Over the last twenty years I’ve fallen in love with both Spain and Ireland, and I keep returning to these two countries whenever I can. Both are places where old animosities, injustices, and cruelties run deep. But when I go to either place, I mostly inhabit a fantasy version of the real thing.
When I go to Ireland, I stay in a little village where I know the pub owner and teh womdeful woman who runs the B&B. I eat Irish breakfasts before heading out to the lush green countryside to ride excellent irish horses, and engage with banter with the owner of the barn. in the evenings it’s Guiness and sometimes traditional Irish music, and I just adore it all.
I’m reading a book at the moment about the Troubles in Ireland, and it reminds me that I am so confused by the mesh of animosities, injustices, and cruelties that have long been a aprt of Irish life. I see clearly the conflict between Irish republicans and the English, who remain an occupying, colonizing power in the North. But then the details begin to elude me. There’s the IRA and the Provisional IRA, and Sinn Fein, there’s the RUC and the Orangemen. there’s the recognition that IRA bombings often claimed as casualties irish citizens - the very people whom the IRA ought to champion. There are the catholics who live in the North, and the protestants who live in the Republic, and there’s the role of the church - deeply problematic on both sides. It’s a mess of animosities, injusticies and cruelties. I give thanks for the Good Friday Agreement, and i wonder if it could ever have been reached if Margaret Thatcher had remained in office. And I give thanks for the leading role of an American - Senator George Mitchell - as arbitrator of the deal.
The book I’m reading at the moment centers on the story of the disappearance of Jean McConville, a mother of ten in Belfast. She was ‘disappeared’ by the IRA allegedly for serving as an informant to the British. But she was murdered and her body secretly buried, only to be discovered decades later. Not a single piece of evidence was ever produced to show that she was an informant, but never mind, the anuimosities, injustices, and cruelties of the time and the place were enough.
I remeber the first time I went to Spain, almost twenty years ago, and I chuckled to see banners flying celebrating 25 years of democracy. The Anerican bicentennial was decades past, and I thout it was quaint of this modern nation to have arrived so late to the party. I’ve always found Spanish histroy hard to get a grip on too. Even the last hundred years. I get that the Spanish Civil War wa s astruggle between left and right, but the inner workings of that struggle still elude me. I’m flabbergasted that there remain in Spain to this day people who admire Franco. I’m told that there is much left unsaid in modern Spain about all this - especially about the role of the church. Rather than agreeing to disagree, Spaniards seem to have agreed simply not to talk about it much, which doesn’t seem like a healthy way to address old animosities, injustices, and cruelties.
I sometimes think of my job as a miner of good news. But there are times when the tunnels in which I am mining seem to close in, and the good news is harder to extract. I feel that way when I see the animosities, injustices, and cruelties of American society laid bare, as we have so often seen these last few months. And I know why these animosities, injustices, and cruelties are not confusing to me in the way that the animosities, imjustices, and cruelties of Spain and Izreland are confusing to me. It’snot just because I know the terrain here, not just becomes I an well familiar with the context. No, there is something else. It’s because here, in America, so often, so many of our animosities, injustices, and cruelties are color coded. It’s just that simple. It is often the case that throught this country, and certainly in Philadelphia, animosities, injustices, and cruelties are just color coded. I can prove it to anyone who wants to challenge me on this.
And I hear the words of Jesus to Peter, which I take to be words that Jesus is also speaking to his church,and to me - maybe to you, too, but certainly to me. “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” And I know that Jesus is not allowing us to color code the way we hear those words. I also know that some of those sheep are white, and some of them are black. But I am trying to listen to what Jesus says: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” And the way I hear it, we arenot permitted to color code.
Notes for a homily preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
29 May 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia
