There are those who think that people shaking hands with other people is powerful and significant. I’m not one of those people: handshakes are just that – handshakes. They don’t change any underlying disagreement or injustice.
In recent times the great handshakers have been Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams McGuinness met Queen Elizabeth on a number of occasions and pressed the royal flesh, and some people found this gesture particularly impressive. Not to the point where they saw a need to reciprocate, of course, but impressive nonetheless. Gerry Adams had a public handshake with Prince Charles, which produced much admiration of Prince Charles, that he could bring himself to shake hands with someone who was aligned with those who’d killed his beloved grand-uncle Earl Mountbatten. There was less speculation about how Adams felt, shaking hands with the Commander-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment which had slaughtered a goodly number of Irish people.
But there’s a new handshake on the horizon which is not a political handshake, and yet there’s been considerable weight assigned to it by unionist commentators. I’m referring, as you’ve probably guessed by now, to the (possible) handshake between Pope Francis and Queen Elizabeth.
The Pope will, we’re told, visit Ireland in August of this year. That’s the southern part of Ireland. The northern part of Ireland? Well, that’s uncertain, but the smart money appears to believe he’ll come north as well. Pope John Paul II chose to stay south of the border when he visited the south in 1979 beacuse if he had come north, his safety couldn’t have been guaranteed. There were, maybe still are, people here who would see it as their holy duty to demonstrate against or even attack a Pope, given the opportunity.
Now, some thirty years later, if Pope Francis were to come north, there’d be few or no fears for his safety. When and if he does come, the smart money says that Queen Elizabeth will be waiting with outstretched hand.
Will this be a big deal? Some think so. It’s pleasing that the Pope and the queen won’t cold-shoulder each other, but please don’t go on about its political significance, except you saw the period of the Troubles as a religious war. Which it wasn’t. Certainly there was a nasty strain of sectarianism running through it, chiefly but not exclusively among unionist extremists. But the disagreement here wasn’t about matters of doctrine, or even how friendly or unfriendly Catholics and Protestants could be to each other. It was about human rights and self-determination.
Viewed in solely religious terms, there will be people energized to fill the car with petrol and head to see the Pope south and/or north of the border. I won’t be one of them. I didn’t feel the need in 1979 and I don’t feel the need now.
I believe Pope Francis is a good man – a very good man. He has pushed the message of God’s mercy at every opportunity and has refused to be drawn into condemnation of people who follow a different code of ethics from him or the Catholic Church. But my admiration for him doesn’t extend to hurrying down to Drogheda, or even to Armagh if that happens, to gawk at him. I don’t expect that seeing him would perform some miracle in my life: if I did I would be guilty of superstitious and stupidity.
If the Pope were to shake hands with the Archbishop of Canterbury, that wouldn’t indicate they saw eye-to-eye on matters of doctrine; and if the Pope shake QE2’s hand, that doesn’t mean he approves of hereditary monarchy, the sumptuous life-style that the Royals lead or the British presence in Ireland. As for gawping from a distance at a tiny figure in white and then thinking that somehow that made you a better person – could anything be more ludicrous?
Let’s save the political hosannahs for another time.
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