Nuala O’Loan
Morry Gash/AP Photo The View
A man I have known for many years died last week in our parish. He was a genuinely good man – husband and father of four children, very talented, a former vice-principal at our local grammar school, but what marked Declan Martin out was his consistent service to and care of others, and his great faith.
He worked for decades with the St Vincent de Paul, the Order of Malta, and many other organisations. For many years he suffered illness, first cancer which left him with very limited ability to speak, and finally the sickness which took his life. Despite all that I never once knew him to complain, and he was a model of how to suffer well – there surely is such a thing.
I did know that he was endlessly out helping others: quiet, but effective and determined and his gift to all those he encountered was immeasurable. It was the gift of that true love of which St John spoke in his gospel – the love that lives in man when God lives in him and he loves God. We are all called to give as Christ gave, endlessly and without limit. Declan did that and as he returned to the Father who gave him life, he leaves so many people whose lives he touched quietly and with such love. We were blessed by his goodness and his life.
Injustice
Others seek to help their fellow travellers on the journey of life in a thousand different ways. People fight what they perceive as injustice with all the tools they have, yet our world is now facing a strange but not unique phenomenon – the woke! They describe themselves as fighting injustice and racism – something we are all called to do – as Micah said: “This is what the Lord asks of you, that you act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with your God.”
Yet there is very often great injustice in the actions of those who describe themselves as the ‘woke’. Think about the ‘no platforming’ – the decision, often by students and other groups, to refuse to allow invited speakers to make their arguments. Rather than listen and respond to those arguments, and where appropriate trying to change the mindset, the thoughts of an invited speaker where they disagreed with them, they simply refused to allow them to speak. It happened in that great centre of learning, Oxford, to The Irish Catholic columnist, Breda O’Brien.
They decide without any process. It is bullying, very often online bullying. A person’s life is inextricably changed”
Where once people were taught to debate and to argue with respect and thoughtfulness, now simply because they disagree with what they think the speaker is going to say, they do not allow them to speak.
This was followed by a process through which people were ‘cancelled’ because of things they said or did. We need only to think of the number of people who have lost their jobs, their livelihood, their way of life because they have been ‘cancelled’ by the world in which they live: people such as actor Laurence Fox, historian and commentator David Starkey, author JK Rowling.
They are the famous ones – there are many others especially young people excluded from their world by those who set themselves up as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, who decide the future of those whom they may not know without thought or consideration.
Righteous, they decide without any process. It is bullying, very often online bullying. A person’s life is inextricably changed, though they have no right to defend themselves because there is no process – just mass hysteria putting commercial and other pressures on employers, publishers, and peer groups.
Then there is the Black Lives Matter movement – of course every life is precious, no matter the race, gender, colour – each of God’s children is equally precious in his eyes.
Black Lives Matter proclaims that it seeks to remedy racial injustice. They have developed a massive commercial entity and have raised huge funds. It seems that nobody dares to speak out against their activities, lest they be perceived as racist or intolerant.
The coverage by much of the media in these islands is supportive, yet there is huge injustice and damage inherent in what they do when they protest. Little of this is reported.
They want to ‘defund’ the police – abolish policing and allow communities to govern themselves. They took over part of Seattle and the mayor ordered the police to withdraw from their station which was then destroyed, as was the whole area, by the rioters – for that was what they were. This was not peaceful demonstration, non-violent law-breaking. It is not being done as Jesus Christ himself, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Rosa Parkes did – breaking the law but harming no-one. They brought life and hope.
The rights to life and freedom of speech, thought, religion and conscience are fundamental and must be protected”
Yet in Seattle, Kenosha and other areas in the US people have been murdered by those who have been set free to do so by the absence of policing. Property on a huge scale has been destroyed, cars have been burned, shops destroyed, people intimidated and assaulted because they will not join the BLM – not because they support injustice and racism but rather because they believe that this violence is wrong, and that societal change is necessary but that it is not achieved by rioting, looting and widespread damage.
Often the areas most affected are those occupied by black people themselves.
If people seek to act justly they will not maim, injure, burn and destroy, they will not intimidate and terrify, they will not create anarchy as BLM did in Seattle and other places, causing the civil authorities, belatedly, to reassert themselves.
Peaceful
Protest will be peaceful, just as the civil rights protesters demonstrated in Northern Ireland in the desperate days of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Change may come slowly through peaceful activism, for it requires the support and consent of the wider population. The ‘armed struggle’ which followed those courageous civil rights marches did not bring us peace. It brought us death – at least 3,700 identified deaths and so many others caused by heartbreak, shock, despair. It caused hundreds of thousands of injuries. People still suffer. It has left a legacy of trauma, addiction, poverty, suicide. It was terrible.
There are lessons to be learned from Northern Ireland: that the rights to life and freedom of speech, thought, religion and conscience are fundamental and must be protected. As a people we have to have the courage to say that every life matters, and to live that conviction we must protect and ensure, as best we can, all the rights of our fellow citizens.
No platforming, cancelling, depriving people of the rights which are theirs in law are simply further examples of injustice and intolerance.
We must speak out and say that people have a right to due process, that their lives should not be destroyed by those who do not know that about which they make decisions. Life is very complex and it is very precious. We are called to recognise and fight injustice. We have no right to do injustice to others. Rather we are called to act justly and to love tenderly as Declan Martin did in Ballymena – one man who quietly made such a difference to so many lives.