THE all party support in the Dail for the divorce Bill now going through the Oireachtas might appear at first glance to support one of the main arguments made by conservative campaigners: that "traditional family values" are being swamped by a liberal agenda which has in turn hijacked the traditional party system and left hundreds of thousands of conservative voters disenfranchised.

Attractive as that analysis may be for conservative campaigners, it is rather dubious on a number of fronts. Closer examination actually suggests that, far from being some form of alien force which has hijacked the political system, the current liberal consensus may actually be simply a variation on the Catholic conservatism it replaced.

Historically, Ireland has had a long tradition of what could be called political Catholicism, running through O'Connell's mass movements of the 1830s right up to Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. That political Catholicism differed, however, in two respects from the political Catholicism to be found elsewhere in 19th and 20th century Europe.

Whereas Catholic parties in Europe were often directly linked to the church, right down to receiving funding from local bishops, Ireland's political movements were much less so.

That was because, unlike in Germany or France, the major Catholic party was not a player in a competitive market, but was the dominant force. The Catholic Church did not have to get involved in politics; the party which dominated the market, whether under O'Connell, Parnell, de Valera or whoever, already accepted its ethos.

That in turn had a second result. While Catholic parties in Germany and Italy and elsewhere tended to be committed to a formalised ideology as promoted in papal encyclicals, Irish Catholic politics tended to be much more populist. Irish political Catholicism was grassroots led rather than elite orientated.

Thus, while in the 1920s there were demands by, among others, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin that divorce be made illegal, the bishops on that issue were really pushing an open door, with committed Catholics such as W.T. Cosgrave and Eamon de Valera already committed personally to opposing divorce.

Many of the legal changes which came about after independence, from the censorship of films and publications to the restrictions on drinking, came through lobbying from lay or largely lay pressure groups.

Indeed even the bishops balked at some proposals, such as W.T. Cosgrave's suggestion that the Free State be given an upper house of theologians to advise on the morality or otherwise of proposed laws.

Unlike their Catholic counterparts in Europe, Irish parties were actually able on occasion to go against the church when they felt like it. When the church urged de Valera to support Franco during the Spanish Civil War, it was told quite bluntly to mind its own business.

Similarly, when conservative Catholics demanded that de Valera make Catholicism Ireland's established religion in his new constitution, they were ignored. Indeed, in the face of cold fury from anti Semitic and anti Protestant Catholic fundamentalists, de Valera went so far as to give constitutional recognition to the Church of Ireland and the Jewish faith.

The text even made clear that the "special position" given to Catholicism was only because of its numerical superiority, not because it was the supposed "true church". That statement alone was practically treason in the eyes of some conservative Catholics.

HISTORY suggests clearly that the Irish parties took their religious consensus from grassroots Catholics rather than from official channels.

While initially, from the 1920s to the 1950s, grassroot Catholics tended to be even more extreme on occasion than the official church (in 1925 Douglas Hyde lost his Senate seat because of snide attacks on him from the Catholic Truth Society which had claimed, wrongly, that he was pro divorce), by the 1960s and 1970s grassroots Catholicism was much more moderate than the official Catholicism espoused by the Hierarchy.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a whole sea change in sexual attitudes occurred among Irish Catholics. The use of contraception became widespread, as did sex outside marriage. That fact was reflected in the growing liberalism of the contraception laws, which went through in the teeth of opposition from bishops yet with large scale indifference from voters.

A sea change also occurred on abortion, with anti abortion campaigners fighting a losing battle to try to generate any mass demand for another abortion referendum. And, in the 1995 divorce referendum, more Catholics voted in favour of divorce than in 1986, even though the Hierarchy took a stronger anti divorce stance on the second occasion.

Each of the main parties in turn has adopted a liberal stance on contraception, abortion, homosexuality and divorce. Yet none has yet abandoned totally the Catholic consensus to push for a truly secular policy programme that would, for example, advocate removing the church from the education system.

Even the once radical FDs have backed away from advocating removing references to a deity in the Constitution.

The parties instead have adopted a newer, more liberal Catholic based consensus. This is in response to public opinion. It is the growing liberalism of ordinary Catholics, rather than the machinations of secular liberals, that has moved the centre of Irish politics away from conservatism and towards a moderate liberalism.

What the conservative agenda needs now is for one of the main parties to abandon the moderate liberal Catholic consensus that they all currently subscribe to and move to a purely secular agenda. Such a move would create a reaction that could allow a European style intellectual conservative Catholic movement to appear in Ireland for the first time.