Courtney McGrail“Our aim should not be the domination of the Islamic world; our aim should be friendship”, writes Fr Conor McDonough
Fr Conor McDonough
Twenty years ago, seven monks of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria, were snatched from their cloister by Islamist militants, and later murdered in circumstances that remain unclear. What is clear, however, is that these monks were well prepared for this moment.
Thanks to the records of their chapter meetings, their personal diaries, and an extraordinary ‘testament’ penned by the prior, we know that these sons of St Bernard understood the risks they were taking, knew that they were likely to be killed, and chose to stay in Algeria anyway.
Why on earth did they refuse all the offers of military protection and evacuation? For Fr Christian, the prior, the answer was simple: as a monk his life was already ‘given’, to God and to his people, and the martyrdom that he foresaw was simply another mode of this giving.
Monastic theme
Being a martyr was just a variation on the monastic theme. And since monasticism has its very beginning in North Africa at the end of the age of martyrdom, one could interpret the martyrdom of the Tibhirine monks as a return, tragic and life-giving, to the sources of the monastic movement.
Still, we’re not all called to be monks, and we’re certainly not all called to be martyrs. Twenty years after Tibhirine, Islamist violence is not a distant phenomenon; we feel its presence, both because of attacks that are closer to home, and because the diabolical activities of ISIS into our living rooms by means of the Internet. In dealing with all this, can we learn anything from Fr Christian and his brothers?
Well they certainly don’t provide us with instructions on how to beat terrorism, how to conquer ISIS, or how to respond successfully to homegrown Islamic extremism.
They point us towards a different goal, more distant and far more important. Our aim should not be the domination of the Islamic world; our aim should be friendship. In his testament, Fr Christian addresses his future assassin, calling him “my friend of the last minute”. Yes, we have enemies, but as Christians we should always see our enemies as potential friends, even potential brothers and sisters in Christ.
We may find ourselves in a ‘clash of civilisations’, but we should never willingly subscribe to the logic of this clash. As Christians we have a bigger, broader, bolder dream: friendship, even at the last minute.
The bells that herald Christ
What a joy it was to see a video, shared widely on social media this week, of the church bells in the Iraqi town of Bartella ringing for the first time in two years, as ISIS retreated in the face of the Iraqi army. These bells reminded me of the bells that are heard in Irish literature, signs of the arrival of Christianity, and an invitation to baptism (think of the Children of Lir, for example).
As Christians, our hope for every man and woman is that they come to know Jesus as friend and Lord, and to be baptised into his body, the Church. In this mission, the brave Christians of the Middle East are the frontline, faithfully and hopefully proclaiming the Gospel in the face of persecution. ‘Then pealed the bells more loud and deep/God is not dead, nor doth He sleep/The Wrong shall fail/The Right prevail/With peace on earth, good-will to men’ (Longfellow).
No room for breezy relativism
I’ve heard recently some complaints about children in Catholic schools being taught other religions: Islam, for example. I can understand the concern. The risk is that a certain relativism is inculcated, especially if the focus is on equating external practices: “We go to the church, they go to the mosque; we have Lent, they have Ramadan; we read the Bible, they have the Koran”.
In a Catholic school there should, of course, be a radical asymmetry between the treatment of the Catholic faith and all other religions. The Faith should inform every aspect of school life, and should transcend, without supplanting, all other educational activities, since it aims at a goal beyond this world: eternal life. A Catholic school should want its students to become saints. But it should also want to produce good citizens, and for this a solid understanding of other religions, especially Islam, is necessary. How else are young Catholics to understand their Muslim fellow-citizens, and to work for the common good with them? Breezy relativism should have no place in Catholic education, but we should be just as keen to avoid complacent ignorance.