ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF “RECONCILING MEMORIES”
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF “RECONCILING MEMORIES” AT THE IRISH SCHOOL OF ECUMENICS MILTOWN PARK, DUBLIN
Firstly, I’d like to thank you for your very warm welcome on this – my first visit to Miltown Park as President. I am particularly pleased to have been invited to launch this Second Edition of Reconciling Memories – as it addresses a subject very close to my heart – and one which is particularly relevant in Ireland today – facing, as it does, the prospect of a new departure – a whole new set of relationships. In the months and years ahead – all of us will need to look closely to ourselves – to our beliefs and understandings – and to re-assess them - in a process of unlocking memories - perhaps exploding some myths – and a re-appraisal of those whom we consider to be ‘others’ – or ‘not on our side’.
Only last month – I had the privilege of launching the Believers Report – which arose out of a process of dialogue between the different Christian churches on this island – and which, for those involved in the process – meant that they had to go through a process of “introspective examination” – reflecting on their ethos – on their interpretations of the basic Christian message – and giving consideration to the “challenge of being reconciled with those of other traditions”. For the participants in that dialogue and enquiry – it was a therapeutic process of reconciling with the self – with the Church - and with fellow Christians - and involved a high level of commitment to the process of reconciliation which - as the report’s commentary said - “may sometimes leave them vulnerable to the charge of ‘letting the side down’”.
“Reconciling Memories” is a more broadly based volume – reflecting the diverse contributions from theologians, political scientists, historians, philosophers and literary critics. Interestingly, the essays that made up the first edition - a decade ago – still stand – “they have worn well” – as Alan Falconer and Joseph Liechty put it in the Preface to this edition. The further work and thought on the process of reconciliation – of forgiveness and understanding – that was in many ways spawned by the first edition – and was progressed in the essays published in the special issue of “Studies” in 1989 - is reflected in the additional material in this edition. Over the last decade, of course – there have been immense changes in Europe - with the ending of the Cold War – and the re-emergence of old ethnic conflicts in the region of the former Yugoslavia - where the world has seen the awful face of ethnic hatred and conflict – but on a much greater scale than that which has been so destructive in Ireland.
Mirosalv Wolf had first-hand experience of the ugliest and worst excesses of that terrible conflict - where different factions retreated behind the armour-plated walls of their own bigotry and hatred - each knowing that they had God on their side - as they pillaged, raped and plundered - for the cause of the “group”. Wolf says that “in situations of ethnic conflict, churches often find themselves accomplices in war, rather than agents of peace. We find it difficult to distance ourselves from our own culture, and so we echo its reigning opinions and mimic its practices.” He warns that while group identities are important places which offer us belonging - recognition - and a place to be truly ourselves - they can also become “fortresses into which we retreat, surrounding ourselves by impenetrable walls dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’. They are havens of belonging as well as repositories of aggression, suffocating enclosures as well as bases of liberating power”.
As the political process in Northern Ireland moves on into new phases of activity – and the prospect of permanent peace creates a space for us to look to new horizons – there is a growing awareness of the need to resolve positions and conflicts – to reconcile each other in our beliefs and traditions – in the knowledge that there are victims and oppressors on every side – and that nobody has a monopoly on ‘victimhood’.
That will be an ongoing process – and will ultimately involve all of us in examining what we are – and what we should be – in terms of our religion and tradition – all the while striving to create a healthy society - which celebrates diversity rather than suppresses it - where cultures and traditions draw on each other rather than try to bury each other - where the spiral of civilisation and social development is upward. To achieve that, minds must be capable of opening to the richness of diversity - to the realisation that harmonious co-existence and joyful curiosity - rather than blinkered intransigence are the way forward.
Last weekend I was in Lourdes as part of the 40th International Military Pilgrimage. In 1959 soldiers of the armies of France and Germany came together to pray for each other and for peace in the wake of a war in which they were the bitterest of enemies. Each side carried bleak memories of the other to that place of prayer but in standing side by side before the one God in whom they each believed they acknowledged their common membership of God’s huge and at times dysfunctional family and they committed themselves to healing the dysfunctional parts. Forty years later the armies of 30 countries prayed, sang and marched together – a strong inflow to the energy and hope offered by reconciliators. Their pilgrimage did not end conflict. It did not bring peace but it travelled part of the difficult road towards acknowledging the crucial need to be open to the otherness of each other.
Reconciling memories is central to that process – and the essays in this volume air many of the issues to be teased out – raising many questions that will have to be considered and - I have no doubt – contributing immensely to the resolution of this conflict. It is a very important contribution to that process – and I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the contributors – and to Alan and Joseph for their work in editing the volume.