How have the Churches emerged from the period of conflict here? I’m thinking about that in the wake of the death of Fr Alec Reid.
They did pretty poorly, in my view. The contribution of the Protestant Churches I don’t know in any detail. There were occasions when a number of Protestant clergymen attempted to contact the IRA and hold talks, but those came to nothing. At the official level, ,the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church and others followed an unquestioning unionist line: the IRA were engaged in sectarian terrorism, the men and women of the RUC and UDR were holding society together, their funerals were occasions for full union flag trappings and respect.
As for the Catholic Church, with some honourable exceptions its contribution was sadly deficient. Not that such a thing is new: the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has historically disowned and distanced itself from republicanism, identifying with the status quo. During the recent conflict this was best personified in the late Cardinal Cahal Daly who was unfalteringly anti-republican, to the point where he was sending letters to be read at Sunday Mass telling people who not to vote for.
Balancing him there was Cardinal Tomas O Fiach, who identified with the suffering of nationalists and republicans. In one television interview he pointed out that most of those in the IRA came from a family background where, under normal political and social conditions, they would have let peaceful, productive lives. When he visited republican prisoners involved in the dirty protest he famously said he felt like being sick, such was the smell and the horror. These men were living, he said, in conditions in which you wouldn’t keep an animal, let alone human beings.
The great majority of the Catholic diocesan clergy, however, were either vocal in their identification of republican violence as the problem – one-eyed indeed, Virginia – or quietly followed the lead of their bishops. There were, of course, exceptions. Fr Des Wilson lived and ministered in the heart of West Belfast, close to the people there. Something similar could be said of Fr Joe McVeigh down in Fermanagh. The official Church, to a greater or lesser extend, regarded both men as renegades.
Fr Denis Faul and Fr Raymond Murray were also outstanding exceptions. They produced a series of pamphlets in the early 1970s detailing cases of torture undergone by those arrested and interned. In 1986 they produced an 80-page booklet showing the innocence of the Birmingham Six – five years before their release. In 1981, however, Denis Faul became seen in republican circles as Denis the Menace, as he pressured families to take their sons off the hunger strike to which they’d committed themselves.
And there was Father Eddie Daly on Bloody Sunday, waving his blood-soaked handkerchief. To their credit, the Catholic clergy of Derry on that occasion spoke out clearly about the killings of that day and the official lies which followed. And Father Aidan Troy, who literally stood and walked shoulder to shoulder with the Holy Cross children and their parents, along a via dolorosa of sectarian hatred.
But Alec Reid will go down in history as the man who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. When other clergy, led by Cardinal Daly, considered Sinn Féin as something for holding your nose and keeping at arm’s length, Fr Reid from the early 1980s worked tirelessly to bring Sinn Féin and the SDLP together in a pan-nationalist front and resolve the conflict. The fact that he was a member of the Redemptorist Order rather than a diocesan priest made this more possible. People talk about the Hume-Adams talk. They should be more accurately called the Adams-Reid-Hume talks, with Fr Alec Reid the vital conduit that worked with republicanism, worked with the SDLP, worked with Albert Reynolds to convince him that republicans were sincere in their desire for an end to the violent stalemate. And of course with the Rev Harold Good, Alec Reid formed the independent witnesses who testified to the decommissioning of IRA weapons.
That famous picture of Fr Reid, kneeling blood-spattered by the body of the British army corporal, speaks loudly of the man’s courage and compassion for all. He was shrewd but he was saintly too.
Ar Dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal.
- Ar
“The contribution of the Protestant Churches I don’t know in any detail. There were occasions when a number of Protestant clergymen attempted to contact the IRA and hold talks, but those came to nothing. At the official level, ,the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church and others followed an unquestioning unionist line: the IRA were engaged in sectarian terrorism, the men and women of the RUC and UDR were holding society together, their funerals were occasions for full union flag trappings and respect.”
As Gandhi once said; “I like your Christ, I don’t like your Christians, because they are not very Christ like.”
I think most of the Protestant churches were hypocritical during the troubles.
What were the catholic clergy to do, subscribe to the armed struggle? Had they not a duty of care to tell catholics that commiting murder was harmful to your soul. Cathal Daly made the point of a progressive barbarity in engaging in violence and the result of that can be seen above lying beside Alec Reid
I can remember Rev Good breaking up a group of children making petrol bombs who he happened upon at the back of his church on Agnes St. He knew these children and their parents and went on TV that evening and didn’t hold back in his disgust and condemnation. That was I think the 14th Aug 69. He got nicknamed Fr Good for a while after that episode. He has pursued that path throughout his life and certainly while he on the Shankill he was very youth orientated and cross community. Some time later in 69 a trip to Castlerock was organised with children from the Shankill and Falls. After some initial fighting going up on the train everyone got on famously for the week. I met Fr Marcellus from Clonard who was also heavily involved in the trip and he was