Next year's commemorations of the 1798 Rebellion had a potential for building trust in Ireland, although examinations of the past had sometimes caused divisions, the Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, the Right Rev John Neill, said yesterday. Bishop Neill, addressing the Church of Ireland Ferns Diocesan Synod in Wexford, said that anything done locally in any parish which helped trust to develop across old divisions could contribute to an atmosphere of trust throughout the island.
Patience was required in order to move from a position of confrontation to the position of trust in which old hurts and other divisive issues could really be addressed.
"The key question is not whether the past affects us, the key question is how we handle that past history," Bishop Neill said.
The recent commemorations of the Great Famine had been handled in many parts of the island with great sensitivity, with an awareness of wrongs done and hurts received, and with "an attempt to get behind popular mythology and to move towards healing and reconciliation in the present".
As we approached the bicentenary of the 1798 Rebellion, he was certain that the same spirit was about, "that we are entering again into a story that on one hand has a potential for uniting us, and yet on the other has sometimes divided". A positive attitude to the celebrations had already been apparent in the diocese of Ferns.
"It is important to realise that there is nothing to fear about confronting memory, when it is undertaken in a context of trust and indeed of reconciliation, understanding and peace," he added.
This had a bearing on the situation in Ireland today, as the coming months would be vital within the island as a whole as groundwork was laid for the political future of Northern Ireland.