wfn.org | Irish Church Leaders Congratulated on "Integrity"

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29-July-1998 
98244 
 
    Irish Church Leaders Congratulated on "Integrity" 
    During Ulster Troubles 
 
    by Edmund Doogue 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA-Two of Europe's leading church organizations, the Conference of 
European Churches and the Council of European (Catholic) Bishops 
Conferences, have written to the leaders of Irish 
churches and ecumenical organizations congratulating them on their 
"integrity" during recent threats to the Northern Ireland peace process. 
The letter also describes  sectarianism as contrary to the will of God. 
 
    The Conference of European Churches (CEC) has as members Orthodox, 
Anglican and mainstream Protestant churches across Europe.  Together, CEC 
and the Council of European Bishops Conferences represent the overwhelming 
majority of Europe's Christians. 
 
    The letter refers to recent violence following a government decision 
forbidding a Protestant parade from taking its traditional route through a 
Catholic neighborhood in Portadown, in Northern Ireland.  The Orange Order, 
organizers of the Protestant march, held massive protests and 
violence erupted in many parts of Northern Ireland.  Protestant arsonists 
burned 10 Catholic churches, destroying three of them. 
 
    But it was the murder of three Catholic boys, aged 11, 9 and 8, burned 
to death at home in their beds in Ballymoney, north of Portadown, on July 
12 that brought forth an unusual chorus of pleas for peace,  spanning 
Ulster's political and religious divide. 
 
    Political and religious leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, urged 
the Orange Order to call off their protests.  The Orange Order has 
throughout the protest distanced itself from the violence. 
 
    Archbishop Robin Eames, head of the Church of Ireland (Anglican), told 
the Orange Order to "quietly walk away.  In the name of God, please leave 
the hill at Dumcree [site of the protest]. You've made your points." 
 
    The morning after the murder of the three boys, William Bingham, an 
influential chaplain to the Orange Order, said from his pulpit in Pomeroy 
in Northern Ireland that he had wept when he heard of the deaths.  He 
begged the Protestant protesters to "back off," adding that "after last 
night's attack a 15-minute walk down [the Catholic] Garvaghy Road by the 
Orange Order would be a very hollow victory because it would be in the 
shadow of the coffins of three little boys." 
 
    Peter Forde, the Catholic priest who led the funeral service for the 
three boys, said during his sermon that the sorrow shared by those on both 
sides of Northern Ireland's religious divide should provide a "beacon of 
hope" for the future.  Methodist and Presbyterian ministers also took part 
in the service for the boys, whose family embraced both Protestantism and 
Roman Catholicism. 
 
    However, the protest by the Orange Order has continued at Drumcree, 
though in dwindling numbers. 
 
    The letter, sent to Archbishop Sean Brady, Roman Catholic Primate of 
Ireland, the general secretaries of the Church of Ireland, the Methodist 
Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the Irish 
Inter-Church Conference and the Irish Council of Churches, said that the 
two organizations "share in your grief for the events of recent days that 
have been publicized throughout Europe and have caught the attention of 
people everywhere.  The scenes of renewed confrontation and violence, the 
tragic deaths of innocent people, including even little children, have 
stirred up in us as well deep sadness and sorrow.  We try to imagine the 
feelings of grief and anxiety that have been in your hearts, and by God's 
grace we seek to be one with you in heart and mind. 
 
    "As those who are committed to the search for Christian unity and to 
peace in God's world, we reaffirm our belief that all forms of sectarianism 
are contrary to the will of God, the more so if they attempt to use the 
name of religion to further violent causes.  We know that the leaders of 
the Irish Churches and the Irish ecumenical bodies have repeatedly 
proclaimed this message.  We stand with you in all such declarations.  We 
know too that in the crises of the recent days you have maintained this 
stance with integrity, and believe that your witness will help to bring 
good out of a dangerous situation." 
 
    The letter was signed by both Metropolitan Jeremie Caligiorgis, 
president of the Conference of European Churches, and Cardinal Miloslav 
Vlk, president of the Council of European Bishops  Conferences. 
 
    Ishmael Noko, the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, 
based in Geneva, who has previously expressed support for the peace process 
in Northern Ireland, said in a statement this week that "the recent deaths 
of three innocent children in an apparently deliberate, sectarian-inspired 
arson attack has served as a bitter and tragic illustration of the 
alternative to peace and tolerance.  It is doubly tragic that it should 
have taken such an incident, the loss of three young and innocent lives, to 
remind those stuck in prejudice and hate of what sort of a future they were 
leading Northern Ireland towards." 
 
    Noko, who is a Zimbabwean theologian, added: "It is the hope and prayer 
of the Lutheran World Federation, and of all people of peace and goodwill, 
that the intransigence and enmity which have blighted Northern Ireland can 
also be buried, and that the divided communities can resume 
their tentative steps towards dialogue, reconciliation and peace." 

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