John A Murphy on why Archbishop Connell is the obvious choice for the red hat, righting an old injustice

WHEN it was announced last Sunday that Archbishop Connell was to be made a cardinal, the usual congratulations flowed but there was also some adverse reaction ranging from the ill-informed to the absurd.

First, let me declare my interest in Church affairs. My own membership of the Catholic Church has lapsed for many years and I no longer subscribe to its preachings or its practices. But I continue to have a lively and incurable interest in its proceedings, the way other people play golf or follow the horses. Friends confidently predict that in the end (over my dying body, so to speak) I will be reconciled with faith and fatherland, with the parish priest and the secretary of the local Fianna Fáil cumann in attendance.

Enough of personal revelations. Already on Monday morning last, Examiner correspondents were claiming that Connell's appointment was "widely seen as a snub" to Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh. How could they tell so soon? Was "widely seen" a phrase invented just to start a media hare?

A prominent Examiner article outlandishly declared the Connell appointment to indicate "loud and clear that Rome now cares little about Irish unity and less about the needs of the North's Catholics". Hilariously, the writer conjured up a picture of a red-hatless Brady being deprived of "that extra clout" which was badly needed by "a leader who has to try and keep the lid on Garvaghy Road"!

In Tuesday's Irish Times, Professor Oliver Rafferty of Maynooth was in a similar vein of Northern victimhood we wuz robbed! He used the extraordinary phrase "ecclesiastical partitionism" to describe Connell's appointment "in the relative security of Dublin". Critics like Rafferty did not attempt to explain why the same Pope who appointed Cahal Daly cardinal in 1991 should now want to snub Armagh and remove its prestige and status, as they claim.

One could reasonably argue that it is Dublin, a European capital with a huge Catholic population, which has been snubbed all along. Dr Connell's appointment simply redresses a century-old imbalance. Ireland's very first cardinal (1866) was Paul Cullen, the managing director and pattern-maker of the Irish Church as we knew it up to recently. It is significant that he was made cardinal not when he was Archbishop of Armagh but after he was moved to Dublin. His Dublin successor, Cardinal McCabe, was another safe pair of hands, but when it came to the turn of Archbishop William Walsh ("Billy with the lip" in Joyce's famous Christmas dinner scene), the ablest prelate of his day (1885-1921), he was too independent-minded for the Holy See's liking to be given the red hat. Thereafter it went to Armagh up 'till now.

John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin 1940-72, was eminently qualified to be a Prince of the Church but had to suffer, with Christian resignation presumably, being passed over twice for the red hat which went northwards to less impressive churchmen in the persons of Archbishops John D'Alton (1952) and William Conway (1965).

McQuaid missed out, not only because of American opposition (annoyance at Ireland's wartime neutrality) but because in the feverishly anti-partition atmosphere of the late 1940s, the Dublin government's preference was for an Armagh cardinalate. As Ambassador Joe Walshe put it to Secretary of State Montini (afterwards Paul VI), McQuaid "might be unsurpassable as a churchman" but "Armagh was the key to the Catholic and national unity of Ireland, and if the red hat went to Dublin rather than Armagh, it would be regarded as a triumph for England".

Today, with the popular endorsement of the Belfast Agreement, the replacement of the irredentist claim in our Constitution and the waning of nationalism generally, political unification is no longer a priority in Dublin and the considerations of 50 years ago no longer apply. All that went out, at the latest with Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich who was seen by some Brits as an Irish Makarios.

Only conspiracy-freaks and victimhood seekers will look for machiavellian motivations in this present appointment. Archbishop Connell was the obvious choice, not least because of his orthodoxy, but also because of his intellectual distinction, his efficient management since 1988 of Ireland's premier diocese at a difficult period and his prominent role in Church government at Roman level.

In contrast, Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh has a relatively low profile, is quite young (61) ecclesiastically speaking, and can afford to wait. Besides, Cardinal Cahal Daly, though retired from the Primacy and ineligible because of age to vote for a new pope, remains vigorously involved in public debate. There was no way Rome was going to give a second red hat to Armagh.

AS WELL as the Armagh v Dublin argument, the other main objection to Archbishop Connell's appointment (apart from smart-ass personal denigration by some columnists) was on the grounds of his alleged unsuitability in the ecumenical area. He has undoubtedly held the Roman line uncompromisingly on such issues as contraception, women priests, the "intrinsically disordered" nature of homosexual activity and the "sham" of Catholics receiving communion in Protestant churches. His use of the latter word, in the context of President McAleese's action in Christ Church in 1997, was seen as particularly undiplomatic and politically incorrect.

The last straw, in liberal-pluralist eyes, is Connell's vigorous defence of the hardline Dominus Jesus document, issued last autumn by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is prefect and on which Connell is now serving a second term. He pulls no punches about his belief that the Catholic Church is the mother church, not the sister of other Christian denominations, and that the Anglicans' claim to have the Eucharist and the apostolic succession is, to say the least, flawed.

In short, for Archbishop Connell, the Catholic Church is the One, True Church, which generations of Irish children were taught it was. The relative silence of other Irish Catholic bishops on the issue must be interpreted as embarrassed agreement with the Dominus Jesus position.

Protestant churchmen professed to have been dismayed and shocked by Connell's support for the Dominus Jesus line, but surely they should have known better. For example, Paul Colton, the Church of Ireland bishop of Cork, expressed his disappointment with Connell's "condescending" attitude. In view of this naivety, I would recommend him to study the history of ecumenism in the diocese of Cork. It shouldn't take long and he would find it a maturing experience.

Last week, "sources" in the Presbyterian church were said to have reacted negatively to Connell's elevation which also caused some Methodists to worry about "the serious commitment of the Catholic Church to ecumenism". Otherwise, and not surprisingly, perhaps, mainstream Protestants kept a prudent silence. Also during the week Cahal Daly observed that on the question of ecumenism it would be best if all parties understood one another's positions clearly. Indeed. It should be appreciated that the priority of all Catholic bishops, and not just Dr Connell, is the defence and promotion of their own Church a la Dominus Jesus. Being friendly with other Christian denominations is a secondary and fairly new-fangled concern, though nonetheless genuine for that.

When Archbishop Connell said last month that "the Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to supporting the ecumenical movement", he meant it in the sense that Sinn Féin-IRA are committed to the peace process, that is, pursuing a desired goal in their own interpretation and on their own terms.

The Catholic Church is not engaged in a joint enterprise with other churches in order to become in the end one common Church of Christ. It aims rather to bring all Christians ultimately into its own true fold. That is the real sense of the sentiment ut unum sint; that they may all be one with us. Meanwhile, it is as pointless and arrogant for outsiders to criticise the rules and appointments made by the Catholic Church for its members, as it is for the FAI and the IRFU to upbraid the GAA for not opening Croke Park to other codes.

MY OWN scepticism in these matters is partly based on personal observation in the diocese of Cork over the decades. Up to, and indeed well after Vatican II, ecumenism was non-existent in Cork. Official Catholic attitudes being eloquently epitomised in 1951 in old Bishop Daniel Coholan's gruff reaction on being informed of his Protestant opposite number's demise: "Now he knows who's bishop of Cork." In the mid-1960s, Bishop Cornelius Lucey, Coholan's successor, rebuked Lord Mayor Sean Casey for his effrontery and contumacy (look it up) in reading a lesson in St Anne's Protestant church, Shandon.

Around the same time, the reverend Catholic chaplain at UCC advised the College officers that it was not permissible for them to attend the obsequies of a retired, and much respected, Protestant professor in St Finn Barre's Cathedral. They obediently put their backs to the railings outside while a handful of us dissidents imperilled our immortal souls by paying our Christian respects within the walls.

Today, Bishop John Buckley, Lucey's successor, not only has preached in that same heretical building, but has sanctioned collections among the Catholic faithful for its refurbishment! Why, I ask myself, did the Holy Spirit improbably dwell with me and the late Sean Casey in the 1960s and only belatedly visit his professional representatives in the 1990s? To adapt Seamus Mallon's witticism about the Belfast Agreement, ecumenism is a kind of spiritual Sunningdale for slow learners.

Finally, as an ecclesiastical aficionado, I would love to be at the Consistory in Rome on February 21. I suppose an invitation is out of the question, Your Eminence-to-be?

* John A Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at UCC [University College Cork]

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/no-cardinal-error-506549.html