'We Must Heed What is the Creed'

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Monday September 10, 2007 15:42

by C Murray

Father's Rights and The Constitution.

Michael Mc Dowell, being back in the High Court defending the Rights of the Father
is awaiting judgement of the Mr 'G' case, in which a father has applied for return of his kids
from another jurisdiction (UK) and the right to be a father and to educate his children.
Another recent High Court case is being prepared to go to the Supreme Court regarding
the rights of a woman to use the eggs she is storing and to have the dad pay for the
future life and education of any child conceived as result of the process- the father
won citing the end of the marriage and irreconcilable difference. She is appealing.
Both cases involve:- Father's Rights to family and both are read for and judged
within the confines of the Catholic Constitution drafted by De Valera and of
course substanially amended by Archbishop Mc Quaid. The 'G' case should get loads of coverage.

The frozen embroyo case underscored the right of the father not to have a family in the face
of irreconcilable differences between him and his former wife. The 'G' case involves the
desire of the father to have a role in the life and education of his children and judgement is
expected soon. In both cases the men involved have found themselves being subject to
their perceived role in the family and have had their roles defined by the Constitutional
definition of the role of both men and women in the family and in the State. It being unfair
to both men and women in the narrowest definition of gender roles. These cases
were not taken by women, we have not reached a level yet where the courts are used
to allow a woman's right not to have children be defined outside of a referendum.

The women must go to the European Court of Human rights in relation to abortion rights
and to appeal the narrowness conferred on our role by a law that defines us as
reproductive entities from the age of 12-menopause. Currently in Canonical and
Legislative definition we are not entitled to medical abortion, choice in maternity care,
and girls age from 12 are subject to co-equality which means that their lives are considered
co-equal with the foetus. The judgement on 'X' allowed for the legislation for limited
medical abortion , this has not been achieved by FF in ten years, nor in the nearly
16 years since the judgement. The issue of legislation is nothing to do with with
the writing of another expensive and divisive referendum. In the meantime we have
on the Statutes the Criminal law (Sexual offences) Bill 2006/2007, drafted by
ex- Minister Mc Dowell, no rights of the child to privacy and bodily integrity enshrined
in the constitution and the LRC wanting to reduce the age of statutory rape to 12 years.
We are behind in human trafficking laws and the sole arbitrator in moral and religious
affairs is the family and by extension the RC Church.

Men are rightly challenging the definition of their roles within the constitutional definitions
that have been handed down to us from the Mc Quaid era, which was informed by his
relation to right-wing Catholicism and encompassed a knee-jerk reaction to modernity
at the heart of the Holy See. The Catholic Church at Pope Benedict XV's time
claimed to be the one true church , conversion was the order of the day, with Ecumenism
a cover for the conversion of the Protestant minority in Ireland. This present pope
XVI has done something along the same lines by declaring Protestantism to be
a fraternal Christian order and RC the one true Church, based in the Apostolic
sucession. Today's Irish times reported on the Life Conference which urged
our Government to adhere to the rules of the RC religion (Tim O Brien reports).

The issue of inducing or encouraging our largely male legislature to adhere to RC
doctrine presents particular difficulties for women:-
The Primacy of Rome, Papal infallibility and the Uniqueness of Catholicism
do not accept in any way the rights of women except in a narrowly defined and purely sexist
definition of woman within her perceived familial and reproductive role.

read:-
Moratorium Annos 1928 (Pius XI)