Ireland's President Mary McAleese commends Church's 'relentless and courageous work'
Episcopal News Service, Galway, Ireland. May 14, 2008 [051408-02]
Matthew Davies
President of Ireland Mary McAleese told members of the Church of Ireland's General Synod May 14 that they play a vital role in "applying your hands, heart, mind and soul" to make the island nation "the best it can be through the active citizenship of its people."
McAleese expressed gratitude for the "quiet, relentless and often courageous work" of the churches in Ireland "in nudging us, cajoling us, persuading us and leading us in all our prickly differences to the increasingly secure common ground of mutual respect on which we are building a shared future."
Introducing McAleese, Church of Ireland Archbishop Alan Harper acknowledged the contribution she has made in building bridges between Ireland's disparate voices and "enabling them to imagine better outcomes."
McAleese was elected as President of Ireland in 1997 and reelected to another seven-year term in 2004. She is Ireland's second female president.
"As a Church body which promotes the Christian message, I know that deepening, spreading and sustaining the growing fragile plant of reconciliation will be very close to your hearts," she said. "I am ever conscious that we are the first generation of Irish men and women who have been privileged to have been granted the potential of altering the course of our island's history on such a grand and humanly uplifting scale."
Ireland's history has been characterized by high unemployment, mass emigration due to famine in the 19th century, "the mess of distorted relationships…between Catholic and Protestant, and between our island's two competing nationalisms, one Irish, the other Unionist," said McAleese, who was a barrister, journalist and academic prior to becoming president.
"Ireland is neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither agnostic nor atheist, neither Islamic nor Jewish," she said. "It is a welcoming homeland for people of all faiths and people of none."
Saying that Ireland stands at a pivotal moment in her history and acknowledging the political and religious conflicts of the past, McAleese told Synod members that "the confluence of peace and prosperity has utterly changed our context and while neither can be taken for granted and both require constant nurturing, the untilled landscape that lies ahead of us now demands from us a response as to how we will construct this virgin territory, how we will safeguard this fresh new narrative, and in particular what will be the values and aspirations that will inform and shape this new landscape."
McAleese is the first sitting President of Ireland to address a Church of Ireland General Synod, which convenes once a year, and is meeting May 13-15 in Galway, a city on the west coast of the Republic of Ireland.
The Church of Ireland includes 12 dioceses with 390,000 members throughout Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The General Synod, which was established in 1890, is the main legislative body of the Church of Ireland and consists of archbishops, bishops, and representatives of the clergy and laity.
"It's your steady and strong leadership that are going to be so important as we map this shared journey ahead," McAleese told synod members.
"The seeds of tomorrow's Ireland are in part being sown by us right now, this moment in the growth and development of the new relationships constructed and guided by the Good Friday Agreement," she said, referring to the agreement signed in Belfast on April 10, 1998 by the British and Irish governments, marking a major development in the Northern Ireland peace process.
The churches throughout the years, she said, have been "the persuaders and evangelizers that insisted that peaceful politics would work and only peaceful politics would work…The churches have traditionally been an integral part of Irish society, whether at home, helping in our efforts to meet the challenges of our daily lives, or reminding us that we are part of a deeply unequal global human family."
She recognized that Ireland has its many differences, but that "divisions should never be a source of enmity, only a source of energy."
Harper called McAleese's address to synod a "kairos" moment, a Greek word used to describe a God-given moment of possibility during which historic change happens.
"The wind of the spirit blows through this island directing us on a course you have so cogently described," he said. "You have drawn our attention to the extent to which we are responsible for ensuring that this time is the best of times throughout the whole of Irish history."
McAleese was presented with a half-scale replica of St. Patrick's Bell, evoking "another great day when Christianity was brought to these shores," said Harper. The Church of Ireland traces its origins to St. Patrick and his companions in the fifth century.
On May 13, Harper opened the General Synod with a presidential address, reflecting on a recent visit to the Holy Land, condemning the car bomb attack on a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer, and outlining a "new and sustaining vision for the Church of Ireland in the 21st century."
Harper told media gathered at a May 13 news conference that the Church of Ireland remains in communion with every part of the Anglican Communion and spoke about his hopes for this summer's Lambeth Conference of bishops. "I believe that we will find a way to manage the differences that we have with respect to everyone's ethically held positions," he said.
Archbishop John Neill of Dublin preached May 13 during the synod Eucharist at St. Nicholas Collegiate Church in Galway, saying that the current tensions in the Anglican Communion "can be viewed positively."
"A crisis such as that which Anglicanism faces…has enabled us to discover more of what it means to wrestle with the recognition of diversity and the call to unity which is of the very nature of the Church," he said. "Indeed it is only together that churches today can really make a difference and seize the opportunities for service and mission that are there."