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Father
McManus is at it again. He doesn't seem to realise
that there is a grave difference between "historical
consciousness" and revisionism. For Adams and
his ilk are not just revising strategies but the founding
principles that republicanism stand on. Although there
were good things that came from the Second Vatican
Council, it also opened the door for a Protestant
culture to take root in the Church, for Protestantism
allows for a myriad of individual interpretations
of theology, liturgy and morals. The universality
of the Roman Catholic church has been ripped to shreds
by this. Go to any ten churches around the world and
tell me about the "catholic" nature of them!
Fundamentally different liturgies, fundamentally different
theological emphases and fundamentally different implicit
and sometimes explicit moral teaching abound. Most
criticism of Vatican II by what Father McManus would
call "classicists" is not centered on the
intent of the Council but on its outcome. The baby
was, indeed, thrown out with the bath water, and he,
if he has survived, is a grown man, wandering in a
amnesiac's endless and formless haze, looking for
his roots.
This
is the grave danger with Sinn Fein's "baby"
and how it flew from the window when the dotted line
was signed on the GFA. Our roots have become obscured
and are in danger of being lost. To assume that all
of us who are against such a grave error are naive,
overly militaristic or detached (because we, like
Father McManus himself, has done for decades, don't
live in the North) is amateurish and equally dangerous
in the world of ideas and debate. Why doesn't Father
McManus use Bernadette Devlin McAliskey as an example
of all of these defects in judgement then?
To
become a functioning part of the British illegal and
immoral statelet which England has erected and maintained
against the will of the majority of Irish men and
women is wrong, if you are a republican. To undermine
the belief in transubstantiation in the Mass is wrong,
if you are a Roman Catholic. That which pursues progress
is good, but that which undermines the raison d'etre
of a system of beliefs and the struggle to bring those
beliefs to fruition are not. The Church pursues the
kingdom of God and the republican movement pursues
a united, independent Ireland. If, in pursuit of God's
kingdom the bishops decide that housing our sanctuaries
in the beautiful palatial homes of rich pagans is
good for Catholicism, or republican leaders decide
that pursuing a revolutionary Ireland is best done
in an English legislature and will help republicanism
to flourish, then we have a moral obligation to say
"no." It's not very complicated, Father,
unless you're unconscious.
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