(The Nationalist, 24 November 2006)
In the First World War, Christian nations, led by church-going politicians and military leaders, led Europe in a collective suicide-attempt, the slaughter of a civilization. Ten million people were killed in the war, and twenty million wounded – the numbers denied until later. In 1922, the pope of the day, Pius XI, reflecting on the war and its causes, instituted a liturgical feast called the Kingship of Christ.
Why did the war happen? The pope argued that it was because Christian leaders had not applied the Christian faith in public life. Were they ‘keeping religion out of politics’, separating ‘public and private morality’? In private life, they said yes to Christianity; in public life, they gave it no entry. Religion was for the home and the church, for women and children: it was privatized with little social impact; no notice was taken of the law of God in society; the dominant ideology was imperialism, and commercial rivalry aggravated tension. There was a Jekyll-and-Hyde quality to this double standard of private and public life operating on different levels.
If humanity doesn’t learn the lessons of history, it repeats the mistakes of history. That is what happened. Twenty-five years later there was a repeat of the tragedy on a larger scale: Nazism was racist, driven by a desire for revenge, and entirely lacking in respect for the person. In some ways it was a parody of the Christian faith. The consequences of these two collective suicide attempts of a civilization were felt until recently in Africa and Asia.
In Ireland, we cannot stand apart from this with a “holier-than-thou” attitude. Between 1969 and the end of the Troubles, 3,636 people were killed in Northern Ireland. How many times that number were injured in body, mind or soul? – people living with crippling physical injuries, some driven to despair or even insanity. That’s a lot of suffering for a small part of a small country. We are part of the problem. What do we really believe in?
Religion is about God and people, about all of life, including politics, economics and social policy. A “Sundays only” religion is no religion at all, a mere leisure pursuit. Praying for people on Sunday and preying on them for the rest of the week is a mockery of the faith.
To say that religion should influence politics is not saying that the church should support a particular party, ideology, or political agenda. We have seen in Northern Ireland what happens when that takes place. Terence O’Neill, the former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, said that what was wrong with Northern Ireland was that people had not used religion to elevate politics, but had used politics to degrade religion.
Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of the Kingship of Christ because, he said, ‘people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion more effectively by the annual celebration of the sacred mysteries than by any pronouncement, however weighty, of the teaching of the church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few, the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak only once, the latter speak every year – in fact, for ever.” Jesus said, ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these other things will be added unto you.” (Matthew 6.33)
For those in a hurry: ‘The bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people.’ (G. K. Chesterton)