Diocesan News
Bishop Paul Colton’s address at the official opening of the Sam Maguire Community Bells
The Bishop of Cork says that the centenary commemorations of the War of Independence and the Civil Way call for ‘careful thought’ and sensitivity.
Speaking at the Official Opening in St Mary’s Church, Dunmanway, Co Cork, on Saturday, 9th September, of ‘The Sam Maguire Community Bells’ the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, the Right Reverend Dr Paul Colton, said that arising from his own pastoral work, he knows that many in the local Church of Ireland community in Cork, Cloyne and Ross anticipate the coming centenary commemorations of the War of Independence and the Civil War ‘fearfully and with a certain dread.’
‘The coming centenary years call for careful thought and even more careful and sensitive commemoration,’ he said.
Bishop Colton said: ‘Here we are ninety years after the death of Sam Maguire, and, in not too many years down the road, one hundred years after those ‘troubled times’ we will be commemorating through the lens of what we are now, and of what our country has become now.
‘Among some in our Church of Ireland community the commemorations are anticipated fearfully and with a certain dread. Our recent West Cork History Festival in Skibbereen hit the news headlines. The courageous steps taken by our own Canon George Salter to tell his family’s story as he, now in his 90s, inherited it drew heated debate. Among many there is still an enduring reluctance to talk.
‘It has to be said too that the moods, motivations and complexity of emotions of that period, indeed, the truth itself about that period, cannot be extrapolated from statistical analysis of deaths alone. Statistics do not tell people’s human stories as they are remembered. Those stories are still vibrant on all sides of conflict as part of the oral tradition, and it, vulnerable as it is to all sorts of emphases, distortions even, cannot be ignored. There is an understandable reluctance to name anything in our past as sectarian or under desirable, but we are not well served by pretence either. The stories and memories are still vivid in the testimony of children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews today.
‘All of this – the many facets and strands of the same story – have to be shared openly, and told as part of the commemoration. People on all sides of what was need to be empowered and facilitated to tell their stories, to exchange them, and to listen to one another.
‘We know war is cruel, divisive and ugly. We know that Cork was a most violent place in those years. In every war there are sides; there are enemies, divisions, spies, informers, atrocities and injustices. In every situation of conflict, people take sides. Division is part and parcel of the human predicament. War scars landscapes and humanity itself. It scars memories. It changes things forever. At a century’s remove, we live even now with its outcomes and legacy.
‘The quest of the historical debate about the times 100 years ago seems to be about justifying, from the perspective of hindsight, who was right and who was wrong. It’s the age old quest for justification. Some of our families, including mine, as I said, were on the other side, yet, we have happily become part of what now is.
‘But what are we to do with our hindsight now, 100 years on?
‘Be in no doubt, in our new Ireland 100 years on, the coming centenary years call for careful thought and even more careful and sensitive commemoration. This country has to be cautious about how it goes about commemorating events of 100 years ago. Memories are still raw.
‘Against that background, let us be under no illusions about the huge significance of what the Rev Cliff Jeffers and this community here in Dunmanway have put in place; what are we are opening today. In a prophetic way, from within this place (contentious in its own history) they have put down a marker of what the character of the coming centenary commemorations should be – reconciliation.
‘This project has set a tone that others, locally, regionally and nationally might do well to note and to emulate as we prepare: a note of reconciliation; a note of cooperation and partnership; a note of dialogue; and a note of opportunity of community building for the future. That’s as it should be, not least for those of us who call ourselves Christians, for our calling is from God who ‘… reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.’ (2 Cor. 5.18). That ‘ministry of reconciliation’ requires much of us in the days ahead.’
The full text of Bishop Colton’s sermon is available at www.churchofirelandcork.com
Diocesan Media & Information Technology Officer
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Ms Denise Stobart
media@corkchurchofireland.com