REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE DUN LAOGHAIRE PRAYER BREAKFAST ROYAL MARINE HOTEL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE DUN LAOGHAIRE PRAYER BREAKFAST ROYAL MARINE HOTEL, DUN LAOGHAIRE FRIDAY, 14TH APRIL 2000
It is a great pleasure to join you here this morning at this Prayer Breakfast. A special word of thanks to the Chairperson of the Steering Committee, Mary Hanafin – a mere TD when she invited me, but since elevated, in evidence of the power of prayer, to Minister of State - for this opportunity to come here today.
It is good to see that the Dun Laoghaire Prayer Breakfast is now in its third year and has firmly established itself as an annual event. In general, when politicians, business people and community leaders gather in one spot, the last thing people expect to feature on the agenda is prayer. I’m glad to see that, even in today’s world, Christianity hasn’t lost its power to surprise.
It is important to have occasions like this which remind us that Christian faith and Christian practice, while undoubtedly on the wane, is not yet an endangered species in Irish society - occasions where people of all ages, of different Christian denominations and from different walks of life, from North and South, can gather in solidarity and in kinship, drawing strength from each other’s friendship and each other’s faith. It is equally important that we use these opportunities well, looking outwards as well as inwards, to the needs of the world around us and to what living the Christian faith can and should mean in 21st century Ireland.
‘I know my own and my own know me’. We are all familiar with those words, and we all know the comfort that comes from being amongst our own, among friends, among people whose beliefs or traditions or values we share, and to whom we need not explain, justify, or defend our point of view. Anyone who has ever attended a Conference will know that when you enter a room filled with strangers, one of the great joys is to be already in the company of friends, or to see a friend inside, someone whom you can walk confidently towards and be welcomed by. It is human nature to seek recognition and the comfort of the familiar. Human nature also, to feel self-conscious and isolated if we know nobody there, or worse, if we seem to be the only person who is alone.
All those little groups of friends and acquaintances chatting comfortably, can seem accessible only to those who are already known, who are already part of the circle. And to the stranger looking on, those circles appear to be hermetically sealed, forming an invisible barrier that marks out friend from stranger, ‘us’ and ‘them’; ‘our side’ from the ‘other’.
Our society is full of those hermetically sealed circles, none more impermeable than that which divides those who share the benefits of Ireland’s prosperity, from those who watch helplessly and empty-handed from the sidelines. As we celebrate, and rightly so, the tremendous opportunities that Ireland’s economic success has brought, our greatest challenge, and our greatest opportunity, lies in how we spend that wealth. Will we allow the barriers which separate the chosen and the marginalised to become ever more impermeable? Or will we seize this chance to widen the circle of opportunity, to realise the full potential of this generation, as no previous generation was able to do?
These issues are not the sole responsibility of our politicians and policy makers. The capacity to make a difference, to challenge complacency and selfishness lies in all our hands. Those of us who profess to follow the teachings of Christ, have a particular responsibility to make our voices heard. As society becomes more secularised, more cynical about religious faith and more critical of the teachings and actions of the Church, there can be a temptation to adopt a softly, softly, bury-your-head-in-the-sand-approach. Instead, these chastening times should be seen as an opportunity to look once again, with a more humble spirit, at the core message of our faith: to love one another, unconditionally, as each of us are loved by God.
That means stretching out a hand a friendship, a loving embrace, to those beyond our own immediate group, beyond those who look like us, act like us, think like us, live like us. They are easy to love. But we are called on to also reach out to those who are different, who may reject our friendship or be suspicious of our embrace, who have been hurt by past rejection, racism, discrimination, or abuse and hardened by those experiences. We are called to love even, and especially, those who are hardest to love.
If that renewed commitment to love is to be credible, it also needs to encompass a re-energised and revitalised outreach between the Churches and their peoples. Christians did not, unfortunately, enter this Jubilee year united, but neither should we underestimate the progress that has been made on the journey towards unity. We owe profound thanks to men and women within all the Churches who have persisted down through the years in reaching out to each other, seeking to build new links of friendship and understanding, often against the backdrop of criticism, and worse, within their own ranks. That they persisted, even when their efforts seemed at times destined to run into the sand, is testament to their courage and commitment. Now, in this Jubilee year, we have a unique opportunity to build on those foundations, to create new channels of friendship and respect between the Churches. That too, lies in all our hands.
Nowhere has this type of generous and respectful outreach achieved so much than in Northern Ireland. A society that festered for generations in the poisonous air of sectarianism and bigotry, has started to breathe the oxygen of tolerance. It is discovering the energy that is released when we reappraise old stereotypes, when we find new friends in unexpected places. The peace process may be beleaguered at political level, but beneath the ground, the process has put down roots that are deeper and more robust than they might appear on the surface. Those roots are nourished by the network of contacts between community groups, schools, businesses, and Churches across Northern Ireland and between North and South. They offer us hope that what we are living through is evidence of a seismic and irreversible change in the landscape of attitudes and relationships on this island. I warmly welcome the fact that this Prayer Breakfast brings together young men and women from schools North and South, the future builders of peace in Ireland.
John Hewitt has written that ‘we build to fill the centuries arrears’. God knows, we have had a lot of ground to make up. Centuries of hardship, poverty, enmity and distrust have left their mark on us as a people. For some people, the past is a prison; they remain shackled to its narrow certainties, unable or unwilling to believe that the doors have been flung open, that a whole new dynamic has been created. Others enthusiastically embrace this new Ireland, celebrating its success and self-confidence, but sometimes all too quick to dismiss the lessons of the past, with little patience and less tolerance of those who are not part of this new high-tech, prosperous society.
We have never had such a tremendous opportunity to create an Ireland that is peaceful and prosperous, generous in how it uses its resources, respectful of diversity, committed to eliminating poverty and discrimination. That vision of an Ireland that is all centre and no margins is well within our grasp. We have the means to achieve it, if we have the will.