David Quinn
Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Ireland in 2011 Many Protestants and Catholics have found common cause in fighting for fundamental rights, the Pope should encourage this writes David Quinn
Short of some unforeseen development, Pope Francis will be here next August for the World Meeting of Families. Everything he says and does will totally overshadow everything else that takes place at the event. What he will say is extremely unpredictable.
He may say something very strong about the ‘ideological colonisation of the family’, as he has done elsewhere. He may attack gender ideology (which is the pretence that we can ‘choose’ our gender). He has done this repeatedly. Notably, none of our bishops has breathed a word about the matter despite Ireland having one of the most radical ‘gender recognition’ laws in the world.
On the other hand, he may say something that will wrongly lead people to believe he doesn’t take these things all that seriously after all and wants the Church to dial down on talking about them. So, it’s hard to know what will happen.
Unstable situation
What almost everyone hopes he will do however, is visit the North. St John Paul II was supposed to visit the North in 1979 but in the end, he could not do so because of the unstable situation there.
By August next year, almost 40 years will have passed since then and so much has changed both north and south of the border in that time. Relations between North and South, between Britain and Ireland, between the two communities in the North are far better now than in 1979. While it’s true that the current political situation in the North is very far from ideal, there is no comparison with how it was four decades ago.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II visited the Republic in 2011 which alone was a very big sign of how much has changed. The Pope going North would be the complement to that.
In a way, that is a strange thing to say. Even though Elizabeth II is also head of the Church of England, she is mainly seen as a symbol of Britain itself, especially England. The Pope may be a head of State as well, but he is seen overwhelmingly as head of the Catholic Church. So how does the visit of the head of a religion balance out the visit of the British head of State?
I think it is because for us in the South, the religious dimension of the Troubles in the North was always much less important than the political dimension. So, the visit of Queen Elizabeth II as head of State was a sign of how much things had improved politically as a result of the peace process.
If we in the South could finally tolerate a visit by a British monarch, it was a sign that our old hostility to England had hugely abated.
For many unionists, however, the conflict was as much religious as political. This was symbolised in the figure of the Ian Paisley. If unionists can now accept a visit to the North by the head of the Catholic Church, that is a sign that the old hostility to Catholicism has hugely abated, even if it lingers in some circles just as anti-English feeling in the South still persists in some circles, among republican fundamentalists, you might say.
The fact that Jeffrey Donaldson, one of the DUP’s most senior members, has said he would welcome a visit by Pope Francis to the North is very significant.
He told this paper last week: “If Pope Francis decides to visit Northern Ireland as part of his visit to the island, I don’t think there will be a negative reaction from the Protestant community. There is a recognition that Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church that a very substantial portion of our population adheres to the Catholic Church.”
He added: “When we look at the moral issues of today, I’m looking forward to what Pope Francis has to say about those because I think that the debate has become very secular.”
The 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation is currently being marked. The sectarian tensions unleashed by that event lasted longer in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in Europe. Forty years ago, Ian Paisley opposed Pope John Paul visiting the North. Now we have senior DUP figures supporting a visit by the Pope. This is a sign of how much things have changed. A sort of moral ecumenism is underway.
It is why Jeffrey Donald is looking forward to what Pope Francis has to say about some of the big moral questions.
On the conservative side of the Christian house the moral ecumenism centres around issues like the family and the right to life. On the liberal side it centres more on issues like poverty, immigration and the environment. Successive popes have spoken about all of those things, even if they might have a difference of emphasis. Pope Francis speaks more about immigration than John Paul did. (It’s a bigger issue now in any case). John Paul spoke a great deal about the right to life, but Francis speaks about this as well.
If Francis comes here and goes North, many Protestants will be disappointed if he does not address issues like the family and the right to life in a clear, unmistakable and, if need be, counter-cultural manner.
He will obviously concentrate on the progress made so far in improving relations between the two communities, but one other means by which those relations can be further improved is by encouraging the sort of moral ecumenism currently underway. This moral ecumenism is to be seen especially in the battle for the right of life. It is a struggle in which many Protestants and Catholics have found common cause. Hopefully our own bishops will encourage him to promote this moral ecumenism even more.