ROSARY brigade to the right!
Red rose brigade to the left! Nobody should be left standing in the centre.
Good.
Quick march!
Who said the God-squad and the secularists were a hangover from the Eighties?
The divide is alive and well in post-Christian Ireland. Fine Gael backbenchers are urging the Government to reopen the Vatican embassy.
They are supporting the church's role in education.
Labour is seeking to diminish the church's role and asking for a re-examination of State funding for school chaplains. The ideological gap may yet become a yawning gulf.
On the Fine Gael side are Peter Mathews and Mary Mitchell O'Connor.
Ruairi Quinn and Aodhan O Riordain line up on the left. Trendy Trots like O Riordain want to screen civil servants to ensure there are no lurking Christians among them.
The Fine Gaelers should tell Labour to get off their politically correct bandwagon.
Labour is simply posturing. It's what it does best. There are many practical reasons for Ireland to have an ear and eye in the Vatican. Gilmore got it wrong.
This conflict goes to the core of what kind of society we want in Ireland. "It's the economy, stupid" was a phrase coined by James Carville, Bill Clinton's campaign strategist, in 1992. It's 20 years later. But the talk hasn't moved on. Understandably so, given the recession. The political platitudes still pivot around the economy.
However, in the background, sometimes timid and other times more trenchant cries can be heard outlining the type of society we want, be it secular or a republic where religion is at least respected and accorded its rightful place in a pluralist state. Sometimes Catholic tribal time bombs explode, more often they simmer in a stew or just implode over Protestant 'sham' communion. Remember that one?
The Labour Party in Ireland presents itself as a soft left-leaning party. But it sits with the socialists in Europe. And if it sits with the socialists, we can deduce it is socialist. Among them are many militant atheists and secularists. Fine Gael, by contrast, is linked with the European People's Party, which is centre-right. It is affiliated with the Christian Democrats.
Labour's ideology is a mixture of democratic socialism, social democracy and the muddled, sorry, middle, Third Way. It clashes with Fine Gael's conservatism.
A discussion about underlying philosophical principles and not just pragmatic policies is well worth having: about the place of religion, to take just one example, in our post-Catholic state.
With all the focus on economics, isn't it time we talked about what we do believe in?
About God?
Or the Good?
Traditionally, Christian Democrats seek to apply mainly Catholic principles to public policy. Gay Mitchell and John Bruton, to name but two, represent this tradition. It is usually conservative on social, moral and economic matters. It advocates a social market economy.
PD liberal ideologues (yes, they're still around), like Michael McDowell and Pat Cox, are free-marketeers. Capitalists, to use the dirty word. Social democrats such as Ruairi Quinn and Brendan Howlin tend to be pro the welfare state and secular.
They are reformist rather than revolutionary. McDowell, by contrast, is a radical on the right.
By and large, we know where our political parties stand on economic matters.
Fianna Fail is populist.
It changes its mind frequently, lurching from being socialistic to full-on free-market buccaneers.
Think Charlie McCreevy.
Fianna Fail can irritate, from time to time, with its naff nationalism and republican rhetoric.
Sinn Fein wants to go it alone in Europe -- 'we ourselves', as it proudly proclaims. For most of its history it has been associated with the IRA. That's just the start of its problem as we saw in the presidential election.
It's on the loony left economically speaking, even if Pearse Doherty is one of the Dail's brightest boys. Leftists want equality at all costs. If 'egalite' is the catch-cry of the socialist, 'liberte' is the word that gets the liberal salivating.
The problem with liberalism, with all its talk about freedom and the rights of the individual, is that it can so easily become social atomism, with everyone doing their own thing.
There is no sense here of the common good. Liberals prioritise the 'right' over the 'good'.
They uphold the principles of limited government, a minimal state and the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. Liberals regard the state as a 'necessary evil', which should act as a 'night watchman'.
Thomas Jefferson summed up the liberal position simply when he stated that that government is best which governs least.
It is easy to see how, despite these well-worn dictums, that 'a liberal society' (if such a thing is possible) can degenerate into advocating excessive market fundamentalism and social Darwinism. That's probably why the PDs never commanded, despite their charismatic leaders, much support from an eclectic electorate.
Remember Marx's famous aphorism: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'? Well, if we don't hear such embarrassing slogans as 'workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains', from the Labour Party, Joe Higgins's lilting voice is an important one to listen to in his critique of the neo-liberal hegemony, which has all but destroyed our country.
Private sector workers are the new proletariat. But Labour is so entrenched with the unions that it can't see past the long driveways hiding the houses of the union bosses.
Yes, Karl Marx was right. It is true that 'the free development of each is the precondition for the free development of all'. But the problem in Ireland was with developers running amok.
There were not enough stringent critiques coming from the Labour benches. With their bland blend of Keynesianism and liberal capitalism, the Labour Party has lost its weary way.
Think of Joan Burton and her radical lurch to the right with her recent remarks on social welfare. A case of the poacher turned gamekeeper if ever there was one.
Christian Democrats are conservatives who want to change in order to conserve things.
Paradox is the passion of thought, after all.
They emphasise the importance of tradition, human imperfection and an organic society.
But the young turks in the Tory camp of Fine Gael wear a worrying blue rinse.
Their hue is permeating all around them and slowly choking them in the straitjacket of ideology rather than in the free-play of interesting ideas.
Ideas have been in short supply. And that's why this righteous furore over religion might just be the start of something real that could contribute to renewing our republic.
It is high time.
Dr Stephen J Costello is a philosopher and therapist