REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ON TUESDAY 21 JULY, 1998
I would like to thank you Fr. Keane for your kind words of welcome – and indeed to thank you for inviting me to join with you today for the General Assembly of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit – as you come together to evaluate your mission and work – and to look towards the future – and at how you will work in a world that seems to be in a constant state of flux.
In Ireland, we have seen profound changes in society over the last several decades – changes in family structures – changes in attitudes – changes in the way people relate to each other in communities and between communities. The turmoil that we have seen in Northern Ireland over the last thirty years or so – where communities have been polarised – people have become trapped in blinkered attitudes and blind convictions – and where, sadly, they have sought justification for their stance and bigotry in the Gospels – or their selective interpretations of them – has exerted considerable stress on our society and on our religious ethos.
It must seem strange to the outsider – that in a place where there is so much “Christianity” – where there are so many who profess to be following the Lord’s teachings – that people can so readily use scriptural quotations as rods with which to beat fellow Christians – or as steps to a higher moral ground from where they can look down on them and judge. Too many people hold desperately to the conviction that God is a Catholic and an Irish nationalist – or that he is Unionist and a British Protestant - that he is Jewish and Israeli - or Muslim and Palestinian. But nobody owns God - so clearly there is something amiss.
Christianity is not about quoting, mantra-like, from biblical sources – or simply memorising tracts from the Gospels. Surely it must have a practical dimension – where we map or plot our actions and attitudes onto the Gospel – where we are continually reviewing what we do and think, and how we relate to others – against the standards and teachings that are the basis of our Christianity – all Christianity – the common denominator of which is the Gospel of love.
Practicing the Gospel of love means different things to each of us, as we go about our own lives and reach for our own ambitions. It means that we have to accept that there are others besides ourselves that share the same piece of God’s earth. It means that all of us are shaped to some extent by our heritage and culture. It means that the actions of others are largely determined by their constructs of the likely outcomes - and by the reactions of others to their actions. It should force us all to think of others before ourselves – to accept that there are hates, apprehensions and fears – and that these can blind people to what is right. It also means that we must accept “others” for what they are – we must accept that it is not possible to homogenise humanity – and that we must embrace the world in all its diversity.
This is the base line in the context of conflict resolution – where we must accept that there are hurts and humiliations on all sides – that there are always victims and aggressors – but that nobody has a monopoly on victimhood. At times it may mean ‘sitting down with demons’ – talking to those who have injured us – who have flown in the face of our standards or acceptable practice and propriety. That can be a difficult test for even the strongest – and it is therefore the exercise that demands most practice.
Wouldn’t you think that - as we approach the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Christ – we would have practiced the Gospel of love enough by now to get it right! Sadly it seems that the indications are to the contrary – and that there are many manifest examples where the Gospel has been preached, and preached most loudly, where love is not found. Faced with that record of achievement, we are tempted to wonder should we write it off – or should we keep trying. The answer can be found in the lives of people that you see when you look beneath the macro level – at the lives of ordinary Christians in their own communities – people who are trying very hard to live the Gospel – and whose lives are quietly redeeming the bad that is happening around them. They are the ones who give us hope – and the inspiration to keep reverting to the Gospel of love.
Conflict is not unique to Ireland. There are many places in the world where there is conflict. In recent years we have seen terrible suffering and inhuman acts which are echoes of the unthinkable and unspeakable evils that were perpetrated on the Jewish race a little over a half of a century ago. It seems almost unbelievable that it should happen again in such a short space of time – that the lessons of the Holocaust should so quickly be forgotten. That it can happen is surely proof that the Gospel of love is not something that we can put into a glass case and admire from a distance. It is incumbent on all of us who profess to be Christian, to build our lives around it – and to practice what we preach.
ENDS