Benevolent Secularism and the Recalibration of Church-State Relations in Ireland in the Aftermath of the Clergy Child Sex Abuse Scandals

In 2011, the Irish prime minister (taoiseach), Enda Kenny, gave a speech that made international headlines. He accused the Vatican of frustrating a civil inquiry into child sex abuse in Ireland, a sovereign, democratic republic and using the “gimlet-eye of a canon lawyer” to parse its responses, rather than to apologize and to prioritize the safety of children. He criticized the “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism” of the Vatican.1 What shocked the world was that a Catholic prime minister in Catholic, socially conservative Ireland would challenge the Catholic behemoth of the Vatican and assert the primacy of state sovereignty, questioning the moral authority and power of the Holy See. Kenny’s speech also pointed to an often overlooked issue: that while policy makers, politicians, and the media had spent most of the years since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States debating whether Islam was compatible with democracy, it was not clear whether Catholicism was.