REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF ‘THE LAITY AND THE CHURCH OF IRELAND’
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF ‘THE LAITY AND THE CHURCH OF IRELAND, 1000-2000: ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS’
Cuireann sé áthas orm bheith anseo libh um tráthnóna. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an chuireadh agus as an fáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
My first words must be by way of thanks to my dear old friend Dr. Kenneth Milne of the Church of Ireland Historical Society for the thoughtful and very kind invitation to join with you for the launch of this history of the plain people of the Church of Ireland. The eyes of those everyday worshippers have generally and rightly been trained on the altar. Could there be any more appropriate place than this splendid cathedral in which to reverse that eyes-front focus of generations? All too often in all our churches, the gravitational pull of that focus has meant that the faith life of the laity has been eclipsed by the faith lives of clergy and hierarchy. There has been a subliminal two divisions mentality with the laity in perpetual relegation in the second division.
So today I compliment the contributors for such an informative well-written and ground-breaking work through which the laity are restored to their rightful place at the very heart of church as a community. Here is chronicled the story of the church’s bedrock, the people of God, going about their homes, workplaces and communities, struggling with the burdens that life presents and struggling too with their personal faith, with their Church and with their world.
Who were these people? Ask that question on the streets outside and it is quite likely that images of a wealthy Protestant Ascendancy class at prayer might be the first to mind. Those images stand corrected in these pages for here you will meet the poor, the uneducated, you will meet weavers, tanners, brewers and trades people of all varieties and through their stories emerges a much more complex picture, a much more challenging story, than simply that of a secular ascendancy based on religion. Here you will find prayerful men and women whose faithfulness to the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer was an important source of educational as well as spiritual enrichment in Irish Society. Literacy flourished where they flourished.
It was the high level of literacy among Dublin trades people which enabled the Drapier’s Letters to inspire their repudiation of a debased coinage, which allowed the pamphleteers of 1798 to inspire the Protestants of Ulster to stand shoulder to shoulder with their Catholic fellow citizens, and for the Dublin working class to produce writers of such profound social solidarity as Shaw and O’Casey.
One of the delights of this book is the chapter on church buildings. This magnificent cathedral is a very apt place to reflect on the way in which individuals and communities throughout Ireland have time and again, generation after generation, used buildings as the great labour of love that is the outward sign of their inward faith.
The editors have done the Church and the general public a huge service in showcasing the work of so many fine scholars. Four Courts Press have done a splendid job not only in supporting this project but in delivering such an elegant final product. I have shamelessly repeated a proverb I first heard from a Catholic Auxiliary Bishop here in Dublin a few months ago and I am going to do so again, for it seems to aptly summarize the essence of this volume. Those who drink the water should remember with gratitude those who dug the well. This book remembers them with love, affection and gratitude. It introduces them to a new generation and it restores to the laity that place of respect and honour they deserve but have not always been afforded in the history books.
May that remembering give encouragement and reassurance to all lay people living lives of goodness and fidelity to the Christian vision. I wish you all, and this book, every success.
Go raibh maith agaibh