Blair intended to end a UK broadcast, just before going to war with Iraq, by saying "God bless you all." He was talked out of it by advisers. Britain's (unwritten) constitution, more so even than Ireland's, acknowledges one "established" church. Yet using that phrase would have provoked a storm of hostile reaction. In the US, which professes to be secular, such facile sentiments are almost obligatory.

Just to pick up on Paddymac's post, the sections of Ireland's 1937 constitution dealing with spirituality were drafted by Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin, at the invitation of Eamonn de Valera.

My recollection is that divorce and the sale of contraceptives remained illegal in Ireland for some years after the repeal of article 44, but my memory may be faulty on that. Mcquaid once took it upon himself to demand (and get) the dismissal of a public librarian on the basis that her being a protestant put her in a position to influence others. Likewise a cabinet minister (Dr Noel Browne) was sacked in the early 1950s for advocating welfare support for disadvantaged mothers and children - this being a blatent usurpation of the church's responsibility to support families.

I have little truck with loyalist obduracy in the north, but those protestant leaders who wanted to whip up the fear of "rule from Rome" were given endless scope, thanks to the republic kow-towing to the Chair of St Peter in a degree not seen elsewhere since medieval times.