Month: December 2012

Come let us adore him – thoughts from a disillusioned Christian about to attend Midnight Mass

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Crossposted at 8aNoWay.com…

A few hours to kill at home before I go down to St. George’s to make sure the heating has come on at its appointed time for Midnight Mass. Some thoughts waft into my mind from a long distant RE class, probably from the latter years of my (fairly unhappy) Primary School education, I would think from Mr. McGinnity in P6 or P7. I would have been about 10 years old. Somehow it seems of particular relevance tonight.

The shepherds, we were told, were not an obvious choice to be among the first people to see God made man. The shepherds let a tough life, isolated in their highland pastures, far from synagogues, often unable to keep holy days and rarely able, given the marginal nature of their existence, to be ritually pure. I am not sure how true that is. I know nothing of the sociology of Palestine in the era of Christ.

But the story has a consonance with the totality of the Gospels. It is often the outcast who is given the gift of seeing Christ face to face. While the shepherds may or may not have been considered good Jews, the Wise Kings of the East could scarcely have been monotheists of any sort. Mary and Joseph, fresh from their hasty shotgun wedding, were scarcely better representatives of orthodox religious respectability.

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Time for an End to the Convenient Lies of the Peace Process

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Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…

People in Belfast like to be blasé about riots, as if they aren’t a big deal. Our gallows humour spawns #flegmovies memes on Twitter. But it’s OK to be frightened by riots. People in London are frightened by riots. People in Cape Town, where they are a more frequent occurrence than they are here, are frightened by riots. Riots are frightening because of their sheer unpredictability. The latest outbreak of Loyalist street violence is essentially leaderless, the DUP and paramilitaries long having since lost control. It is utterly unpredictable. It also fearsome in its capacity for violence, as the attack on police outside Naomi Long’s office demonstrated.

I am not only frightened but angry at the minute. This was not what I was promised from the new Northern Ireland. In that at least, both the middle-aged woman with her placard and I agree. I don’t think anyone expected it to be perfect. But we all expected a lot better than this. The problem is that we were all sold different interpretations of what the new dispensation meant. We are all learning that reality is not quite as advertised. On the political fringes, the disappointment is acute.

The blunt reality is that the political settlement was sold by Sinn Féin on the basis of lies, and sold by the DUP on the basis of lies. Sinn Féin pretended to its supporters that there was a simple and rapid route to reunification because a Catholic majority was inevitable and coming quickly. The DUP spent two years pretending it hadn’t done a deal with Sinn Féin, and then three years pretending that it only had after winning on all substantial issues.

In particular, both main parties deluded both themselves and their supporters about the realities of demographics. The DUP pretended that a region with rapidly changing demographics would not continue to experience deep cultural change. Sinn Féin pretended than an impending Catholic plurality over Unionists would lead to a United Ireland within two decades.

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