Like many ageing clergymen, he has had a distinguished career articulating the One True Faith, his truth being international law. Like those stout vicars advancing in years, his sermons can tend to go on a bit.

Even as their enthusiasm may wax, their coherence wanes. And like those men of the cloth, there can be detected a tendency to invoke the authority of the Holy Writ, shrouded in an incense cloud of mystery, without actually being forced to critically examine that writ.

Never has Michael D more reminded me of these wellmeaning characters than last week, when he stood at the D'Olier Street pulpit and held forth under a banner asking, 'Is this the beginning of the end of international law?'

Underneath the litany of condemnations of the US and Israel there can be detected the faintest bit of confusion.

While condemning Israeli attempts to clear out Hezbollah rocket batteries in southern Lebanon being used to launch into northern Israel and kill her citizens, he imagines this (the Israeli response) to be the instigator of the end of international law. International law, according to Higgins, has as its highest aim the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure and the sole means to that end is adherence to the Geneva conventions.

He goes on later to claim that because the EU has refused to send money that would end up helping arm Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the EU has "handed the Middle East to the militarists". Leaving aside for the moment that the Middle East has been in the hands of militarists pretty much since the last Ottoman Pasha of the Tulip Era ran the neighbourhood, and with it the question of whether decadent empires are always bad things, Higgins goes on to thunder that Ireland should demand a "comprehensive settlement within the framework of international law".

Settlement to what, you ask? Thought we were talking about Lebanon? No, first on the list of 'issues' is "illegal settlement." Michael D here comes perilously close to agreeing with Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert, in arguing that there's no point to a temporary cessation until larger problems are solved.

It's when identifying the larger problems that political theology comes back into play.

Michael D talks about 'international law', but doesn't explain that international law dates back from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which founded the international system and granted radical equality of all sovereigns. Whether you're king of Spain or prince of a transalpine duchy a mile wide. In theory.

And that system could be said to have been functioning, more or less, from a Western point of view, until 1978 or so, when non-state terrorism fired with Jihadi fervour came into its own. Non-state actors, especially ones that don't accept the premise of international law . . . that the state is the only legitimate unit of political organisation . . . are trying to overthrow the system itself, including international law.

Even until 2000, when Israel withdrew from Lebanon, a state-to-state solution was possible. But what do you do when civilians are being killed by a group which then retreats behind the border of a state which cannot control its own territory? Which, when Israel and Jordan signed their 1994 peace accord, shelled Galilee as a protest? When your critics demand you adhere to their faith in 'international law' exposed as being neither between nations nor something resembling law in any meaningful sense?

Michael D is right on one point. If Hamas and Hezbollah were to coalesce into something resembling accountable governments that speak legitimately for their citizens, that would restore the usefulness of his classic model of a stateto-state solution under international law . . . something which, again, makes his position not very far from Condi's on democracy promotion.

Sadly, history doesn't seem to be moving in that direction . . .

for the moment.

In the meantime, Michael D's High Church pieties are at least still a pleasing if plaintive sound amid all the fury. Bless him.