September 28 1974
“Almost thou persuaded me to be a Christian,” said King Agrippa to St Paul after hearing him expound the Christian faith and the story of his conversion.
One may well wonder what King Agrippa would think of what passes for Christian behaviour, or the behaviour of those claiming to belong to a Christian community, in the Northern Ireland of 1974. If an attempt can be made to murder a Christian clergyman in the name of Christian belief, something very strange must have happened to the teachings of Christ since St Paul was delivering them in Caesarea.
Many horrible and tragic things have occurred in Anglo-Irish history, as they have in all conflicts between countries where one has sought to dominate another. But a peculiarly evil aspect was given to the Anglo-Irish conflict with the cold-blooded introduction of political advantage based on the most private and profound of human rights – the right to worship according to one’s conscience.
It is a fearful and blasphemous affront to the Creator that human beings should use the vehicle of divine worship to attain their petty aims, should use His name as their right to deny in practice everything He taught and to reject that which is the very basis of Christianity – love.
The ravaging of Europe in the religious wars of the seventeenth century, followed by the nihilism of the eighteenth, should surely have been warning enough of the evils of religious hatred. It cannot help but bring disaster in its wake. It has done so in Ireland and it has done so to the English in their relations with Ireland.
It is undeniable that it is the Catholics who have borne the brunt of religious hatred and sectarian fury. All past history aside, the British Army is in Northern Ireland in great numbers today because a British Government was obliged to send it in in 1969, not to restore law and order, not to bring peace, but simply to protect the Catholic population from a sectarian attack which had destroyed 600 Catholic homes and over a hundred businesses before it arrived.
It was the Catholic population which was denied its citizens’ rights under Stormont; which since 1969 has been involved in the greatest forced migration since World War Two; which has suffered the appalling number of over two hundred sectarian assassinations; which is made the subject of vilification and untruths by public figures whose hate-filled words must surely bear a frightful responsibility for the sectarian crimes which are constantly befouling our streets and roads.
