This past weekend, we had the privilege of attending a peacemaking conference put on by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. I believe that Jess has also written a bit about this so I’ll apologize ahead of time if our thoughts overlap.
The conference basically did two things. It gave different churches who are doing cross community work (work between unionist (protestant) and nationalist (catholic) communities) an opportunity to share what they’ve been doing and how its been successful.
The second was to allow people to ask questions about the cross community work that different churches are doing, the problem of peace in Belfast, and general issues relating to the troubles. One of the questions posed to the panel of experts (including the head of the Corrymeela Community, a catholic priest, and a gentleman who runs a cross-community center) was about how, from what they’ve seen, “catholic’s seem more willing to do cross-community work than protestants do”. The panel speculated that it could be due to many protestant’s belief that catholics are not Christians. Although this is true, I don’t think it really speaks to the heart of the matter, simply because the issue between protestants and catholics here is not religious, but political (see Jess's blog for an explanation of this). I think that the question is entirely unfounded and that there are just as many protestants (not)willing to explore cultural and political diversity as there are catholics. In Northern Ireland because one is protestant or catholic, society forces them into a specific mold. Protestants and catholics here (stereotypically speaking) watch different news programs, go to different shops and schools, read different newspapers, have different perspectives on social issues, and live in different communities. Because of this a protestant, who sees primarily unionist people, religious or not, all day long knows that many more unionist people than they do catholic. One of the only reasons they would know someone in the catholic/nationalist community is if that person broke the mold. The only catholics/nationalists a protestant/unionist would interact with would be one who was willing to do cross-community work; whereas, on an everyday basis the same person would see and interact with at least a handful of protestant/unionists who would despise the catholic/nationalist community.
Perspective is an interesting beast to tackle in this context. Everything is influenced by one’s perspective, and the two groups that are at odds have entirely different perspectives on just about everything. I am convinced that the only thing that can bring people on both sides together, for a lasting relationship, is love and commitment to Christ. This “catholics aren’t Christian” talk has to stop, and we need to reach across the divide with the same amount of love and compassion and self sacrifice as God did for us on the Cross.
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