LETTERS to the editor
Sunday, March 14, 2010 McGurk’s missionary position
I welcome Tom McGurk’s article (7/3/2010) focusing on the historical role of Irish missionaries in the Third World during the 19th and 20th centuries.
It is indeed remarkable that Irish historiography has devoted minimal attention to this. FSL Lyons, in his groundbreaking Ireland Since the Famine, wrote only two sentences about the modern missionary movement.
Diarmaid Ferriter’s blockbuster, The Transformation of Ireland:1900-2000, has only a passing paragraph about the modern Irish missionary movement.
When are Irish universities going to establish chairs of African Studies, Asian Studies and Latin American Studies, and enlist the accumulated experience of Irish missionary societies to help consolidate such worthy intellectual projects?
Missionary societies could sponsor and contribute actively to exhibitions, research projects, conferences, film documentaries and international cultural exchanges.
Individual missionaries and retired missionaries could nudge insular journalists a bit more often, in the hope that the Irish media might become more cosmopolitan and focus on global issues from an Irish perspective.
Garreth Byrne Nanchang, China
I would like to congratulate Tom McGurk for drawing attention to On God’s Mission, a film which finally brings some shamefully overdue recognition to an army of unsung heroes.
In the 33 years that I have been involved in the aid world, I have been continually astounded and moved by the exceptional, selfless and often lonely work done by these remarkable people.
They spent lives sacrificing personal comforts and ambitions to improve the lot of strangers thousands of miles from their own native shores, and did so without reward or recognition, as McGurk pointed out.
Not surprisingly they are cherished, loved and admired in the countries in which they served. But bizarrely - and despite the untold credit they have won for Ireland, and the golden reputation they have forged abroad - they are still largely unrecognised and undervalued in their own country.
Many of these nuns and priests died in the countries which they made their own, and their kindness is a fading memory. It is high time that we as a nation, formally recognised the care and devotion of Irish missionaries. At a time when the reputation of this country is less than pristine, we would do well to remember the gold standard that they set.
John O’Shea Goal
Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin Having criticised Tom McGurk on occasion, I would like to congratulate him on his article on the Irish missionaries.
In a very short article, he picked up on the various ways in which missionaries from Ireland were of importance for the countries in which they worked. He highlighted an issue which has not received the attention it deserves in contemporary Ireland.
A Leavy Sutton, Dublin 13
‘Conscience clause’ would protect rights
You report Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern as suggesting that amending the Civil Partnership Bill to include a clause allowing an exemption for religious institutions might lead to undesirable ‘‘unintended consequences’’.
He points to scenarios in which a science teacher might refuse to teach about evolution, a fundamentalist Christian garda might refuse to arrest a husband breaching a safety order on the basis that he is entitled to chastise his wife, or a judge could refuse to register a power of attorney in favour of a person’s civil partner.
Quite apart from how insulting some of these suggestions are to people of faith, legislatures in even very liberal US states, such as Vermont and Maine, have managed to craft amendments which protect religious freedom.
Legislators there perceived that it is possible to create laws which allow religious institutions a measure of discretion as to use of their property on grounds of sincerely held traditional religious beliefs, while avoiding the sorts of ‘‘unintended consequences’’ suggested by Ahern.
Indeed, if this were not possible, no legislative clause designed to protect conscience could ever pass muster. In countries where abortion is legal, for example, those who profoundly believe that abortion is wrong would be compelled to perform them.
But many countries where abortion is legal allow for such exemptions. Some of our own laws have such clauses.
For example, Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act gives religious institutions the right to refuse to employ people who are in conflict with their ethos.
It is eminently possible to draft a conscience clause which would protect religious freedom and conscience rights. All that appears to be lacking is the will.
Martin Deegan Finglas Road, Dublin 11
Nail in coffin of old Ireland
I wake up aghast that the Civil Partnership Bill is going through the Dáil without an outcry of protest.
Am I on my own in regarding same-sex marriage as a denial of the natural law, as a rejection of the mores civilisations have known, as a direct disavowal of the institution of marriage as a bond of love for the procreation of children?
With this legislation, the Ireland of religionwe know is effectively sundered.
Canon James Kelly Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo
Terminally ill
Paul O’Kane (the DAA’s spin doctor) was misleading your readers last week by claiming that the cost of the Terminal 2 project is actually €609million.
In fact, the DAA’s own figures confirm that the cost of Terminal 2 and its associated facilities (including €30milliononUSImmigration, €43 million on car parks, €16 million on internal roads and €120 million on ramps and stands) now runs to almost €1.2 billion. The DAA has applied to the Regulator for a 40 per cent cost increase in 2010 based on this €1.2 billionT2 spend.
The DAA will open this T2 white elephant in October, when traffic at the airport will have collapsed to under 18 million passengers per annum, while the capacity of Terminal 1 is 30 million passengers per annum.
Not alone isT2 too big, not needed and in the wrong place, but it has now cost more than six times the ‘‘€170million-€200million’’ the DAA promised in 2007.
Who else could deliver such rubbish, other than a government owned, Department of Transport protected, semi-state airport monopoly?
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