponsors aren’t just social roles, after all. They have important spiritual duties.
This March Bishop Cullinan issued guidelines to parishes, for instance, in which he spelled out that sponsors are called to give Confirmation candidates “a good example of what it means to be a disciple of Christ and should take their own spiritual life seriously”. Explaining that a sponsor should be a confirmed and practicing Catholic, he said that the basic duty of a sponsor is to “pray for the candidate and continue helping the candidate along the Christian road of life”.
It should go without saying that atheists are simply not capable of fulfilling this role.
In truth, even beyond common sense, there is a serious question of basic integrity here. During the Confirmation ceremony, Dr Cullinan said in his guidelines, bishops ask sponsors the following question: “My dear sponsors, on behalf of the Christian Community, you are about to present these candidates for Confirmation. Do you promise to guide, support and encourage these friends of yours as they continue their journey of Faith?”
Could Mr Halligan, an avowed atheist, have made such a promise in good conscience? Could he have stood beside his godson and before ordinary Waterford parishioners and publicly have lied in this way? Would he have wanted to? Could any honest atheist do this?
Mr Halligan has said that his godson’s family were told that he would be an unsuitable choice as a sponsor owing to his views on abortion, something The Irish Catholic understands the diocese disputes, but nonetheless, he raised an important question when he said: “I sincerely doubt that I am the only person asked to sponsor a Confirmation child who is not a practising Catholic.”
This is surely true, but in fairness to the diocese of Waterford and Lismore, Mr Halligan might well be the only person there who’s been asked to sponsor a Confirmation child who is known to be an atheist. He has, after all, stood up in the Oireachtas and identified himself as one at least twice, and has stated in interviews that he is certain that God does not exist.
He wasn’t singled out for his atheism, let alone for his support for removing Ireland’s constitutional protections for unborn human beings, but simply because he has publicly identified himself as someone unsuitable to be a sacramental sponsor.
It feels as though we have been here before. In October 2013, for instance, the then Fine Gael TD Derek Keating kicked up a fuss when Fr Peter O’Reilly, parish priest at St Mary’s Church in Lucan, Co. Dublin, asked him to step down as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist. Fr O’Reilly’s request came against the background of Mr Keating having voted to introduce legal abortion to Ireland by supporting the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act.
Maintaining that he was a “devout Catholic”, Mr Keating said: “People should be allowed to make decisions in their own life and not for it to compromise their duty whether it be as minister for the Eucharist or indeed any other responsibility they have within the Church.”
Statements like this – and we will all know of massgoers who planned on voting ‘yes’ in this week’s referendum, just as we will the mealy-mouthedness of the ACP leadership’s statement on the referendum – point to a kind of secularisation of Church life, where people talk of roles in the Church community as though they’re somehow separate from Church teaching.
How can those who reject Church teaching on core issues ranging from the reality of God to the sacredness of human life stand up and in good conscience make promises suitable for godparents, sponsors, Eucharistic ministers, parish Baptism committee members and so forth?
One might wonder whether the Church should do more to bring home the importance of this, and to ask people to consider how far they can go before they step outside the bounds of what it means to be a practicing Catholic.
Catholics – and Christians more generally – are expected to be Christ’s arms in the world. It’s not enough to talk about how our Faith makes us feel, or our spirituality or any such thing; we’re called to live the Faith, and that means at least trying to live Church teaching as we serve Christ in the world.
Granted, we might fail or stumble in our efforts, but as the late Dominican Herbert McCabe once wrote, “there is all the difference in the world between being lazy or a nuisance to your colleagues, and betraying the whole project”.
