ADDRESS BY MARY McALEESE, PRESIDENT OF IRELAND TO SEDOS - THE UNION OF 100 MISSIONARY CONGREGATIONS
ADDRESS BY MARY McALEESE, PRESIDENT OF IRELAND TO SEDOS - THE UNION OF 100 MISSIONARY CONGREGATIONS ROME, 12 FEBRUARY 1999
I am delighted and honoured to have this opportunity to join you today at this conference, to share some of my thoughts with you and to listen to yours. I would like to particularly thank Father Walter von Holzen for extending the invitation and my old friend, Father Laurence Freeman, who has been instrumental in making sure I am fully occupied in this wonderful visit to Italy.
The dictionary defines a missionary as “one sent on a mission to spread the knowledge of religion”. My fellow countryman, Oscar Wilde, in a less serious vein, described missionaries “the divinely provided food for destitute and underfed cannibals”.
What these descriptions both reflect, is the inadequacy of traditional understandings of missionary work in today’s world. Through the years I have come to know and to hugely admire the tremendous work done by missionaries in all parts of the world – the extraordinary heroism you have demonstrated in bringing and, more importantly, living the Gospel in remote parts of the world. More than anyone, you have great insight, distilled from your experience, that what the world needs most of all is the loving touch of God, not empty recitations from some rulebook. More than anyone, you are well placed to bring this message to a world still locked in conflict and prejudice.
It is a world that I know so well. As a child growing up in Belfast, we were encouraged to give money to “The Missions”, to save the babies – invariably black – from the terrible fate that awaited them if they were not converted to the true faith.
There was little space in those days for modern day concerns about cultural diversity or religious imposition. Even if there had been, no doubt we would have stared blankly in amazement. For the world I grew up in was one of very stark divisions and utter certainties. It was a world where on the same narrow street, Catholics and Protestants lived side by side, yet a world apart. For my family, God was male, Irish and Catholic. For my Protestant friends, God was still male – no gender-bending allowed – but with equal certainty, they knew him to be Protestant and British.
Those divisions extended into all facets of our lives. They determined not just our religious practice, but our identity, our culture, our understanding of history, the sports we played, the way we viewed the world and our place within it. We knew with certainty, without self-doubt, that ours was the one true faith, the true version of history; our Protestant neighbours were equally sure that their diametrically opposed system of beliefs and truths was equally infallible. If friendships survived – and, extraordinarily, they often did – they floated tenuously on an underlying current of suspicion and hostility between the two groups, which eventually erupted into murderous sectarian hatred.
What the sad catalogue of violence in Northern Ireland - and the cultural and religious apartheid that lies at its root - teaches us, is that an unquestioning acceptance of what has been handed down to us as infallible truth, is unhealthy, stultifying and ultimately destructive. Taught to focus almost exclusively on what separated us, we had little comprehension of what we shared in common. Taught to be fearful of contemptuous of the others’ beliefs, we learnt to prize uniformity and despise diversity. Now we pay a heavy price for all our certainties. For baby and bathwater all stand in danger of being thrown out by a cynical world tired of Christians squabbling ferociously among themselves.
Unless we are willing to reappraise our view of the world, to challenge past certainties, to admit we may not have a monopoly on right and on the truth, we are condemning ourselves and our children to spiritual, emotional and mental stagnation. Worse, we are condemning them to an acceptance and internalisation of the ethos that underpins the violence, conflict and contempt for difference that is so prevalent in our world today.
The blinkered attitudes of prejudice are not, of course, confined to Northern Ireland. We who claim the Christian faith must acknowledge that frequently religion – and, sadly, the Christian religion in particular – has all too often sustained rather than challenged this type of straitjacket mentality that fuels bigotry and narrow-mindedness in all parts of the world. It may be a warped religion, a religiosity that owes more to the prejudices and vanities of men and women than to the all-encompassing love of God. But it is a reality which we must acknowledge and tackle at root level – beginning with ourselves.
Sectarian hatred provides a warning to all of us of the evil that can be sustained under the guise of faithfulness to our ideals, to our heritage, to our love of our God, to that “bitterness and love, hand in glove”, which the Irish poet Seamus Deane has written of. It provides a warning, but also a challenge, an opportunity to reflect on past wrongs and how these can be righted as we approach the 3rd millennium, the 2000th anniversary of Christ’s nativity.
What type of Church do we want to have in the next millennium? What type of world? A world where poverty and injustice still hold sway over so much of this small globe, where people and women in particular are denied basic rights, basic dignity? Where every day is a fight for survival? A world in which religion is used and abused as a weapon for justifying hatred and contempt of others? A world in which the Churches are engaged in a siege mentality against the apparent Godlessness of the world, or caught up in unedifying bickering with each other? Who today calls us unconditionally to joyful celebration of the full spectrum of human diversity?
Christ called us to love and unity. If we are to fulfill his wish, we need to reappraise what that means as we approach the next millennium. What is our mission in the world as men and women of faith - lay people and religious alike – as we approach that milestone? Is it to be showcases for God’s transforming love or recruiting sergeants for exclusive memberships of elitist organisations?
We need to start from first principles, to accept that we are all God’s children, He has no favourites – He loves each of us deeply and equally. We are each born in and by his grace. Each has the potential to live a life of decency and respect for others – a potential that is often warped by the prejudices we are taught and learn for ourselves – but always with that potential for renewal, for redemption and for profound change of heart and habit. Brian Keenan learned this in the long years of captivity and brutality he suffered in Beirut. He looked at his captors, at the men who had inflicted humiliation and harm on him, and saw in each one of them not just a terrorist but, in his words, “a man, a man not defined by Islam or ethnic background, a man more confused than the man in chains, a man more hurt and anguished than the man he had just beaten”.
By insisting on retaining his own humanity in the face of brutality, by meeting violence not with hatred but with an extraordinary clearsightedness that saw beyond the acts of aggression to the person beneath, Brian Keenan found his own redemption. His was a physical prison, not the prison of the heart and soul in which so many of us are trapped.
That story demonstrates that love can be present in and can transcend even the worst of circumstances. It shows us that the cycle of hatred in which so many parts of the world are bound, is not unbreakable. In Northern Ireland, amid the terrible acts of violence and tit-for-tat killings, a few courageous men and women have struggled to heal the rifts and bitterness of generations, to stretch out a hand of friendship across the divide. Instead of wallowing in vengeance, recrimination and hatred they have transcended those human traps through prayer. Those men and women recognised that we all pray to the same God, that both sides have suffered terrible hurt. They recognised that if we are to create a better future for our children, we cannot remain in our respective bunkers, shored up by the conviction that God is on our side and our side alone. They recognised this, but more importantly, they did something about it. They did not wait for others to take the first step in reconciliation, they had the courage to take it themselves, at the risk of rejection by the other side, and of outrage within their own. They challenged the certainties on both sides, and in doing so, they created the space in which the green shoots of hope and renewal can spring up.
Such a transformation does not come about overnight. It requires many years of patient effort, many rejections, one step forward and two steps back. When things are going well, others join in and swell the ranks of those prepared to show generosity of spirit. But inevitably, there are setbacks and difficulties, and the chasm widens once again causing many to retreat back to their old familiar catchcries, their old prejudices and their worn-out mantras.
All too often in Northern Ireland, it seems to require the sickening tragedy of an atrocity like Omagh to reawaken the latent decency in people, to entice them back out of their bunkers and move forward again with hope. Could we finally agree to move beyond the momentum of the last atrocity to keep this process on the rails? Let us not leave it to a few committed individuals to keep the flame of hope alive when things get rough. Let us all find that momentum to keep moving forward within ourselves, simply because it is the right thing to do. Let us not waste the long years of patient dialogue and even more patient prayer, which have prepared the soil for the peace process we are now blessed with.
I am hopeful these efforts will not be wasted, for we have before us the example of those quiet, persistent doers who have kept hope alive in Northern Ireland against all the odds. That example, which so many of you have emulated in so many parts of the world, provides a role model for the rest of us. For in whatever sphere we are endeavouring to do our work, it gives us not just hope, but proof, that change is always possible, even when things are at their most bleak. It provides us with a challenge to take up that example and be the instigators of change in those other spheres.
It challenges the Churches to reassess traditional views of missionaries and missionary work. It challenges us to ask where are today’s mission fields? The role of the missionary has changed so radically from the days of my childhood – those days in which it was seen as one of recruitment officer, winning converts for our version of the truth, our view of God – headhunters or soulhunters is a big numbers game. A view in which those of other faiths and traditions were seen at best, as misguided, at worst, as enemies of the one true faith. That role has changed, - you are all evidence of that - but has it changed radically enough? Have we moved sufficiently beyond those outdated, confining preconceptions and succeeded in defining a new role for missionary work, indeed for the Churches generally, that meets the challenges of the new millennium? Have we fully realised the potential of building bridges of friendship and trust with those other faiths, who in the past were seen as competitors in the race for saving souls?
Today’s mission fields are the streets we were born in not just the African bush, the South American favala and we have made a start at mission with a difference. There are now many opportunities for cross religions encounter and dialogue which give new hope to people of faith. In recent months we have witnessed the joint retreat by Christians and Buddhists under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago. It is a sign that a willingness to come together in a spirit of openness and trust can be a source of immense enrichment to both ancient faiths, each with very different cultures and perspectives, but each sharing a rich sense of God’s presence in the world and in the human soul.
This is a promising episode in the new climate of inter-faith respect building, but much remains to be done. This spirit of reconciliation is one which our world is crying out for. We are all only too familiar with the ethnic conflicts that still tear countries and families apart, the denial of human rights to so many, the hunger, the poverty, the injustice that are so rife and so seemingly intractable across the globe. Reduced in scale to the lived lives of children, men and women, the avoidable suffering endured by God’s family is truly horrendous. God knows life itself brings enough capricious hardships.
In the face of such urgent need, it may seem that dialogue between the Churches is an academic point, that it will not put food in the mouths of children or take bullets from the guns of terrorists. Yet who could have predicted, either, that dialogue, perseverance and determination to find a better way could have swept away apartheid in South Africa, or created the basis for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland? Who could have predicted that from the debris of two World Wars, that once bitter enemies could today have built a Europe reconciled and at peace, a European Union founded on the principles of mutual respect, partnership and equality?
This gives us a role model which can be applied elsewhere in the world. For it shows us how even the most unyielding problems can be resolved on the foundations of a common value system, built by men and women of good faith coming together with a common mission as equals and with a commitment to turn away from a conflict driven world view to a consensus driven one.
If such a value system is to have real effect across the world, it must be genuinely global. It must transcend charges of ethno-centricity, to be accepted in the slums of South America and the villages of Africa. Given the diversity of cultures, values and social structures that exist across the world, it may seem that the challenge of formulating such a set of guidelines for human behaviour that can be accepted universally is either impossible or would require an imposed homogenisation.
In fact, neither is the case. The building blocks for such a common ethic already exist within the religions of the world. How wonderful if would be if religion – the source of so much conflict in the past – could in future become the source of unity – if the wasteful quest for uniformity could become a radical call to acceptance of diversity as the essential prelude to unity.
Within our diversity, there is a common essence among all the great religions. An essence which has at its heart the Golden Rule that “we must treat others as we would wish them to treat us”. That basic premise, which is so familiar and yet so astonishing in its simplicity and power, is capable of being the source of a truly global ethic. An ethic, which in the words of Hans Küng “seeks to work out what is already common to the religions of the world despite their differences over human conduct, moral values and moral convictions…which does not reduce the religions of the world to an ethical minimalism but represents the minimum of what they already have in common now in the ethical sphere”.
It is a framework which can gain acceptance by people of every culture and creed, because it finds resonance within every religion – Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Judaism, Hinduism, Native Religions and many more. There are few places on earth where these religions have not profoundly influenced – and continue to influence – the development of local value systems, local cultures. By coming together, they could play an invaluable role in promoting acceptance of this universal ethic within every culture and creed.
It sounds so simple. You may ask, then, why it has not already succeeded in changing the world. Perhaps, as GK Chesterton said of Christianity, “it is not that it has been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried”.
Now is the time to try it - so that as Hans Küng has said, “one day there may even be a UN Declaration on a Global Ethic, to provide moral support to the Declaration on Human Rights, which is so often ignored and cruelly violated.”
This is not a call for uniformity of religion, for attempting to deny or eradicate the kaleidoscope of differences in doctrine and form, practice and prayer that exist. God is, after all, the source of all diversity, the creator of each person as a unique human being. Those very differences between people, between religions, provide us with the most profound evidence of the scale of God’s embrace of diversity. But it is nevertheless a call to action, to build bridges of trust between the different religions, particularly between the different Christian Churches, that can provide causeways of trust to other faiths. It is an invitation to listen and learn from each other, to identify the core values and objectives that unite us, and to respect the different pathways we have found to God’s presence. Above all it is a call to teach the next generation respect, real respect for difference – to take from them and to bury the old batons of contempt.
There will always be those who will fear this call, those who will dismiss it as a pointless pipedream, which can have no effect in the real world. Those outside the Churches and those within them, who cherish the status quo, who are willing to offer friendship and respect only on their terms, who reject the opportunity to listen to the perspectives of those of other faiths, who are blind to the light that this exchange of trust and friendship can shed on our own perspectives, our understanding of each other and of God.
It is often those at the margins, far from the power structures that drive every institution, even and especially the religious, who are most willing to take the necessary risks and I know many of you here today are included in their ranks. They have least to lose from upturning the comfort of established relations, the polite but empty exchanges that have so often marked inter-faith dialogue in the past. They are closest to those in greatest need of our help – those whose lives are torn apart by conflict, poverty, injustice and despair, those whom we label as the marginalised, the socially excluded. Their insight and wisdom are needed in the world. Their giftedness is needed.
Women, in particular, have a lot to contribute in terms of shaking up the established system. Women, after all, have never been at the heart of religious power structures, and perhaps this distance allows us to focus more clearly on what needs to change. Missionary organisations are also ideally placed to carry on this peaceful revolution, for you have already done so much to transform the lives of those around you – work which is priceless and for which you so rarely receive the acclaim and thanks you deserve.
A world which paralyses the giftedness of so many of its people – which locks it away, straightjackets it, skews its growth – that is a world that is impoverished. That is our world. A world which does look gift horses in the mouth – which wastes human ingenuity and imagination on a frightening scale. In your own work you have seen that waste devour lives and defeat the best of people.
As Seamus Heaney says in his poem, ‘From the Canton of Expectation’, “the future lies with what’s affirmed from under”. My own deepest insight into the meaning of God’s love and his plan for humankind comes to me through the mystery and wonder of motherhood. When my first daughter Emma was born, I approached the new role of motherhood with the jaundiced eye of older sister to five brothers and three sisters. I had had babies up to my tonsils throughout my teenage life. My mother and her siblings had taken to heart the gospel call to increase, multiply and fill the earth, except that they thought they had to do it singlehandedly. Between them they had sixty children most of them younger than me. If the truth be told I had a relatively underwhelmed attitude to babies generally. I was surprised therefore to find myself so completely overwhelmed and totally smitten by my own daughter. I loved her to bits. Consequently when I discovered some two years later that I was expecting twins I hit an unexpected crisis. These twins were badly wanted but for nine awful months I struggled to comprehend how I was going to divide this wonderful river of love for Emma between two more children. I was heartbroken for her. She was now to have two thirds of her normal allotment of love withdrawn and distributed among her rival siblings. I thought it a shameful thing to do to a child, but what else was there to do?
How little I knew. When the twins were born and I passed through that knowledge and experience barrier that books are incapable of explaining, I knew how rudimentary, simplistic and pathetic was my comprehension of love. There was no need to share what Emma had. Here were two new babies, each one with their unique river of grace and love. Not only did I not have to share Emma’s love, it was now enhanced and even more vibrant, touched as it was by these two new lives.
You cannot divide love. Its nature is to multiply, to embrace openly and widely, to draw in, not to exclude, to make each feel part of the group, to make each feel completely at home, to reconcile.
Exclusivity is not in the nature of God. He made each one of us, called up by our name, knew us before we were born, has the very hairs on each head counted. God has no favourites. Captor and captive are his cherished children. Calvary is his gift to all. The Resurrection is his promise. The Second Coming is his invitation. It is an invitation to experience his loving presence, to share it and to bring the world out of chaos into reconciliation with Him.
That is the task - the missionary task for the 2nd Millennium – simple and only elusive if we let it be.