Church of Ireland reassessment of links with loyalism overdue

Every July for the past four years I have seen family members and friends who are members of the Church of Ireland in this State transfixed with horror as one of their churches, its two Union Jacks rampant, becomes the venue for an orgy of sectarian triumphalism. Their horror is combined with despair at the lack of any serious action or condemnation from the leadership of the church.

Finally, shamed by the murder of the Quinn children and the statement of the Rev William Bingham, the church moved to ask the Portadown Orange lodge to desist from using its property at Drumcree as a base from which to organise their protest, and Archbishop Eames asked the Orangemen to go home.

More recently Dr Eames - who, let us not forget, is Primate of all Ireland - has written to the Tablet saying that much of what he saw at Drumcree was "far removed from the Gospel", and that "there are ways to protest which are well removed from the worship of God in a parish church".

If this, and much more trenchant statements from other churchmen, indicate a reassessment of the relationship between the church and loyal institutions, this is to be welcomed. It is not before time.

But it must be accompanied by a serious examination of the history of the Church of Ireland in the North, its role on the island as a whole, and the failure, up to now, of its leadership to represent the church's membership as a whole, and not just the majority who live in Northern Ireland.

Questions must also be asked of commentators in this State, who have treated the leadership of the Church of Ireland with a deference long gone from their treatment of the Catholic Hierarchy.

The Hierarchy is - rightly - subjected to rigorous interrogation on its attitude to paedophile priests and to the enshrining of Catholic social teaching in the law of the State. But when it comes to the attitude of the Church of Ireland to the Orange Order and its protests, journalists and commentators here have been strangely reticent.

Of course, Archbishop Eames has regularly denounced sectarianism and has expressed his abhorrence of the violence surrounding the Drumcree protests. But, until the deaths of the Quinn children, he was at pains not to oppose the protests themselves and to avoid even expressing any personal reservations about the use of Church of Ireland property as campaign headquarters for the protesters who, as we all now know, included heavily armed men. This also happened in previous years, and nothing was said.

Events surrounding Drumcree pose other questions for the Church of Ireland in the North. I have attended too many sad press conferences where thin women, clutching bewildered children, described the sound of breaking glass as the bricks or petrol-bombs were thrown through their windows in the early hours of the morning, accompanied by a barrage of sectarian insults.

I have never seen or heard of a single Protestant cleric at the scene, expressing his abhorrence at such unChristian behaviour and by his presence showing that this was not done in the name of Protestantism and its "civil and religious liberties".

Instead, over the years successive statements from the Church of Ireland on current events, normally through its leader, Archbishop Eames, have generally contained closely argued presentations of current unionist thinking.

One of his first acts when appointed in 1986 was to say that the Anglo-Irish Agreement had made reconciliation in Northern Ireland 10 times harder. A year later he won the public approval of both the Rev Ian Paisley and Mr James Molyneaux when he called for a new agreement which would supersede it.

In 1995 he insisted, along with the Ulster Unionist Party, that there must be IRA arms decommissioning before Sinn Fein entered talks. A different view was taken by the then archbishop of Dublin, Dr Donald Caird.

Visiting Drumcree during the 1996 standoff, which was accompanied by widespread violence and intimidation, he said that the Orangemen "feel that their rights and their ethos are being eroded . . . This march to Drumcree has been part of their tradition."

At the general synod in 1997 Dr Eames said he did not think a general condemnation of the Orange Order would be "right, helpful or justified". Is it any wonder that at the same synod Dean Victor Griffin urged the church to "be very careful to avoid any action or policy which would support the view that the Church of Ireland is primarily, if not solely, the religious dimension of unionism and the British establishment"?

Yet it appears that for many in the leadership of the Church of Ireland it is quite right and proper that this should be so. When asked why its churches in Northern Ireland flew the Union Jack in July every year,, a spokeswoman said it was to commemorate the dead of two World Wars, and it was "the national flag". When it was pointed out that it was never flown over churches in Britain, she said: "It is because they [the Northern congregations] want so much the connection with the rest of the UK."

This view sees the Church of Ireland as representative of the political aspirations of its members in Northern Ireland who are unionists, not as a church with members throughout the island, let alone as a religious organisation with a spiritual mission and moral and ethical values transcending political allegiance.

When Bishop Comiskey apologised publicly for the boycott of Protestants in Fethard-on-Sea in 1957, it showed the profound reassessment taking place within the Catholic Church of its role in the Southern State. His apology was warmly welcomed by Bishop John Neill.

Yet so far there is little evidence that the leadership of the Church of Ireland is similarly fundamentally questioning its role in the Northern state. When will we see an apology from the Church of Ireland for the years of discrimination practised by many of its members in Northern Ireland against Catholics, in the name of Protestantism?

Appalling though the Fethard incident was, it is trivial compared with the murderous intimidation of hundreds of Catholic families in Northern Ireland during the marching season every year. Yet the Church of Ireland, far from looking into its own heart, has insisted this has nothing to do with "respectable" members of Orange institutions and has signally failed to campaign against it.

Father Micheal MacGreil's study of prejudice and tolerance in Ireland, updated for the 1990s, contained the finding that religious practice in this State is now lower among members of the Protestant churches than the Catholic Church. Within the Church of Ireland could this be because members in the South cannot identify with an institution whose public face is no more than that of Northern unionism at prayer?