Good Friday at 25 Whatever the persistent problems or deficiencies of the Good Friday Agreement, a return to violence has to be avoided, writes Dr Martin Mansergh The reaction of older people who lived through the 30-year-long northern conflict, especially those in close proximity to it, is one of profound gratitude that it proved possible…
Northern Ireland 1921–2021: Centenary Historical Perspectives Edited by Caoimhe Nic Dháibhead, Marie Coleman and Paul Bew (Ulster Historical Foundation, €19.99/£16.95) Ireland was never rigorously partitioned like Germany, Cyprus or Korea. Churches, sporting and cultural organisations continued to operate island-wide. Since the peace process and the Single European Market, any hard physical border is gone. Ireland’s…
The View As stated here before, there is an imbalance in public discourse between civil rights and civic responsibility, with not enough emphasis on the latter. Not just religion but community is about coming together and showing mutual support and consideration. St Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews (10: 24-5) speaks about spurring one another to…
The View Pope Francis, meditating recently on the problematic history of Latin America including his own country of Argentina in its evolution over the past 500 years, and especially the treatment of native peoples, ran into criticism from Spanish conservatives. They hold that Spain gave Latin America (except Brazil) its language and Catholic religion, and…
The View A friend, who has long been involved with the ecumenical outreach of Clonard Monastery in Belfast, wrote to me recently about the concerns that many of his Indian friends had about the direction of their country under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his attempts to establish for it a dominant Hindu ethos and…
The View One of the pleasures of an older family house is that occasionally one may go rummaging in drawers, boxes and old suitcases and find something interesting, unusual or exciting. Two weeks ago, I pulled a small painting on a wooden block out of a drawer. It depicted a winter scene in the Dutch…
The View Paradise is depicted at the beginning of the Bible as a heavenly garden. Given that the origin of the Jewish religion was in a mainly dry, hot and arid region of the Middle East, not surprisingly a fertile and fruitful garden represented an ideal habitation for humanity. The story inspired great works of…
The View The late Fr Denis Faul acknowledged that the one luxury he permitted himself was a television subscription that permitted him to access French and German channels. As a country, we can afford even less today to rely exclusively on the Anglo-sphere for our information. Happily, it was possible to order from a French…
The View Hearing the news on Sunday morning June 6 that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds had been married privately in Westminster Cathedral, I wrongly assumed, for which apologies, that the RTÉ newsroom must have confused Westminster Cathedral with Westminster Abbey, which is Anglican. Given the strong stance of the…
The View It is often overlooked that a major contributor to the opening up of Irish society from the early 1960s was the Vatican, when Pope John XXIII soon after his election summoned the Second Vatican Council. It had many outcomes and effects, but one of them, the ecumenical movement, was warmly received by many…