ALL FALL DOWN ?

Going from left to right - in more ways than one - the political world seems falling apart :  The USA is discussing not whether their president is the best ever but whether their president is just self-seeking and intellectually unfit for the job ; in Ireland most politicians  are resisting the logical advance of democratic  representation,  coalition of all parties and go on dividing in the hope of conquering each other; in the North of Ireland the DUP is pulling itself apart, in Britain many Scots want to secede, the Conservative government is  unsure whether its rudder is  guiding them to the right direction and even whether it has one;  the European Union instead of creating unity and the certainty of a better future for Europeans  is wondering if there is, or ever will be, such a thing as European Unity ; the Middle East is rocked and blasted again and again with disastrous wars whose origin goes back to what European Nations have greedily done to it for centuries.

And the Catholic church, still believing in its destiny to be the Rock on which a new World would be solidly built is in bitter conflict inside, under attack from outside and wondering how  it can keep its certainties about anything in face of so many believers now becoming uncertain of nearly everything.

There is even more than that, but why continue such a litany of woe?

There is plenty of criticism about all this , plenty of a verbal and other abuse about it. But there seems a  remarkable absence of reasonable analysis of what is happening and why it is happening. Maybe too many people are afraid of being held  responsible, too few believing we humans can do any better.

So why not ask just one question that might help lighten the dark : What would have happened if.........?

What would have happened if our Unionist friends in Ireland , having got control  - against their wishes because  they wanted all of it  - of six Irish counties had decided to treat  everyone in that carved off area  with justice, decency and even generosity? There were some of them who did want it and even the British King George the Fifth  ( it was George V wasn't it ?) made a speech at the opening of Stormont  (in 1932 wasn't it ?) saying he hoped "both sides in Ireland would eventually come together". What would have happened if the Unionist fair play people, few as they were, had taken courage and succeeded? Of course they were  thinking of fair play inside the Empire, which would not be easy but no matter, that might well have been remedied in time.

Or if in the USA they really did become the Land of the Free for the black people, the immigrants, for all to whom their Constitution promised  a new life brightened by  the American Dream come true?

Or if the European Governments who colonised the world for profit had listened honourably to those who demanded  justice for those whose riches and resources they plundered , and the idea of creating a "shared history" with them  had been real, not a sham  created after so much abuse?

So many ifs and an even greater number of buts. It did not happen - that was not because it could  not happen, but because so many people refused even to think of it happening. These weren't only the  powerful and ruthless ones.  Some of them believed they were the great defenders of human dignity in the world - the church and other religious leaders among them. What would have happened to Apartheid in South Africa if the Dutch Reformed and other Churches  had not tolerated or encouraged it ? 

Is our "What if..?"  then a fantasy question about an  impossible dream ?

We human beings have an immense capacity to do what is right. Some of us have died rather than refuse  their fellow citizens the dignity and justice they deserve.  We celebrate their lives and deaths. Surely then we have proved we have something better to live and die  for than an economic system, or for making ourselves great again by blocking other peoples' trade, fingers poised over a bigger destructive button of misery  than our fellow human beings  whom we should be promising to   cherish, not threatening to destroy ? Asking "What would have happened if.....? " is not a useless question. Not only  political and religious unions but even our social and homestead unities are dissolving, our empires crumbling , our artificial greedy divisions of people and countries proving to be the  accursed disaster they really are, yet somewhere there must be  -  an individual here, a handful of people there - the seeds of a human intelligence that understands what is really good for the human race, seeds that never really died and may still be ready to grow no matter how the ruthless, the greedy, and worse, the ungenerous, have  poured the worst of their destructive profit-making seed- destroyers on them.

Or to put it another way :  What if your small persistent shouts for justice were at last to  shake down  our avalanche ?

 

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH.

The President of Ireland Michael  D. Higgins recently made a powerful speech in which he laid bare the central problem of our world at war and the central reason why the United Nations is a large part of our problem with no  desire to be anything else.

President Higgins said that: " The five permanent members ( of the United Nations security council )   China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA, are embarking on a ' new arms race' and  the arms industry was exporting  'weapons of death and destruction' for use in Syria, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of Congo".

President Higgins  is one of the few international figures who have the courage and the desire to make  such a statement and talk about the consequences. .

The United Nations organisation is based upon the principle of arming the  most militarily powerful and wealthy nations and giving them the responsibility to keep world peace!

This  is a sure recipe for war - not occasional war  but permanent war for profit. In the least violent  of times we may hope these five best armed and wealthiest nations - whose leaders are becoming every year more unstable - will agree enough  among themselves to enforce stability - not create peace but enforce stability -  on the rest of the world with the help of the armies of the smaller countries like Ireland.  If the five fall out among themselves then the stage is set for the most appalling of all the United Nations  principles to come into full action - the principle of "you get peace by threatening to beat down the rest of the world", the rest being  chosen for this fate by the United Nations and its highest  paying members. At present the USA and China are threatening each other with  a trade war which could turn into something much worse.

This principle  and our  acceptance of it is one of the worst of the deceptions played by the United Nations on a world that was so hopeful for peace that it accepted the United Nations as a peacemaker. The UN was not and is not a peace maker, it is  a facilitator and stabiliser of war between factions  and nations competing in our permanent wars  for profit.

President Higgins pointed out that " these five members of the Permanent Security  Council of the United Nations who are entrusted with the maintenance of international peace and security  account for three quarters of global arms exports".

He might have coloured this picture of evil with a homely illustration - if you produce eggs you will encourage  the whole world to get healthy by eating eggs. For the arms makers every war is a welcome opportunity to demonstrate the latest and freshest in their range of deadly eggs. Every war stimulates their trade and if there is a lull in their permanent wars, they  make new ones. The five "peace-keepers" of the United Nations cannot do without arms sales on a massive and ever increasing scale to feed  their economies. For them death solves problems, their economic problems.

It all may seem far away as we read what President Higgins or any other analyst says so let's bring it nearer  to home. When we were in the last stages of ending the thirty years  war in Ireland's northeast a few years ago a conference was held in  Washington to discuss our future. Imagine the scene, tired people hoping to make peace, waiting for encouragement and help from the leaders of the world. In this conference held in the  premises of one of the UN Security Council, there were plenty of  speeches about peace. So what did the speech-makers say to us in this atmosphere of hope?

There was one speech I shall never forget .

We were emerging from a thirty years war . We had worked and  hoped for peace not only for ourselves but  for the world. In the midst of the various clichés, a speaker  took to  the platform - I think he was from the now deceased Northern Ireland Office -  to tell us how we could best make progress in our future peace.

The best thing, he told us ,  was to encourage industry.   And the best industry to encourage, he said, was the Belfast-based firm making arms for export,  which he said had excellent prospects..................excellent prospects   ..... ......for peace ?

After a thirty years war......................?

From the audience of politicians, social workers,  clergy and many others present  there were only two people who cried out and protested  with  dismay and indignation. One of them was Inez Mc Cormack, a fearless trade union  leader who demanded what the workers wanted, not  what the war-for-profit merchants wanted.  

From the army of professional peacemakers about to leave the meeting for a meal  not another word was said about our peace.

 For some reason we go on  believing  in this  United Nations fiction.

What a recipe for peace it is, " Your best way to proceed in your peace is to manufacture arms to encourage others to make war ".

President Higgins in his speech also said ; " The self- defeating rhetoric of the arms race, the immorality of the arms trade, can only serve  as infrastructure to fuel current and future wars" .

We might think that such a speech in this  time of  Wars-For-Policy-and-Profit would encourage most Irish people to bring Michael D. Higgins into Presidency for a second term. Unfortunately it may do nothing of the sort.  We may  have bought into the United Nations and arms trade untruth  that peace means preserving for the few the ability to beat down the rest us. For profit.

 

AFTER POPE FRANCIS' VISIT

The recent visit of Pope Francis to Ireland was celebrated before, during and after, by protests, appeals, condemnations, and disapproval such as we Oldies never saw offered to a Pope in our lifetime.

These ranged from street demonstrations with condemnatory placards to friendly advice and dignified appeals from Jude Collins and Father Paddy Mc Cafferty. On one hand honour and ceremonial acceptance, on the other rebuke and disapproval sometimes verbal abuse.

And yet....

And yet Pope Francis was the very first Pope we ever had who not only called for revolutionary change in his church but showed many signs of being willing to make it happen. It was  like a great dramatic tragedy in which the ills and hurts of the past are heaped on the head of the least guilty. Pope Francis may be the tragic pope, willing but not able, recognised after he is gone.  In that case those who offered Francis  a dignified rebuke and their promise to help him will be shown to be right and thanked for it. The Chief surrounded by  cries of Yes in front and murmurings of No behind- backs,  a leader besieged by both friends and colleagues needs all the help he can get.

There have always been times like this in his Church, great international arguments about policy and teaching sometimes  tearing the church apart, sometimes soothed by wise spirits who knew the church would never be without conflict inside and out.

The present upheaval was not  caused by sexual scandal alone. At  times the Church has been riven with sexual scandal - Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (fourteenth century)  show what kind of  scandals hurt the Faithful in his day. There were times when sexual abuse of children was not considered a major offence by church or state.  There were times in Ireland when even a weakened people would  protest with Dan O Connell, "We take our religion from Rome, our politics from Home"  and still keep intact the line of communication between Irish people and Roman pope. History can be a cruel but helpful teacher. So what has happened in the past can happen again.  Is Francis earthy enough to brighten once again the Vision of Christianity even as the numbers  interested in  the Vision become smaller? 

I think he is. But if the present rage is not caused only by the abuse of children let us say honestly that abuse of children has been tolerated for a very long  time.  And covered up for a very long time. People did not take it as seriously as the abuse of older people;  and the cost of revealing it was too heavy  in family shame, institutional disgrace, or in the revenge of those who have exploited  people of any age for profit. It will take a long time to change that situation, in church, state, family or wherever, because although we now insist on  knowing where it  occurs we do not recognise yet how deeply rooted in a human mind it can be.

Nowadays revealing  secrets has become part of our new culture. Investigative journalism is part of the new culture.  Reality film and television show pictures of childbirth, extreme mental distress, death, as closely as entertainers may dare to show it. We used to hide many harsh facts of real life for the sake of not offending, we softened  them in speech through respect or respectability,  we even had words we never uttered  because of delicacy or discretion. But the hurting reality of a harsh world  we tried to make less fearful remained. And even this new culture of revelation still allowed  respectable, discreet silence to save careers, institutions, fortunes. Our new culture of revealing  everything  did not include everything after all.

 That so much  anger has been expressed in Ireland may give the impression that abuse of children is a specially Irish problem, or a specially church problem or a specially  Irish church problem. It is none of these, it is a worldwide problem. A study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004 showed that the occurrence of child molestation or abuse was around 2 % of clergy  generally and this was  an international figure.  Such a figure enrages people  because they expect very different behaviour from clergy and because their children are exposed to this ill-treatment by men or women whom they trusted most.

There is a huge demand for exposing and punishing those who are guilty. But that  could make offenders more cautious while  reassuring parents that "we will make sure that such things do not happen again".  The problem is so deeply rooted  that it will not be disposed of by that alone,  no matter how strong punishment and rules of behaviour may be made and even enforced.

Shifting clergy offenders from place to place in the church was not just a random careless gesture - it was based upon the church's  belief in "the occasions of sin".  This was the belief that a usually subdued inclination to do  wrong can be triggered off by the presence of something or someone  who, knowingly or not,  stimulates it. The  frequent sight of unguarded money might stimulate a normally honest person to steal, the frequent presence of a specially attractive person might stimulate a desire for personal contact. So, innocent persons or harmless  things become what the moralists called "occasions of sin".  Naturally it was thought that removing  a person from the  "temptation"  would solve the problem.  Hence removal of clergy from one place to another. But the deep desire now  active may be too deep for that.  Increasing modern knowledge of an age-old problem has  changed people's minds about this way of solving a problem. It may solve a problem of unguarded cash but it does not solve  a problem of abuse. Cash boxes don't have sexual attractiveness. One of the greatest causes of anger is that those in authority did not act when they found their "remedy" did not work, even when accompanied by  therapy or sympathetic watchfulness.

This underlines  how subtle and complicated the problem of persons abusing persons  really is, and why anger and retribution are not enough.  A problem so subtle and complicated that  it cries out for worldwide  research using all the knowledge and skills we possess , beginning with those of loving parents  teaching their children how to be the first line of their own defence, no matter what successes or failures or betrayals the rest of the world has to offer. Parents are the first - and generally the best - educators of their own children.

And safety, like charity, begins at home.