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“In Northern Ireland, society is pervaded by mistrust”; so the first thing that needs to be done is “restore trust, the necessary precondition for the peaceful sharing of spaces, powers and responsibilities”. So said Archbishop Séan Brady, primate of Ireland and President of the Conference of Irish Bishops, in a lecture he gave at the “St. Ethelburga Centre for Peace and Reconciliation” in London on 5 May. The Centre was established at the church of the same name in the City of London following a terrorist bomb blast, which caused the death of one man and the injury of 51 others in 1993. Archbishop Brady declared that “the Protestants must accept all the implications of the Good Friday Agreements (signed in 1998) and the legitimacy of the nationalist aspiration for a united Ireland”. The Catholics, for their part, “must energetically oppose the actions of undemocratic armed groups in our community”. “The first victim of violence and injustice is trust continued Brady ; so we need to combat the ambivalence that persists in the Catholic community” due to “the presence and actions of antidemocratic and totally irresponsible armed groups”. We cannot he said aspire “to a more just and free society and, at the same time, be tolerant of the forces that contradict these principles within our own community”. In the view of the Primate of Ireland, Catholics and nationalists should “commit themselves more actively to creating in the Protestant community greater trust as regards the future of their religious, cultural and political identity”. Protestants and Unionists in favour of remaining under British should, in turn, “accept in full the conditions established by the Good Friday Agreements and the presence in Northern Ireland of citizens with a strong ‘Irish’ identity”, and this means “recognizing the right of the nationalist community to equality, including that of expressing and celebrating their own identity”. According to Brady, “trust can only be built up through concrete actions, from the words we use to the political decisions we take. The principles for the solution of this historic conflict have not changed”, but today we need to “tackle the more controversial aspects of what has already been approved and go further, preferably by putting ourselves in each other’s shoes”. “Over the last few years we have made major progress Brady concluded and I remain personally convinced that in the months ahead this progress can be consolidated. The conflict in Northern Ireland bears eloquent witness to the dangers of an illogical relation between faith and identity, based on presumed reasons of superiority, exclusion and suspicion; the present time, by contrast, bears witness to the capacity of ‘healing’ and redemption of those who believe in an approach founded on the values of forgiveness, reconciliation and justice”.
