Three moves for peace:

...However, just as it is disingenuous of the media to portray the entire six-county state as an urban jungle littered with paramilitary graffiti and fortified police barracks while ignoring the majestic beauty (and yes, even serenity) of much of the country, such despairing also does injustice to those denizens of Northern Ireland who are a living testament to the Christian adage that it is those individuals huddled in the shadow of the cross who cling most steadfastly and faithfully to the hope and promise of the resurrection...

...This year he spent time in Northern Ireland conducting interviews on the "troubles" there...

...Hume is quick to remind skeptics that twenty years ago it was common for Catholics to be denied suitable housing and Northern Ireland's electoral system was based, not so ironically, on ownership of property...

...The effect of the agreement has been that when it was signed the unionists did the usual thing: they threatened...

...Fifty years is only a blink in the life of a country, and there are people who want the problem solved last week...

...And we are firm but patient with them while we wait for them to do that...

...These basic civil rights abuses have since been rectified, but it is the Anglo-Irish Agreement, signed in 1985 by Garrett FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher, that Hume believes signifies a radical shift in the power relationships of an oppressive society: "Northern Ireland was set up when the unionists threatened the British government and the British government backed down...

...And of course that gave encouragement to people in the Catholic community who said the only thing the British understand is force...

...And that is the vicious cycle that has paralyzed this country for the better part of the twentieth century...

...Now the unionists' political leadership is faced with the situation that the old guard doesn't work anymore...

...The unionists learned that that is the way to deal with the British...

...They now realize that they have to stand on their own feet for the first time and sort out relationships with the rest of the island...

...The community members believe with both heart and mind that the words that were spoken on that day provided a first small step toward a peaceful reconciliation from which, finally, there will be no looking back...

...and the English ("I repent for the price that all communities in Ireland have had to pay for English national security, paying it in blood, degradation, division, famine, persecution, and exile...

...It's very hard for people to understand that progress because it requires great patience...

...The government has ensured Lagan College a future as a first-rate facility by granting it a £3 million endowment...

...Lagan College opened in 1981 with an enrollment of twenty-two children who did not wear school uniforms for fear of attack or harassment by less ecumenically minded individuals...

...The anniversary will be marked by the American press with its usual platitudinal (tit for tat sectarian killing) coverage of the conflict by describing a nation shackled to its own history with little hope of ever escaping the paralyzing constraints of a long, tangled past...

...There are presently 550 students who fill the classrooms to their capacity...

...But if you have a divided people anywhere in the world the process is going to take time...

...Believing repentance to be an essential component of the healing process, on Good Friday of 1988 the Columba Community arranged public services that would not have been possible twenty years ago...

...Young adolescents ranging in age from 11-16 years regularly engage in class discussions and reports designed not only to facilitate the development of oral and written skills but also to tap into what vice-principal Peter Agnew refers to as "the hidden curriculum of relationships...

...Agnew acknowledges that the response of the Catholic church has been "lukewarm" at best but remains convinced that time, so often the enemy of progress in Ireland, will prove to be beneficial as the church moves from its role as protector of her people to reconciler of a nation...

...And at the present time they are in a state of confusion...

...We have to tackle the problem of division here and that is where I think we're making the progress...

...Therefore, leadership in the country remained in the hands of bigots, people who were uncompromising and wouldn't share...

...While Hume and the rest of Ireland await the commencement of these long overdue talks, similar political discussions, albeit of a lesser magnitude, take place on an almost daily basis in the cramped and perpetually chilly classrooms of Lagan College in Belfast, Northern Ireland's largest integrated secondary school...

...The resulting polemical discussions focus on such topics as parental attitudes, the IRA, and the heavy-handedness of local police forces in Catholic neighborhoods...

...We reckon that vicious cycle has been broken through...

...VINCENT A. PUNZO Vincent A. Punzo is a graduate student in psychology at the University of Notre Dame...

...The services were highlighted by extraordinary confessions from "representatives" of the Gaelic Irish ("I confess and ask forgiveness for...

...John Hume, leader and founder of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party which grew out of the civil rights protests of 1968-69 (see Commonweal, December 14, 1984), bristles at the suggestion that the political process in Northern Ireland has stagnated: "There are people who will tell you nothing has changed and that is just not true...

...Nevertheless, the debates are reassuringly typical of that age group: what is lacking in subtlety and nuance is effectively countered by a corresponding absence of acrimony and a tacit agreement that no matter how vigorous the debate in the classroom, it is not something that should be carried over onto the Lagan College playground which, as one student pointed out, is far too small to be partitioned anyway...

...REPORT FROM NORTHERN IRELAND THREE MOVES FOR PEACE UNRAVELING THE WEB OF VIOLENCE o a nation already haunted by too many anniversaries, the marking of August, 1989 as the beginning of the third decade of British troops patrolling the streets of Northern Ireland portends little more than the disturbing realization that old wounds, far from healing, continue to fester...

...Seemingly insurmountable obstacles remain...

...glorifying violence and seeking first not the kingdom of God but a united Ireland to the point of idolatry...

...While Lagan College sows the seeds for future harvest and John Hume struggles in the political quagmire of the present, it is the women and men of the Columba Community in Deny who have taken on the burden of Northern Ireland's past-a past which must be laid to rest before any meaningful reconciliation is possible...

...And of course, this time, the British government stood its ground...

...The toil of John Hume, the integrated classrooms of Lagan College, and the prayers of a small community radiate a sustaining and victorious light...

...the Protestant Irish ("We have taught our children that they are a superior race....We have sought to rule our country and share power with no one...

...But surely it is not to our credit if in our cynicism and despair we fail to see beyond the oppressive glare of hate...