REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A MEETING ON THE “RELIGIOUS SENSE IN THE MODERN WORLD”
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A MEETING ON THE “RELIGIOUS SENSE IN THE MODERN WORLD” – SHELBOURNE HOTEL
Dia dhaoibh a chairde. Is mór an chúis bróid agus áthais dom bheith anseo libh tráthnóna inniu agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl daoibh as an chuireadh, agus as fáilte a bhí caoin, cneasta agus croíúil.
It is a real pleasure to join you for this discussion and I regret that I couldn’t be present to hear the other speakers – Reverend Dr. Ian Ker from Oxford University and Professor Giancarlo Cesano, Leader of Communion and Liberation.
My thanks to Mauro Biondi for inviting me to be with you here this evening and for giving me the headache of trying to make sense of “Religious Sense in the Modern World”.
Truth to tell I have had that particular headache for many years, long before I first met Mauro almost two decades ago. Then our first discussions centred more on the failure of religious sense for we were, like many others on this island and many people who were watching this island from outside, deeply challenged by the manifest presence of sectarian hatred, its generation of violence and its resonance even in the most courteous of religious discourse and religious sensibilities.
This island with its Christian past has struggled to make sense of religion and to develop a coherent, integrated religious sense capable of responding to the deep urge for peace and holding in check the age-old impulse towards conflict.
Some commentators have become tired and cynical and are inclined to the view that to make sense of our future there is no place for a religious sense at all. Yet even those who feel that way would have to acknowledge that there is another side to the story. Beyond the impaling of religion on the crucifix of constitutional politics and indeed precisely because of it, there are people of demonstrable good will, people of remarkable courage fuelled very often by deep faith, who have stood against the tide of contempt. Their unswerving determination has helped to bring about a radical, benign change of hearts in the individual and in the community. They have emerged from all denominations. They have found each other across all sorts of impossible barricades and they have believed in the transcendent power of love even in the face of the awesome power of hatred.
An occasion like this is timely given the circumstances Ireland finds itself in right now. History has a habit they say, of repeating itself and there is plenty of evidence in our history of the same mistakes made over and over again, but when historians come to look back at this juncture they are going to see something quite dramatic – an identifiable watershed between past and future. This will be seen as a time when people gathered together the bitter wisdom distilled from their historical memory, grew sickened of the corrosive vanities and the waste of life and decided consciously to change direction. Deeply embedded in that decision was and is an acknowledgment that only with self-sacrifice and compromise can there be a more humanly decent future. This generation decided not to be driven by history but to become its driver and the impulse at work is an impulse that is driven by what Monsignor Giussani would likely suggest is the fundamental human desire for happiness that lies within each human heart. His idea is far from new here. It is beautifully articulated in the words of Seán Ó Ríordáin in his poem Oileán agus Oileán eile:
I bhfírinne na haigne
Tá oileán séin,
Is tusa tá ar marthain ann
Is triall fád dhéin
In the truth that is within the mind
There is a place serene,
An island hermitage where you must dwell
And seek your innermost being
The truly remarkable thing that has happened in Ireland in and through the Peace Process is that a critical mass of people have risked finding personal and communal happiness, not through taking something from others, not through winning while others lose, not through triumphalism, but through giving, through sharing. You could say that liberation has ironically come from seeking a sort of “communion” with “the other”, with those from whom we have been estranged. We have missed this truth for a very long time - that true freedom is best guaranteed by making friends of your enemies not by overwhelming them. It is a truth which infuses the Beatitudes but which has eluded us time and again as distrust, bitterness and woundedness, skewed our thinking and our feeling.
The Peace Process has demanded the most extraordinary amount of self-giving, of generosity, of risk-taking and of forgiveness from all participants. Could it be that Ireland is witnessing the triumph not just of politics, not just the victory of patient dialogue but the coming to maturity of an integrated religious sense increasingly comfortable with difference and diversity, profoundly embarrassed and challenged by religious intolerance and anxious to redeem the commandment to love one another by truly, authentically living its mandate.
Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Cure at Troy’ reminds us:
“Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and they get hard”
And it is true - the evidence is all around us. It’s in the children who grow up in homes where there is no love, or on the streets where they feel second-class. It’s in those places where the rich overlook the poor, where denominations fight each other and where countries oppress each other. But there is another truth - that hardened hearts can be softened. We can soften each other. We can bring healing to hurts, vindication to injustice, equality to the marginalised. Commitment to doing those things is an essential part of the process which will guarantee their delivery. And for many people all over Ireland that commitment derives from a religious sense, not necessarily in the sense of a religious affiliation or crusade or religiosity but from a sense of the sacredness of each human being, the entitlement of each person to know respect and dignity, to know their worth in the world. It has taken a lot of time and effort to get this far on our own island home but we have already travelled a very long distance towards a future of our own making. True we have not yet dispelled all of the old hatreds. Their poison still seeps out, they still infect hearts and heads to a worrying degree but today more people are aware than ever of their own vulnerability to that poison, more people than ever are facing it down, taking it on, stopping it in its tracks. Why are they bothering to do that? Why are they changing their behaviour? Could it be that through the often difficult debate on achieving peace, justice, equality and respect for difference, that the vision offered of a society of true equals spoke to that part of their hearts which history had silenced?
I have just returned from a visit to East Africa. My purpose in going was to acknowledge in some way the vital work of many, many sons and daughters of Ireland, religious and lay, who have given their lives to helping the poorest of the poor in the overlooked and forgotten parts of our world. During those ten days in Uganda and Kenya, I met some of the most caring, selfless and committed people it will probably ever be my privilege to encounter. Their stories, backgrounds and Christian denominations were very different from each other and yet I was struck by a common characteristic – nothing was done for the self – ego didn’t impinge on their consciousness at any level. They worked for people of all faiths, bringing education, healthcare, advocacy to men, women and children who waken up each day to a world of relentless grimness, a world where their short, hard lives only seem to matter to these few individuals from this small island far away. I will long remember that visit, not alone for the images of suffering human beings, but for their ability to transcend life’s indignities with a smile and for the happiness that radiated from the Irish volunteers who despite many, many other choices in their lives, opted for the poor, found their fullest liberation in working with the poor, so much so that even in post-retirement old age, many preferred that world of apparent hardship to the comforts of life at home in Ireland.
In today’s fast moving, fast changing world, material values often appear to take precedence over all else. The pursuit of happiness seems inextricably linked to status and wealth, to acquiring things rather than surrendering things. Yet my work as President takes me daily to where people are giving of themselves, whether it is in rearing families with love or doing community work with the unemployed, the illiterate, the homeless, the aged, respite for carers, hospice care for the dying, advocacy for the disabled, capacity building among the marginalized, sports activities for the young, confidence building among damaged children and damaged adults - every day on this island in a million different ways, people are giving something good of themselves to help others, to build up resilient caring communities and yet without fail when I thank those people for what they do I am told that they receive much more in terms of personal fulfilment than they ever give.
What they bring to Irish life can I think be characterised as a truly religious sense, a wholesomeness, a goodness that makes life worth living, worth looking forward to. Every age has needed such people. In our age of empowerment more people have the choice to liberate the goodness inside themselves than ever before and to harness it as a history changing energy.
Everyday, the Irish News, a Northern newspaper carries a story by historian Dr. Eamon Phoenix taken from the early days of the last century. Yesterday’s was particularly apt for this discussion. It told the story of an old convict named James Brady who had been in and out of prison since childhood. When he appeared before England’s Old Bailey in 1931 at the age of 72 on petty larceny charges, the Recorder of the Court, Sir Ernest Wild remarked with great compassion and kindness that Brady’s life was an illustration of how a harsh criminal justice system “manufactured criminals”. The Recorder helped the old man to get a job and visited him when he was dying in hospital. Brady’s comment was that the judge had given him “his first foretaste of heaven.”
There is no better description, no better test of a credible religious sense at work in the world than that. How many of us who profess to be Christians would happily settle for that as our epitaph?
Go raibh maith agaibh.