A proposal by the Social Democrats and Labour to remove the prayer reading before Dáil sessions has been described as a “self-indulgent… contempt for Christian practices”.
The prayer is read out in both Irish and English by the Ceann Comhairle before Dáil sessions. It is followed by a 30-second moment of reflection.
Carol Nolan TD for Laois-Offaly told The Irish Catholic the issue of the prayer was debated and resolved in 2017 when it last arose, which showed “there is no desire to abandon the prayer”.
“Here we go again on the self-indulgent merry-go-round with parliamentarians trying to disguise what is really a fundamental contempt for Christian practices under a guise of inclusiveness,” Ms Nolan said.
She added that “there certainly is a desire on the part of a small vocal minority to jettison Christian symbolism and practice from the political realm. I think that it is a mistake and I will not support it”.
Minister of State and Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae said that he would be “vehemently opposed to any suggestion to remove the prayer and the moment of reflection that we have in the Dáil”.
Mr Healy-Rae said: “I’m not trying to drive the Catholic religion down on anybody… but how could anybody object to, when you start a meeting, blessing yourself? And if you don’t want to bless yourself, there’s nobody forcing you to. Even just standing up and have a moments reflection and just think about things, is there anything wrong with that?”
“For Labour and the Social Democrats, they should be ashamed of themselves. Have they anything better to do in representing the people of Ireland than using valuable time and concentrating their efforts on this?” he added.
In a debate on Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder on the issue last week between Senator Ronan Mullen and Social Democrat TD Gary Gannon, Mr Gannon said that having a singular prayer from a particular tradition is “not reflective anymore”.
Senator Mullen said “there’s something still deeply Christian about our country… it strikes me that we probably don’t realise just how much we depend on our Christian tradition for a lot of what we take advantage of as our modern virtues”.
He added that whether people are religious or not “they still value traditions and they still value ideals of goodness. And respect for the tradition might be to say ‘we’ll live with that prayer’”.
The prayer read out by the Ceann Comhairle is ‘Direct, we beseech Thee, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspirations and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance; that every word and work of ours may always begin from Thee, and by Thee be happily ended; through Christ our Lord. Amen.’
