They asked him to use
his influence to persuade the Pope to come north across the border.
They assured the Cardinal that he would be welcomed, pointing out that all he need do was travel through a short corridor from
the Republic of Ireland up to Armagh.
The Cardinal promised
he would do his best - many
people other than Catholics wanted the Pope to come over the border and said so
publicly and privately.
But no matter how many people wanted the papal visit north
to happen there were political and diplomatic problems: if the Pope visited Ireland's northeast in the context of a visit to the
south this could be interpreted as a political statement that Ireland,
north and south, was all one. If he
visited in the context of a visit to Britain that could be interpreted as a
papal statement that it was part of Britain.
And the British government might succeed in becoming partners in the visit- this was a time
when Vatican Radio commenting on Ireland referred to Britain as "the
mainland". Either way the visit
could have a political meaning unacceptable
to the British government or to many
Catholics in the northeast. Which then to choose? Neither.
The "security situation" was given as a reason for refusing
the northern visit, especially the killing of Lord Mountbatten.
There was a permanent diplomatic representative of the Pope in Dublin, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi. A
permanent diplomatic representative in Britain, Archbishop Bruno Heim, was living in Wimbledon. Each was a vital link between the
Pope and Catholic people in each country. However, Bruno Heim's job as papal representative did not extend to
N. Ireland. Gaetano Alibrandi's job as Papal Nuncio to Ireland did. It extended
to all Ireland. The Irish Bishops however had told him he need not be concerned further north than Dundalk.
Who then was the effective personal representative of the
Pope for northern Irish Catholics during
their years of upheaval and near disaster in the late seventies? Apparently neither Alibrandi in Dublin nor
Heim in Wimbledon. We know this from
what these men said.
Some Catholic clergy
believed Cardinal Conway in Armagh
during some of the seventies period had
undertaken the functions of Nuncio but this was not announced publicly. The
Cardinal died in 1977.
However, even if the
Papal Nuncio was restricted from coming North, that did not hinder people from
the North going to see him. Fortunately he kept an open door for them.
This curious situation meant that quite different accounts
of what was happening in Ireland's northeast were going to Rome. The Pope's 1979 speeches
reflected little awareness of the reality of the political and church life of
the tens of thousands of people who came down from the north to see and hear
him.
A few years before his visit in 1979 a programme of torture
had started under government command
in N.Ireland. Since the end of the second world war
international Catholic associations had been more and more forward in
condemning torture, but at Drogheda, a few miles from the nearest identified
torture centre, the Pope's well-crafted sermon did not mention this startling
abuse of power and morality happening nearby. He begged the young people however not to use "violence", presumably
against the government.
In the years following the 1979 papal visit other failures
to recognise the real roots of the economic,
political and moral problems Irish people were facing would be revealed.
The visit in 1979 was looked forward to with enthusiasm and hope for peace rather than for mere political
stability.
But soon afterwards N.Ireland
entered a period of even greater pain for both people and church.
Perhaps people expected too much, as if peace would come from
leaders at the top rather than from people who too often are at the bottom. Internationally many Christians and other
religious people realised this, but governments at home and abroad were
convinced that what they deemed peace could be got only by identifying and
beating down their perceived enemies, even if their perceived enemies were
citizens whom the governments were pledged to protect and foster.
Pope
John Paul mentioned Archbishop Helder Camara but did not stress Camara's advice that in a spiral of violence
governments are often the primary aggressors. Many of those who came to hear
the Pope in Ireland may have gone home feeling
embalmed rather than enlivened, with a message of stability based on the
past rather than one of flourishing in a
marvellous present and possible future.
The Irish child abuse scandal did not cause the church's
chaos in the years after the Visit. It was like a tumour bursting open suddenly
and revealing so many other ills that
were there as well, intellectual caging, feminine and gender restriction,
over-centralisation, failure to offer a
present-day ideal of spiritual and intellectual life in which Faith would set us free to develop the best and most hopeful in us all.
But what could even a pope say unless he had sound advice
about what is really happening to those to whom he is talking? Different messages were being sent to him
before he came. The most powerful was that of the British government; the most
accurate and probably the politically least likely to be accepted was going through Alibrandi. Future research may
make clear what messages from N. Ireland were sent to Rome and who sent them. Alibrandi would probably have made
sure his open door was a help.
After a triumphant hopeful Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in 1932 the Catholic Church could
not prevent the international war starting, neither could it lessen the
increasingly severe war in N. Ireland in the years after the 1979 papal visit. What
seemed a triumphant church in1932 and a confident
church organisation in 1960 had to endure the loss of congregations, drastic
fall in the numbers of those who wanted to be priests or members of religious
orders, opposition to the church's influence on education, accepted morality, health, welfare and
control of property. Even the great Council in the Vatican in the early sixties
that promised change became a source of
upset and even division in the church as some Irish bishops enthusiastically
supported the Council privately and publicly but others supported it in public
but not in private, and some disagreed
with it simply.
For a church emerging from persecution this need not have
had devastating effect . It could instead have energised the church to find its
real roots in Irish and world history, examine and refresh its beliefs and
practices and do much else for the practical and spiritual good of church and
state. But problems at the roots cannot be
cleansed away in a flow of gentle piety. Piety can be a result of renewal, not
a cause of it. Christians had inherited a programme of radical thinking which seemed to be going to
waste.
Maybe in August 2018 Pope
Francis will show a more critical
view of problems and potential in the Irish
church and maybe whoever drafts his speeches
will have the insight and courage to tell him what he really should say to
bring us along with him. Or him along with us.
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