Martin O'BrienA leading Belfast nun tells Martin O’Brien politicians need to listen to those bereaved by the conflict in the North
When Pope Francis used an engagement with students at a Dominican university in Manila to praise women for being able to “see things with different eyes” his words could – without him knowing it – have applied to sisters of the calibre of Marie McNeice CP, one of the leadership team of the international Congregation of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion.
One is not in her company long before seeing her quiet determination to inject new thinking into any pastoral situation or problem with which she has to contend.
She says: “We all have a responsibility to rethink things, wasn’t it Einstein who said we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them?
“I passionately believe that unless we apply new thinking, then we will always get what we have always got.”
It is a maxim Sr Marie, a Belfast woman, believes can be fruitfully applied to efforts to promote healing in post-conflict Northern Ireland and to the challenges currently confronting the Church.
Murders
A quarter of a century ago Sr Marie founded an organisation then known as WAVE (Widows Against Violence Empower) which emerged out of the rampant sectarian murders of Catholic men and from a personal crisis for Marie triggered by one such killing.
She was its first director and it quickly grew from being initially a body that cared for Catholic widows into an organisation that embraced victims and survivors of all backgrounds.
Formally launched after Sr Marie’s spadework in 1991, it is today known as the WAVE Trauma Centre, an internationally respected charity that provides support for all those traumatised by the Troubles.
It has also made uniquely informed submissions to those who have wrestled with ideas on how Northern Ireland should deal with the legacy of its past including Bloomfield in 1998, Eames/Bradley in 2007-2009 and Haass in 2013.
WAVE has to date offered support and care to over 3,600 people, the approximate number of those who died in the conflict and around 450 people are referred to it annually.
One person who was wounded said: “I would have taken my own life if I didn’t get help but coming to WAVE has saved me.”
A brother of Marie’s was critically injured in cross-fire in Belfast in 1971 and made a full recovery. While that was a real shock the sectarian murder of a friend’s husband in the city in the late Eighties would have a more profound effect triggering “a personal existential kind of crisis in which I questioned my whole vocation”.
She explains she was riven by guilt by her failure “as a religious person” who should have been able to provide practical help to the young widow.
Marie was so upset that she had to get counselling herself and went to London to train in psychosynthesis, “a psychology that includes the soul” becoming a qualified psychotherapist and a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy to add to her primary and Masters degrees.
Returning to Belfast, she joined a peace and justice group and raised the issue of support for the victims of violence but found little interest.
Then on her own initiative she visited The Irish News to seek out the names of victims like her bereaved friend and arranged meetings in their homes in 1989/90 and “WAVE was born out of my guilt at not being able to help my friend at that time”.
Sr Maire, who was elected to the Cross & Passion leadership team at their General Assembly in Connecticut in August explains she is no longer actively involved in WAVE but keeps in close touch with victims and survivors.
Her congregation, a member of the Passionist family, has 200 sisters in different parts of the world.
Its best known centre in Ireland is Drumalis Retreat in Larne, Co. Antrim.
While Sr Marie cautiously welcomes the recent Stormont House Agreement she is severely critical of those in political authority for not paying enough heed “to the voices of those bereaved in the conflict whose suffering and loss is always present.
“There isn’t even yet agreement on the definition of victims. Those who have suffered can give direction on how to resolve many of the issues and they are not being sufficiently listened to.”
Joint project
Marie McNeice has seen suffering at first hand both in Northern Ireland and in Bosnia Herzegovina where she was part of a joint project in trauma recovery between Cross & Passion and the WAVE Trauma Centre in 2011-2013.
“While it was a privilege to be there I found it hard to be in the presence of such suffering. I remember saying that what we were doing was very little in relation to their needs and one woman with tears in her eyes said ‘you’re being here is enough’.”
Sr Marie was born in Ballymurphy and at the age of seven the family moved to Hugo Street in the Upper Falls from where she attended St Kevin’s Primary School and subsequently St Rose’s Secondary.
Her late parents were daily Mass-goers who transmitted to her a strong faith and from her time at St Rose’s “had this niggling thing which I ignored for years” which turned out to be a vocation.
After St Rose’s, she joined the civil service for a year at Stormont but bus burnings on the Falls cut public transport links and she felt forced to give up the civil service post for a handier city centre job in a travel agency and then a position in a post office close to her home.
By this time Marie was “going steady, not quite [engaged]” but “the niggling thing” was still there and she recalls “the embarrassment” of telling her boyfriend: “I am going to Birmingham [the Cross & Passion formation house] just for six months. I am going to get this out of my system and I’ll be back.”
They were both clearly in love, he phoned her and sent flowers and she recalls getting permission to return home to “sort things out”.
Sr Marie recalls meeting her former boyfriend just once more, out of the blue several years later, when they both happened to be accessing the security barriers in Belfast city centre.
“It was very funny. We greeted each other and kissed and hugged in the middle of Royal Avenue when I realised I had the veil on me and I whipped it off.”
Marie’s new leadership role comprises a minority of her work and she stresses the need to be working at the sharp end of pastoral care “so as not to lose touch with reality”.
For more than a year she has been leading a project in Belfast called ‘Embracing Possibility’ which echoes her original work in WAVE helping individuals and groups with “transformational change”.
She also runs a small Cross & Passion private practice in psychotherapy dealing with a spectrum of mental health issues and provides a separate service that helps Church groups with organisational change.
On the huge issue of change in the Church, Sr Marie points out that the religious orders have largely embraced the thinking of Vatican II in contrast to other parts of the Church.
“In a short time Francis by his very person has made people like myself think that some things might be possible that have never seemed possible.”
However, Sr Marie is clear that the present “hierarchical system” in the Church is not working and pointedly asks “why would women want to join a patriarchal system?”
Regarding the role of women and their empowerment within the governance of the Church, Pope Francis will be judged “on actions rather than words”.
On sharply declining Mass attendance and the growing absence of younger people she avers “there is something not right and I am not sure we know what it is”.
Sr Marie says the charism of Cross & Passion is above all about “showing compassion to those who suffer”.
It is little wonder that one Biblical verse she finds especially inspiring is the one in which St Paul says: “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12.10).
WAVE operates from five centres in Belfast, Armagh, Omagh, Ballymoney and Derry. www.wavetraumacentre.org.uk