Bishop Donal McKeown.
Northern Ireland is still a place where “confrontation rather than conciliation is the name of the game,” Bishop of Derry, Most Rev Dr Donal McKeown, has said.
Speaking during the solemn reopening of St Mary’s Church in Desertmartin and the Mass of Dedication of its new altar, Bishop Keown said political attempts to deal with the past and with how we celebrate it had “failed to deliver much progress,”
Speaking on the 20th anniversary the IRA ceasefire, he said Northern Ireland was “still not a society at peace with itself.”
Bishop McKeown said: “We may have had 20 years of ceasefires and decommissioning on our streets. That is huge progress. Jesus asks us to have ceasefires and decommissioning in our hearts. And that does involve carrying a cross. But there is no other way to be credible disciples of His.”
He said it would be easy for regular churchgoers to stand on the sidelines and criticise others.
And he posed the question – “what might ‘taking up the cross’ mean for people of faith in 2014?”
“If Jesus broke down barriers between Jew and Gentile, between the religious leaders and the sinners, what would he be asking all our churches to do in order to ease the pain of those who suffer most?” he asked.
“While there have been many great people of faith who said and did generous things, I believe that there is a lot more than our Church leaders and Church communities could do to ease the itch rather than just scratch it.”
“Are those who go to church regularly and pray at the forefront of seeking to build bridges and deal with the hurts? I am not talking about building church unity or prayer together.”
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