In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Ireland, humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial, Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation, And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations, Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution. —Preamble, Irish Constitution (1937) Who are "the people of Ireland" who have "give(n) themselves" the still-operative 1937 Constitution? The preamble explains the origins of a constitution that continues to structure Ireland's government, to provide "directive principles of public policy" to guide legislation, and to identify the fundamental rights guaranteed the people of Ireland. Yet one might think that the preamble—and by inference the Constitution itself—no longer fits Irish social reality. It is obviously a preamble for a people who understand themselves to be Roman Catholic—expressly in its reference to the Trinity, implicitly in its use of the Thomistic "final end," and with its invocation of the virtues of prudence, justice, and charity. And it is equally obviously a preamble for a people whose "fathers" (which, of course, can be both factual and metaphorical) struggled for national liberation. One might think, though, that more than seventy years on the people of Ireland no longer take Roman Catholicism to be central to their identify, and that the national liberation struggle is far behind them, perhaps even with a mildly