December 14 1974
THERE can be but one thought this weekend in the minds of all the men and women of this country, north and south, east and west, who have the welfare and happiness of our people at heart. It is that the deeply desired and long postponed era of peace should at last be granted to this island.
Peace is a word of depth and breadth; a word which embraces the outer conduct of our lives and the inner stillness of our hearts. It means at once that blessed relief from fear: fear of death, fear of maiming, fear for our homes, fear for our jobs or our businesses, fear for our children, fear for our future; and it means too a release from the bitter tensions of hating, from the sickening sense of being hated, from the gloom and doom of religion and politics gone mad.
It is this last, the religo-political aspect, which has given the whole Irish problem its peculiarly virulent character and which, in recent years, has been the source of scandal and disgust to the world outside. Both at home and abroad voices have been raised demanding that the Christian Churches should bring their influence to bear upon it, a demand which appears on the surface to be both valid and reasonable.
It is a demand, however, which ignores two important factors. The first applies generally to our times. Throughout this century the separation of Church and State has been practically a dogma of the world of politics. For the Church to intrude its views upon the operations of the secular State was to invite its anathema. The second applies particularly to Ireland. In the now forgotten and practically disowned days of empire, British policy was to use religion to divide the people of this island. It was as successful as it was evil; but while Britain eventually outgrew the bitter divisions of the Reformation she left a murky legacy to the Irish.
Inevitably opportunists saw in this legacy of bigotry a wonderful opening for themselves in terms of power. The result has been that the Christian Churches in this country were driven into isolation from one another. For many years church leaders have known the sterility of this situation and have been working quietly to overcome it, but extremism always rates a better press.
Irish News editorial supporting the nationwide campaign of prayer for peace initiated by the four main Christian Churches in Ireland in December 1974.
