Dublin Reviewing Link to Church

DUBLIN, Nov. 23—The Irish Government has embarked on a delicate and possibly far reaching reassessment of its re lationship with the Roman Catholic Church.

The immediate aim is to ease the fears of Protestants in Ul ster that the Irish Government is “priest‐ridden” and domin ated by the Catholic Church. But officials view changes on such issues as divorce, contra ception and censorship as nec essary in the long run if Ire land is to be reunited.

Prime Minister John Lynch and other officials are involved in a referendum campaign to amend the church's “special po sition” in the Constitution. The referendum, on Dec. 7, is con sidered deeply significant be cause a sizable vote to delete the church's favored status could open the way to key so cial changes. Government offi cials say that defeat of the measure or a small vote in fa vor, would confirm the fears of Northern Protestants and set back unification.

‘Historic Opportunity’

“There is now an historic op portunity to raise ourselves out of the quagmire of hatred to work together to create a new kind of Ireland,” said George Colley, the Minister of Finance and director of the smoothly organized referendum cam paign. “It must be clear that we are talking of an Ireland which Protestants and Catholics will share and in which neither party will dominate.”

Ireland is now sharply split along religious lines. Two‐thirds of Northern Ireland's 1.5 mil lion people are Protestant; in the Irish Republic to the south, 95 per cent of the population of three million are Catholic. The Protestants in the North have long feared unification because it would mean Catholic ascend ancy over them.

So far the Catholic Church has been somewhat equivocal about the campaign to revise what is widely referred to sim ply as “Article 44,” the part of the Constitution that recognizes “the special position of the Holy Apostolic and Roman Church” in Ireland. William Cardinal Conway, head of the church in both parts of Ireland, has said that he would not shed a tear over the deletion of Article 44, but there is disappointment in the Government that the Irish Catholic hierarchy as a body has not formally supported the amendment.

In fact, many priests in Dub lin and Cork have given publicity to meetings organized against the proposal, arid a movement called “Defend 44” has been set up to keep the ar ticle on the ground that abor tion reform, the sale of contra ceptives, and sexual permissive ness would follow its repeal. Leaders of the movement have said that the Irish will commit “spiritual Kara‐kiri” if they amend the article.

High Government officials maintain that the deletion of Article 44 would merely be a gesture, but a highly symbolic one. “It would show our open mindedness and our desire for genuine change,” said a senior official. Defeat of the amend ment, he said, would play right into the hands of such people as William Craig, the militant Ulster Protestant leader.

Mr. Lynch's Government is now working with an all‐party committee on constitutional re visions, considering especially repeal of the ban on divorce. Other changes under discussion would enable the partners of religiously mixed marriages to adopt children and would ease censorship. Some of the books now judged “indecent or ob scene” are by such authors as Bernard Malamud, Iris Murdoch, Colette, and John Updike.

‘Saying Nothing Beautifully’

Critics of the Government, maintain that on the crucial issues of contraception and education, Mr. Lynch and his Cabinet have so far done little to ease the anxieties of the northern Protestants. “Saying nothing, but beautifully,” began a recent article in This Week magazine, a popular Dublin weekly. It added:

“The reiterated appeal to the northern citizens of ‘Come in, we won't hurt you’ is only reminiscent of the classic tale from the nursery, of the spider and the fly.”

Earlier this year the Govern ment opposed a measure in the legislature — called the “Dail” in Gaelic—that would have permitted the sale of contracep tives as well as the circulation of advice on family planning. At present Mr. Lynch says only that the issue is before the Irish Supreme Court because of the actions of a Dublin women's group that bought contraceptives in Belfast and distributed them illegally at home.

The debate is especially em barrassing because under‐the counter sales of contraceptives are common in Dublin.

Recently, a Catholic marriage advisory council in Cork, the first established in Ireland, was closed by the Bishop of Cork and Ross, the Most Rev. Cor nelius Lucey, who took excep tion to the remark of one of the counselors that 93 per cent of those attending postmarriage courses were seeking advice on family planning. The comments of Dr. Lucey—a church con servative who has been cool to the deletion of Article 44 — were widely publicized in Northern Ireland.

School Issue Is Crucial

Perhaps even more crucial is the issue of primary school education, still overwhelmingly under the control of the church.

Dr. Noel Browne, a former Minister of Health and an Irish Labor party member of the Dub lin Parliament, said forcefully that “the church has controlled our education, and although they'll make concessions on some issues,” they insist on sectarian schooling.

“We have a church as au thoritarian as any South Amer ican Republic, with a hierarchy as rigid as any in Europe,” he added. “It has blocked desper ately needed social legislation and it has been an important contributor to the fact that we are a country with had health services, dreadful housing, poor education.”

Dr. Browne, a Catholic‐born physician who represents a working‐class Dublin constitu ency in Parliament, said:

“Why the hell should any Northern Protestant in his right mind want to join the Republic? On our record, in terms of our inferior social welfare or free dom of conscience, no Protes tant or Catholic should want to conic here and accept out standard of living, our way of life.

“All of us here are victims and end products of the same sectarian education. Our ideol ogies, our social attitudes are predetermined by our educa tion. Priests don't have to go into Parliament because we're taught by them as children.”

Dr. Browne conceded, how ever, that the church was in the midst of changes because of political necessity, the rest lessness and questioning of Irish youth, and television dis cussions and documentaries from Britain that have had an impact on the Irish. “There's obviously a ferment taking place now,” he said. “The church knows they've got to change and the Government knows it too.”