‘HOPES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM’ ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE IN ST PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL
‘HOPES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM’ ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE IN ST PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN SUNDAY, 11TH JUNE 2000
It is always a humbling experience to know that you are following in the footsteps of a Nobel Laureate – doubly so, when that person is Seamus Heaney and the task on hand is to speak on a topic as wide-ranging as ‘Hopes for the New Millennium’. But then, I am no stranger to the terrors of the pulpit - a number of years back, I was asked to preach in a particular Cathedral – the first ever woman to do so. Lacking the humility to say no, but devoid of inspiration when it came to writing the address, I turned, like a good Christian, to the Bible for assistance. The New Testament fell open at that part of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians so familiar to all women, and to far too many men:
‘Women are to be silent in church......they are not permitted to speak...that a woman should make her voice heard in church is not seemly’.
I was inclined to find the Lord’s sense of humour less than helpful in the circumstances, but I am glad to see that the Dean does not share St. Paul’s view of women preachers. I am most appreciative of his invitation to speak to you today.
From the perspective of a human being with a normal lifespan of considerably less than a hundred years, a millennium, one thousand years, seems a long time to plan for, even to dream for. Yet in this great church dedicated to the name of St. Patrick we are reminded that he and the Master he served dared to have hopes for all time and for eternity. Against the changing, chaotic backdrop of history they insisted there was a linear and purposive journey which offered a profound reconciliation between human beings and between human beings and God.
Not everyone looks at human existence in that way. Not everyone sees God, or purpose, or love as significant issues for this Millennium. But no matter what our perspective we each know that if we have hopes and dreams for ourselves, our children and grandchildren, this moment, the present, the now, is our opportunity to plant them, our only sure opportunity.
For those of us who dare to dream of life in all its fullness, for all of creation, we know we have to get a serious move on. We are privileged to live in an Ireland of unprecedented prosperity, peace and opportunity. Many of us are its beneficiaries and we have good lives. Yet all around us, in our own country and across the globe, lives are being shut down by hatred, fear, neglect, greed, violence, poverty, loneliness and by the sheer corrosive energy of the dark side of human nature.
These past few years have taught us forcefully that we are capable of creating and absorbing the most remarkable changes, that we can generate those changes, that we do not have to accept the dead hand of fate, the paralysis of history. Here in Ireland we know it is essential to have hopes for tomorrow and essential too that we begin the work of making those hopes happen.
Who could have believed, even a generation ago, that Ireland would now be the economic success story of Europe? That we would be encouraging emigrants to return and coping with an influx of refugees to our own shores? That Irish culture would be so vibrant and so globally recognised? Or that the seeds of peace would take root to such miraculous effect in Northern Ireland?
Who would have dared hope, either, to see the human impact of that great sea-change: the dawning pride and self-respect in the eyes of a father who has found a job after years despair; the joy of an illiterate parent who after half a lifetime of frightened secrecy, finally learns to read; the self-confidence of a poor and marginalised community which has built a new heart for itself through its own efforts. These are our true successes, these men and women who now see themselves through different eyes. Their pride in self allows us to take great heart and hope from what has already been achieved.
But if these last years have brought great hope to many, they have also had a darker side. It has been said about human beings that they have three lives - past life, present life and their secret life. The same could be said of institutions and of societies. Now the sordid side of our country’s secret life is under the spotlight and we are deeply challenged by the evidence of many different forms of corruption. We see their collateral damage to public confidence in political, civic and spiritual leadership. They have contaminated the wells of hope that we draw from, poisoning the atmosphere with cynicism and doubt. Yet cynicism builds nothing up. It drains energy, leaches acid into hope. And so we need voices which insist on hoping in humanity’s ability to be noble, to be decent, to live authentic lives which can withstand the searching scrutiny of the spotlight. So here is one of my hopes - that this will be a chastening period, of purging and purification radically calling us to higher values instead of providing self-justification for low standards whether in business, the church, politics, the street or the home.
Realising that hope, may provide the anchor that so many people are seeking in today’s Ireland. The extent of social, economic and cultural change has been so radical and so fast, that it is little wonder that many are left with a sense of being, in the words of Mexican writer Octavio Paz, ‘dislodged from the present.’ There is a feeling of dislocation and unconnectedness, of being swept along by an uncontrollable and unpredictable current, which some find frightening. Others are exhilarated by the freedom of abandoning what they see as old and destructive baggage. There are many who find in the gadgets, gizmos and technological wizardry of this generation an adventure in progress enough to consume them. There are others who want to remind us that piped water is not the same thing as the water from the Spring well and that we need the memory of the taste of the spring well water - we need a modern world which is not in the vicelike grip of the past, but which is also not amputated from that past. So there you have another hope, that we will find the right relationship between what has gone and what is.
If there is some degree of impatience with looking back to the past in this era of rapid leaps forward it is hardly surprising. So often we have been prisoners of history. So often the past was an arsenal to be ransacked for weapons to confirm our sense of victimhood and to identify the enemy. The wounds of both ancient and recent history are still raw - the scars of emigration, discrimination and poverty, the low self-esteem caused by centuries of colonisation, those “high banked clouds of resignation” described by Seamus Heaney - these we can still touch and feel. But our relationship with the past has been problematic and the core problem is how we have remembered it. The truth is that our memories have been selective and all too often they have served not to illuminate our present, but to disfigure it. Today we have an opportunity to remember it differently, with more generosity and forgiveness and in that fresh remembering to liberate our present so that we can create the future we hope and long for. It is a journey already started and I have a deep hope it is a journey many more will commit to as we attempt to build new friendships and partnerships between North and South, between unionist and nationalist, catholic and protestant, between Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales. Just a few days ago, in Greysteel, I saw that hope translated into reality. I saw how a community devastated by tragedy chose to honour their dead not by vengeance or withdrawal into tribal bunkers but by working together to build greater unity. The past, even when it has brought us pain, can make us stronger, kinder, more sensitive to the pain of others.
Our past is full of that potential. It has been said that Ireland is a first world country with a third world memory – a memory to keep us humble amidst our current prosperity, to remind us of how recently we were the ones in need of help, to remind us too of our responsibility to those who still suffer hunger, poverty and social injustice today in other parts of the world - and in our own. That memory has equipped us with a particular insight into what it is to feel alienated and undervalued. It has given us a rare understanding of what is needed to give a people their freedom, their dignity and self-belief. Today’s generation is the first generation to have available to it an extensive and complex array of tools and resources to turn the tide of history comprehensively against poverty at home and to be champions of the marginalized abroad. Many poor countries look to us today as witnesses to the triumph of hope over adversity. They see in Ireland’s story the seeds of their own possibilities, the energy which fuels their own hopes. Many poor people arrive on our shores seeking a new start in the same way that many of our own families set out on lonely emigrant journeys across the world. We are new to this issue of asylum seekers on our own doorsteps. We are struggling to deal with the issues it provokes. Like so many unforeseen problems in life, how we cope on day one is not how we cope on day one hundred and one - we grow in knowledge, in wisdom, in experience, in acceptance. We begin to see things differently. That which seemed strange gradually becomes familiar and, please God, while many of our neighbouring countries are also coping with the same issues, we in Ireland will in the days ahead become a country justifiably proud of how its treats and reassures the vulnerable stranger. So I hope we give each other the space to change and the acknowledgment and encouragement due when those who are today frightened of the stranger, tomorrow find the courage to become the stranger’s friend and protector.
There are many here, in need of reassurance that this wealthy Ireland, this self-confident Ireland, this Ireland of the new millennium which seems so distant from their reality, is still their home. I am reminded of a Traveller child I met some time back, a child who knows all about poverty and hardship, a child whose life to date had given her little reason for hope. And yet, her ambition in life is to be a doctor. That hope had not yet been drummed out of her by the smug disbelief of others, by their casually cruel, snide remarks or by the harsh reality of a society which has not yet achieved its ambition of treating all its children equally. She is not alone- there are thousands like her in our inner city schools, in our poor neighbourhoods. I meet them week in and week out, hear them talk out loud of their ambitions for themselves, and know the struggle they do not yet know that they face. Their teachers know it, their parents know it, we know it. And we know a good start is half the work and we are trying in so many ways to reach deep into these little lives and give them that good start. We have a long, long way to go and I hope we can shorten the journey and soon.
I hope too that we will use these blessed days well - that they will not simply enrich us financially but enrich us humanly, making us more generous, more big hearted, so that we will be genuinely a welcoming people, a courteous people, a people who strive for excellence in all things whether selling a packet of sweets to a five year old or providing hospice care for the dying. I hope our new found prosperity and self- assertion will not disintegrate into smugness and strident egoism but will help us focus on creating an affirming and reassuring environment of decent human relationships. To have prosperity without kindness, affluence without compassion makes for a hard-edged world, hard-edged hearts. Not a world Patrick would have been proud of. I hope for the world he would smile on with satisfaction.
I hope too, that we find a new level of optimism, energy and impetus in relation to religious belief and practice. These past few years have been difficult ones. The traditional well of spirituality, the role of prayer and even the role of Christian hope itself in Irish life have suffered serious damage. Some are inclined to blame forces arrayed outside the churches, from the media to secularism, yet in truth much of the damage has been self-inflicted. Many opportunities have been missed to bring the good news and the cost has been high. Failure to champion gender equality, failure to make the professional ministry attractive to a new generation, failure to deal with sectarianism, failure to keep the worlds of the spirit and politics in their proper perspectives, failure to enter the Jubilee year with the unity Christ desired - these things and many more have put distance and doubts between institutions and people.
And yet in Ireland today, there still a hunger for the spiritual, a search for the transcendent, for meaning, which crosses all age groups and backgrounds and which has not been quenched by the faults and failings of the churches. The question is how that yearning is to be satisfied. My hope is that this new Millennium will see a more humble, radical and relevant community of churches, actively promoting joyful and respectful curiosity about each other, champions of social inclusion, radical voices calling us to forgiveness, to reconciliation and to love. In this week alone the voices of the new Moderator of the Presbyterian Church Trevor Morrow, and the new President of the Methodist Church Ken Todd, have sounded a fresh and energising note, challenging sectarianism and racism. Allied to the Pope’s recent call to forgiveness, his admission of Church failings, and mindful of the voices from within the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland Hierarchies challenging racism and urging generosity, we dare to hope for an Ireland where Christians are at last known by the way they love one another and by the way they joyfully welcome the stranger as a brother or sister in Christ.
It was Cardinal Newman who said: ‘to live is to have changed, but to be perfect is to have changed often”. Is it too much to hope that we might seek in this millennium some sort of profound perfection of the human condition? W.R. Rogers in his poem ‘Nativity’ is scathing about our times:
“Lord in this wintry interval we send Our indolent regards And grey regrets. Make fluent all the pens Of all the frozen bards”.
I dare to hope the wintry interval is over and the spring is almost upon us.