Rite and Reason: We must all - religious believer and non-believer, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist - gather around a renewed concept of "humanism," writes Bishop Richard Clarke
The recent opening of St Peter's School in Dunboyne as the first Church of Ireland national school to be created ex nihilo since the foundation of the State has focused minds again on the changed nature of present-day Ireland.
The days of monolith or duolith Ireland have gone, we may assume, for ever. What we see now is a multiracial, multicultural, multifaith society which demands that we find new ways of living together.
From a more negative perspective, the almost total disintegration of the geopolitical landscape over the four years since 9/11 has shown just how horrifically destructive non-communication and mutual distrust across different religious and ethnic cultures may become.
Somehow, all of us who are Irish-born and Irish-bred need now to shed our modernist preconceptions as to what constitutes "civilisation" - an unexamined belief in the inevitability of human progress, in the supremacy of rationalism, in the paramount importance of individualism over and against a communal humanity - and to connect properly with those for whom such values do not appear as self-evident, in seeking together to establish what it is to be truly human in Ireland today.
Is being a Christian or Muslim in Ireland today really supposed to mean, "Being Irish first and Christian second, or Irish first and Muslim second"? Such a question has no sustainable reality.
Or can we truly commend the current social mores of gross consumerism and individualistic self-absorption as the rich fruits of real Irishness?
No sane person, one assumes, would answer in the affirmative. Or can we point admiringly at the social deprivation of an increasing number of people as a good reason for people to adopt modern Western values? Of course not.
As a committed and convinced Christian, I firmly believe the gospel imperative to proclaim Christ, but I believe also that we must all - religious believer and non-believer, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist - gather together around a renewed concept of "humanism".
In our culture, humanism is often understood only as a rather dour mode of agnosticism, antagonistic to religious faith in all its forms.
True humanism, as it would be understood in the mainstream of the European philosophical tradition, is able to find a place for the religious mind as for the wholly secularist mind. For the religious believer, this is not a dumbing down of faith; it is a necessary engagement with the questioning which is crucial for the maturity of all thinking people, of religious faith or of none - "What does humanness mean?"
Different religious traditions will indeed find differing answers, but a common ground of respectful encounter must nevertheless be found.
The seeking of a space in which such an engagement may be undertaken, without either fearfulness or the agenda of proselytisation, is a matter for the entire globalised world but also for individual societies.
There is certainly little tradition in this country of any mutually respectful philosophical dialogue between faiths, or between faith and non-faith.
We must set to work before the fragmentation of our society becomes irreversible.
The late pope, scarcely noted for his ecclesiological radicalism, openly encouraged a series of annual inter-faith gatherings (from 1985 onwards) under the banner of the Sant'Egidio Community. It was always understood that these gatherings would include also the participation of those who had no religious faith. The latest of these international meetings "in the spirit of Assisi" was held recently in Lyons, and with the blessing of the new pope.
Christians have nothing to fear from such encounters, save their own insecurities.
There should indeed be a humble engagement of hearts and minds with those of other religious faiths. There is, in particular, much that the "People of the Book" - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - need to communicate humbly and respectfully in one another's company, but it must not stop there.
We do our own religious convictions no honour if we cannot set ourselves - through those very convictions - to speak with others and to learn from others, those of faith and those without religious faith, of a humanism which seeks for the common humanness and the shared humanity of all around us.
Most Rev Richard Clarke is Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare