07.10.2014
Church Must Act as Moral Compass for Law – New Law Term Service Hears
The annual New Law Term Service took place in St Michan’s Church, Dublin 7, this morning (Monday October 6). Archbishop Michael Jackson presided and with him were the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne and the Archdeacon of Dublin, the Ven David Pierpoint, who gave the address.
The large congregation included the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Christy Burke, and Chief Justice Susan Denham as well as members of the Irish Judiciary, An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces, the Diplomatic Corps and many from the legal profession. There were also visiting judges from Northern Ireland, Scotland and England and Wales. The choir was from The King’s Hospital School.
In his address, Archdeacon Pierpoint suggested that law and religion went hand in hand. However, he said that the Church should not interfere in matters of State or the law but instead should act as a moral compass.
“Law is there to protect the weak and at times we all need that protection. Law is there to protect us from ourselves, but it cannot make us virtuous and when Law enters the arena of morality, it nearly always runs into difficulties. How far can sexual behaviour or same sex marriage or blasphemy or the right of women for personal autonomy be dealt with by Law, except in the limited sense of protecting the vulnerable?” he asked.
“By the same token, the talk about the imposition of harsher penalties for certain crimes and lesser penalties for others and still further proposed legislation on issues of integrity and self–determination in the name of law and order can only make a very limited impact on the well–being of society and may even prove to be counterproductive,” he added.
The Archdeacon urged legislators to be cautious when preparing changes to our Constitution, particularly in the area of morality.
Archdeacon Pierpoint’s sermon is reproduced in full below.
St Michan’s Church
(The church of the Law Courts)
6th October 2014
Sermon preached by The Venerable David Pierpoint
Archdeacon of Dublin
Readings: Jeremiah Ch 31 vs 31–34, Romans Ch 7 vs 14–25
Almost 20 years ago when I last gave the address at this service to mark the opening of the new law term, a wise old priest gave me some good advice. “You must avoid the temptation to pontificate on legal matters about which the congregation is likely to be much better informed than you”. “Stick to what you know” he went on to say, “for there is much in church doctrine, church history, theology and in the bible to speak about issues which are relevant to the congregation at the service”.
From today’s first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, it is obvious that he was a man of great faith, yet he was also a social reformer, in search of justice and a champion of the oppressed. How many of us here today can honestly say that about how we conduct our lives either in the church or in the courts.
A former dean of Liverpool Dr Patey, once gave an address to a gathering of lawyers on the link between the church and the law. In this, he said, “Of the many great discoveries which the Old Testament Jewish people made about God and humanity, none was more relevant to today’s society than their sincere belief that there is an inextricable relationship between the enactment and enforcement of law on the one hand and the worship of Almighty God on the other”.
To expand on that for a few minutes I would suggest that at a very basic level, this was summed up in the two fold commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength and to love your neighbour as yourself. In the more rigorous regulations demonstrated in the Old Testament books of the law, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, there was no part of life that was not the subject of legal codes and equally, no part in life that was not seen in terms of obedience or disobedience to God’s will. Good conduct and morality were both part of the one thing. Throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, law and religion go hand in hand. Each is seen to be vitally necessary to the other.
Yet there is a rebellious spirit in all of us. When we see a notice not to walk on the grass, our feet almost itch to do just that! The orange light on traffic signals seems to be a sign to drivers to accelerate! I remember once seeing a cartoon in The Church Times, which seemed to catch what theologians call “original sin”. It showed a massive field with nothing in it except a notice board with the words, “It is forbidden to throw stones at this notice board”. I used to think as a school boy, that most of the rules were invented by teachers for the sole purpose of seeing whether we would break them. Yes, there is a rebellious nature in each of us.
St Paul as we heard in the second reading seemed to know this only too well “When I want to do right, only wrong is within my reach. The will to do good is there, the deed is not”. And this I believe led him in his second letter to the Corinthians, to declare “Sin gains its power from the law”.
This seems to suggest that Law, though essential for the conduct of our human affairs, has a limited place in them. Law is there to protect the weak and at times we all need that protection. Law is there to protect us from ourselves, but it cannot make us virtuous and when Law enters the arena of morality, it nearly always runs into difficulties. How far can sexual behaviour or same sex marriage or blasphemy or the right of women for personal autonomy be dealt with by Law, except in the limited sense of protecting the vulnerable? By the same token, the talk about the imposition of harsher penalties for certain crimes and lesser penalties for others and still further proposed legislation on issues of integrity and self–determination in the name of law and order can only make a very limited impact on the well–being of society and may even prove to be counterproductive.
The Old Testament writers knew the importance of law and it would appear that many of them were excellent legislators. But they also began to see that the point would be reached where something more than law was needed for the health of the community. It was Jeremiah who put those fears into words when he said “The Lord says, the time is coming when I will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah. It will not be like the covenant of old when I led them out of Egypt. Although they broke my covenant I was patient with them. This is the covenant I will make with Israel after those days: I will set my law within them and write it on their hearts”.
Jeremiah did not wish to set the law aside but rather he wanted to put it in its religious context. He saw how our spiritual motivation, which finds its expression in worship, must be more important and more effective than legal sanctions. I believe that it why it is so perilous to neglect the spiritual (as many of our leaders in politics, industry, social life and even the legal profession seem to do) because that is to ignore the catch 22 dilemma which St Paul described when he spoke about sin gaining its power from the law.
I ask all legislators to use caution when preparing for changes to our Constitution especially on issues of morality. In last Tuesday’s Irish Times the article written by Fiach Kelly on the proposed constitutional amendment on the Blasphemy Law stated “The constitutional convention said in its report that it received “very many” submissions on blasphemy and said “there seemed to be an overwhelming support for the removal of the clause. The issue is regarded by many of those who made submissions as part of a much wider debate, including the role of God and religion in the Constitution and the separation of Church and State.” Like the Old Testament Jewish people, I believe church and state, church and the Law are inextricably linked. That is not to say that the Church should interfere in matters of State or the Law, but its role should be one of engagement with them in critique and moral guidance acting as a type of moral compass. It was George Bernard Shaw who famously said that “morality without religion is like a tree without roots”. Right living and righteousness or morality are part of the one thing.
Jeremiah’s prophesy is still valid today. There is a new covenant to be written in the hearts of all people. It is a covenant between human kind and our neighbour, based firmly on a covenant between humanity and our God. This still comes as an intimate question to each one of us as it did when Jeremiah first wrote those words, especially to those whose religious faith and practice has grown weak or become a mere formality.
Is our faith in God and Jesus Christ restricted to times of worship or private prayer or like Jeremiah of old, are we prepared to combine our faith with social reform, the search for justice and championing the poor? If that happens as I pray it does, then as legislators, judges, barristers, solicitors, even members of the defence forces, An Garda Siochana, the prison service and church leaders, we can change for the better, the way every citizen lives their lives.
So today’s service can be viewed on two levels, the formal and the symbolic. On the formal level it represents the historical survival of a link between the Law and the Church. But on the symbolic level, it points to what it is and always must be; a key to deep conviction which comes about over many centuries from writers both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, that a healthy society demands, not only sound laws respected by all the people, but a living faith, giving vision and courage and hope to a people who know not only how to be law abiding but also how to be virtuous.