wfn.org | Methodist pastor steps into paramilitary feud between Protestants

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Oct. 2, 2002 News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
10-21-71BP{444}

NOTE: Photographs will be available with this story.

By Kathleen LaCamera*

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (UMNS) - One man is dead. Another has been shot in
the face. Both belong to opposing Protestant paramilitary groups that are
fighting a bloody turf war with each other. Both come from families who are
part of the Rev. Gary Mason's Methodist church in East Belfast.
  
"Belfast is on a knife edge right now," Mason told United Methodist News
Service in a Sept. 29 interview. "We're all waiting for something to
happen." 

For months, a growing rift between rival Protestant paramilitaries has
shattered relations in the Loyalist community and slowed the peace process.
Police and community leaders say a struggle to control the drug trade and
other illegal activities is at the heart of the feud.

On Sept. 13, Stephen Warnock, a Loyalist Volunteer Force member, was shot
dead in his own car, in front of his 3-year-old daughter. The family called
on Mason, their pastor, to do the funeral service.

The night before Warnock's funeral, rival Ulster Defence Association member
Jim Gray was shot in the face but survived. Mason also is pastor to Gray's
family and only six months ago performed the funeral for Gray's 19-year-old
son, who died in Thailand. 

The shootings set off a flood of contradictory rumors claiming that both
Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries were behind the shootings. No one
could predict what would happen next.	  

By the time Mason arrived at his church on the morning of Stephen Warnock's
funeral, he had received phone calls from both the London Times and the BBC
asking if he would lead the service, given the "high potential for
violence." He told them that unless someone literally blocked his way, he
would be there. Then the pastor received a phone call telling him that a
bomb scare hoax had blocked the road between him and the cemetery.
"That's when I went to the UDA to discuss things," Mason told UMNS. 

It is the rare pastor that can walk straight into a room full of men who
have kept Northern Ireland awash in blood and bombs for decades.

"I arrived at this pub, where there must have been a hundred men downstairs
at 11:30 in the morning," he said. "They were angry about the attack on
their friend, Jim Gray, the night before, and said they were going to block
Warnock's funeral. I explained I was going to be there as a representative
of God, comforting the grieving families, which included women and children,
and that I was not taking anyone's side.

"I said, 'Look, I've stood by some of you in some difficult and perplexing
situations. Someday, I might be doing your funeral and your family would not
want anything to stop it, would they?'"   

Eventually, Mason left with assurances from the group's members that they
would not block Warnock's funeral, a decision the pastor called "the right
moral choice."

These events underscore concern about a growing trend. "There's sectarian
violence here, but buried within communities there is an element using the
shortage of policing and Northern Ireland's political instability to line
their pockets," he explained.

It is easy to make the mistake of believing that the problems in Northern
Ireland lay exclusively in the conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
In fact, a recent editorial of a Belfast-based publication, the News Letter,
pointed to the prevalence of "mafia-style shootings, beatings, racketeering
and drug dealing" as part of the "Loyalist gang" agenda that has left
Northern Ireland on the "highly dangerous precipice of serious civil
unrest." 

The human costs of that unrest are all too apparent to Mason and his
Methodist congregation. At the highly contentious funeral Mason fought so
hard to lead, Warnock's father simply clutched his son's coffin and sobbed.
This was the third son he has lost in Northern Ireland's "Troubles." 

"The saddest thing there was looking at all the pall-bearers carrying the
coffin, draped in paramilitary colors (flags). They were so young, 17 maybe,
and facing nothing better than this for there future. It left a bad taste in
my mouth," Mason said with a sigh.

This is not the first paramilitary funeral, nor the last, that Mason is
likely to perform. His family and members of his Methodist congregation are
"edgy" about the fact that he works so closely with the paramilitaries. It
is not work he ever expected to take on. "It gets kind of thrust on you. ...
Walking into that situation in that pub, you believe God is with you." 

The mediating role Mason and the Methodist Church are playing in the current
crisis has not gone unnoticed. When John Reid, the British government's top
cabinet minister for Northern Ireland, visited Belfast a month ago, Mason
was the person asked to spearhead Reid's visit to the Loyalist community.  

"Ultimately, the church has to stand up for Christian values in the midst of
these situations or else the Gospel becomes irrelevant," he said.

With possibly some of the hardest times still ahead for Northern Ireland,
Mason hopes the world will continue praying for him and all people trying to
live their faith against the odds. 
 
# # #
 
*LaCamera is a United Methodist News Service correspondent based in England.

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United Methodist News Service
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