A Catholic view:
Daly, Cahal B
A CATHOLIC VIEW VIOLENCE, SLOGANS, & DEMOCRACY CAHAL B. DALY Bishop Cahal B. Daly is the bishop of Down and Connor, a diocese that extends across the border and includes areas of both Northern...
...Indeed, all of us become gradually inured to the recital of acts of murder and destruction...
...Violence is not the means to justice...
...There is still, in Catholic and Protestant communities, too much ignorance of what Christians of other denominations really believe and how they live their Christian lives...
...For there are two ways of being an Ulsterman...
...But a choice must be made...
...It is an Ireland of depression and a sense of hopelessness . . . . It is a great hoax to pretend that brotherhood between Irishmen can be promoted by fratricide, that justice can be built on intimidation, extortion, and protection rackets...
...A CATHOLIC VIEW VIOLENCE, SLOGANS, & DEMOCRACY CAHAL B. DALY Bishop Cahal B. Daly is the bishop of Down and Connor, a diocese that extends across the border and includes areas of both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic...
...We all know regimes where the voting booths are ringed with screens of armalites and tanks...
...Why do paramilitary groups decline to set out fully and honestly before the people their political, economic, social and ideological policies, with credible indications as to how these policies are to be realized, so that people are made fully aware of what kind of Ireland, shaped by what kind of ideology, they are offering...
...It is claimed that the "new Ireland" to follow the violence will be one of peace and prosperity, justice, equality, and brotherhood: but a new Ireland is being shaped here and now by the violence itself...
...Meanwhile, as year follows year of misery, violence is conspicuously not advancing in the slightest degree the political causes which it advocates...
...The slogan "No sharing with Nationalists" is unacceptable, for it puts more than half a million citizens of Northern Ireland outside the pale of legitimacy and loyalty...
...to the point where all this has come to seem to them almost normal...
...THE CHURCHES must give the lead in showing how communities can not only coexist, but can grow together in love, in acceptance of their differences, in respect for different but sincerely held beliefs...
...Whitehead declared, in the victory of persuasion over force...
...The following are extracts from an address that Bishop Daly gave to mark the World Day of Peace last January 1. the address was delivered at St...
...The simplistic slogan "End British rule" is unacceptable - for it flouts the right of a million citizens of Northern Ireland to see themselves as British-Irish or British-Ulster...
...Someone has spoken of the "numbness factor" in Northern Ireland: consciences become benumbed by familiarity with evil...
...They cannot have bom...
...They must choose either physical force or democratic persuasion...
...WE ARE NOW ending our thirteenth year of political violence: and no end to our turmoil can as yet be discerned...
...Violence becomes itself the cause of new injustices...
...The direct cost of violence has been appalling, in terms of death, bereavement, mutilation, damage to persons and breaking up of families, imprisonment or degrading treatment or degrading conditions of prisoners...
...The armalite and the ballot box cannot both be carried together...
...retaliation, and revenge which could take generations to heal...
...The democratic process and, indeed, civilization itself consist, as the philosopher A.N...
...The Westminster government under Conservative administrations has itself recognized that the Northern Ireland problem is basically that of a peaceful coexistence of distinct Irish and British dimensions, different national identities, different historical and cultural self-definitions...
...It is an Ireland of suspicion, resentment...
...Some of our teenage youth, especially in urban areas, have never known any other environment but that of guns and bombs, confrontation and conflict...
...These regimes can command up to ninety-nine percent majorities, but which of us will call them democratic...
...Which of us would wish to live under them...
...Violence postpones the day of justice...
...It is practicing the pseudo-politics of Utopia and false promises rather man the politics of honesty and justice.ty and justice...
...If these moves represented a genuine will to enter into the democratic process they could only be welcomed...
...The indirect cost of the violence has been incalculable, in terms of general decline in moral standards due to the breakdown of law enforcement, the increase of vandalism, the proliferation of illegal drinking houses and the spread of alcoholism, the plague of armed robberies and of extortion and protection rackets for the financing of paramilitary operations...
...The political rights of each community carry an obligation to respect the political rights of the other...
...THE Provisional IRA has made some moves towards political involvement...
...and above all through a prolonged violation of the most sacred of all moral precepts - respect for the sacredness of human life...
...Brave voices on both sides have been raised calling for this reciprocal recognition of rights and respect for differences...
...or that economic recovery can be assured when the very bases of the economy are being blown up...
...Paul's Church, Fall's Road, in Belfast...
...but more such voices must be raised and be raised more loudly and clearly...
...Any movement which, for reasons of political expedience, conceals its ideology and camouflages its ultimate objectives is abusing the democratic process...
...There is an Irish conception of Ulster and there is a British conception of Ulster, and the two have equal historical and political legitimacy...
Vol. 110 • March 1983 • No. 5
