The Government announcement that anyone convicted of the murder of Det Garda Jerry McCabe would not be released from prison was described as "an outrageous moral fudge" at the Church of Ireland Synod in Dublin yesterday.
To loud applause, the Ven Gordon Linney, Archdeacon of Dublin, said it was a serious moral issue for him to be told it was "quite wrong" that anyone convicted of killing a policeman in Adare be released from jail while it was "quite a different matter" where anyone convicted of killing the two policemen in Lurgan a year later were concerned.
"I want to tell my Government, please don't treat us as children," he said. He thanked God for the gardai, who had courageously identified with their colleagues in the North, but insisted the moral integrity of the peace process was every bit as important as its political integrity.
Archdeacon Linney also said that as a citizen of the Republic, he felt "deeply uneasy" at the message sent out by the Taoiseach's response to criticisms of the release of prisoners to attend the Sinn Fein Ardfheis last Sunday. He believed Mr Ahern to be "a genuine man of peace" but thought in his reply he might have been removed from the mind of the vast majority of the Irish people, which was "massively against violence".
The people did not want to be identified in any way as "accessories after violence", he said. He was not against prisoner release. He believed such gestures of forgiveness were necessary, but he also believed it important that the people of Northern Ireland understood the people of the South were, are, and always have been genuinely committed to peace.
Archdecaon Linney was speaking during a Synod debate on the standing committee report, which included the church's response to the Belfast Agreement.
Earlier in the debate the Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, Dr James Mehaffey, said confidence-building measures by the British and Irish governments had been one-sided. He, too, referred to scenes at the Sinn Fein Ardfheis Ard Fheis, and the "great feelings of unease" among unionist people.
He appealed for support and understanding for unionist people in the North who felt "very uncertain and very unsure", and drew attention to their "fragmented leadership, which was not seen as speaking with one voice". He contrasted it with the situation on the nationalist side.
Many unionist people were Church of Ireland members, he noted, and he pleaded with people in the Republic to try to understand them in their difficulties, "in the hard times we are going through".
He also appealed for lay support for rectors who often had to take the unpopular but Christian decision. "We must stay with Christian principles and not allow ourselves be pushed by the political winds that blow," he said.
Canon Walter Lewis, of the diocese of Connor, said he had met his select vestry in Belfast on Monday night, and an enthusiastic endorsement of the Belfast Agreement was not emerging. His experience would reflect a lot of the pain, confusion and concern expressed by Bishop Mehaffey. And while he thought the Yes vote might win, he still had an open mind on whether it would, such was the "great confusion".
Mr David Bleakley, of the Down diocese, asked that the people of the North in particular be given "a space to think". It was not easy, at what was obviously a tense time and with so many contending voices. He quoted a person he had been speaking to recently who described people in the North as being "caught up in one of history's hurricanes".
He spoke of the "special dimension of suffering the North has known", referring to a woman who for the last 10 years had lived with a husband unable to move following the Enniskillen bombing. She had told him how she had gone on her knees to know how she should vote. Out of it all may come a politics of a higher order in Northern Ireland, which could act as a catalyst for change in all of Ireland, with its greater mix of Planter and Gael, he said.
