FOLLOWING THE visit of Queen Elizabeth, and as this island faces into a decade of centenaries, “it is crucial that we are not meted out the polarising caricatures from the history books of my Irish childhood”, Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork Paul Colton has said.
“What might so easily be squandered is the momentum gestated by the words of President and monarch alike in recent weeks; words which were potently reconciling, healing and bridge-building,” he said.
Recent acknowledgments of the complexity of Ireland’s historic fabric gave “the lie to the heresy . . . that there was only one way in which you could meaningfully be said to be an Irish person – mythical Celtic, oppressed and Roman Catholic”, he said.
The dispelling of this heresy, “conveniently and deliberately cultivated for generations, and which many of us grew up with”, made it “moving . . . in recent weeks to see the ceremony at Islandbridge when wreaths were laid by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and our President Mary McAleese.”
He said that, for him, this “was a public acknowledgment and validation of my ancestors, and, more deep than that, how a family such as mine came to be in Ireland”.
In his address to the Cork, Cloyne and Ross diocesan synod, he explained how last October he and his family visited the grave of his grandmother’s first husband, Daniel Griffith, in France.
From Ushers’ Quay in Dublin, Griffith had been a labourer in Guinness’s when he enlisted in the 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, part of the 36th Ulster Division. On November 20th, 1917 he was killed, at the age of 26.
At the grave Bishop Colton and his family planted a cross on which he had written “a visit 93 years later on behalf of your dear wife Ciss Marsh – my grandmother”, he said. Arising from the experience, he had raised the matter of the forthcoming centenary of the Easter Rising 1916 at a meeting of the House of Bishops, he said.
He said that in the discussions it became clear there was a need to broaden the perspective from the centenary of Easter 1916 to include a preparedness for the other upcoming centenaries – the signing of the Ulster Covenant 1912, the outbreak of the First World War, the sinking of the Lusitania, the War of Independence, the Treaty, and the Civil War.
The matter had been referred to Dr Kenneth Milne, Church of Ireland historiographer, as a starting point, he said. It was “vital that small communities such as ours – small in number, but rich in diversity and pluralism – engage with the preparations for the observance of these centenaries”.
On education, he said he wished to “strongly rebut the portrayal of faith schools which caricature them as bigoted, indoctrinating, monochrome, antediluvian communities of the cosy religiously like-minded”.
He had affirmed publicly the need for greater diversity of patronage models to cater for the needs of those who are not religious.
While the system of education was inherently denominational in character, Church of Ireland and Protestant families were as entitled to a stake in that framework as everyone else, he believed.
