WHEN he presided at the opening of the new prison at the Curragh on Monday, Dean Robert Townley, a chaplain to the defence forces, quoted St Paul's letter to the Romans. The powers of the state, he read, were ordained by God and whoever resisted that power resisted the authority of God himself and would be punished. If you don't want to be afraid, keep the law and pay your taxes and your import duties too, because government workers need to be paid so they could get on with God's work - serving you. And so on and so forth.
Amen to that, nodded the assembled dignitaries, most of them State-paid. (The punished haven't moved in yet.) Embattled Minister Nora Owen commented that the verses should be displayed prominently in workplaces.