John Owen-Davies reflects on
The dignity showed by an
All-Ireland Cardinal in the
midst of sectarian violence
Only months after Northern Ireland's "Bloody Sunday" in January 1972,
Cardinal William Conway, the then Roman Catholic Primate of All-Ireland,
walked down Belfast's Falls Road. Within minutes, his cassock was marked
with the spittle of hardline Catholics annoyed that he was not pushing
their republican cause against the British government.
Undaunted, he returned a few weeks later but this time dressed as
a parish priest, not a cardinal. He headed for his birthplace in Dover
Street, near the Falls Road and in an area split by a so-called Peace
Wall constructed in 1969 to keep fighting Catholics and Protestants
apart.
In Dover Street a local man approached him and, pointing to the place
where his parents' house had stood, said: "Father, would you like to
see where a famous man was born?" "And who might that be?" the cardinal
asked. "Why, our own Cardinal Conway, of course", came the reply.
These two events indicated some of the enormous pressures on the cardinal
during those early years of sectarian violence. The spitting he encountered
in the Falls was not against him as a person but against a senior symbol
of the Catholic Church. As a leader and feature writer on the Belfast
Telegraph at that time it was clear to me and many colleagues of all
faiths that the cardinal, who died in 1977, was a highly principled
and dignified church leader walking a political tightrope. He officiated
at the funerals of those Catholic civilians killed on Bloody Sunday
– officially put at 13 – when British troops clashed with
republican demonstrators in Londonderry. Generally, he was known to
have visited victims of violence whatever their religious beliefs.
He was not afraid to speak out. He called terrorists "monsters...
who offended the Majesty of God and dragged the fair name of Ireland
into the mud" and saw himself, not the Irish Republican Army (IRA),
as the champion of Catholic interests in Northern Ireland. He also criticised
Britain's security forces and government on a range of issues, including
interrogation methods, which he called "brutal", and what he believed
was a lack of willpower to curb the activities of loyalist (Protestant)
paramilitary groups. But he was criticised when it was found that the
coffins of at least some IRA members were draped with the Irish flag
while inside "the walls" – or confines – of Catholic churches.
It was clear talking to him he was not happy with the Irish flag being
used in such a way. He did not elaborate.
In media interviews with leading figures in Northern Ireland in those
days some issues were generally off limits for publication. But that
did not stop them from speaking sometimes off the record, even on contentious
subjects. The IRA and loyalist paramilitaries had other ways of getting
their "not for publication" notice across – by fiddling with a
pistol on a table in front of them.
William Conway, also Archbishop of Armagh, was the first Belfast man
to elevated to head the Catholic Church in Ireland. Medicine, not the
church, was his first choice. But, aged 16, he opted for the church.
"If I was to ask myself what it was that caused the Change, I think
it was that I had a feeling that the Church in Ireland and possibly
throughout the world would be in for a difficult time and that I would
like to be in on all this," he said.
A highly educated cleric with a doctorate in Canon Law from the Gregorian
University in Rome, he was appointed cardinal in 1965. This was four
years before the latest round of The Troubles erupted. By the early
1970s, the death toll from the violence had risen above 1,000. "I have
learned a lot about human nature and human affairs as a result of this
whole sickening business," the cardinal told me in late 1973.
Interviewing senior religious figures usually is not an easy task
for a journalist. But I need not have worried about Cardinal Conway.
After waiting for more than an hour in the drawing room of his 19th
century mansion home near Armagh Cathedral, he entered, robes flowing,
with one hand outstretched and the other carrying a freshly opened bottle
of Beaujolais. "You are a Welshman," he said. "I was reading an article
about one of your rugby players (Gareth Edwards). A keen fisherman as
well, he was asked if he had to make a decision about which one to give
up and said 'rugby'. Now there is an interesting man."
Behind him above his desk was a framed print of the moon's surface
with the world hanging in limbo in the background. He saw me looking
at the print and used it to expound on one of his core beliefs. "Imagine
yourself sitting on the moon and looking at the earth saying: 'Well
there it is . It has been there for 4,600 million years. What is the
human race? It is a swarm of microbes that has been there for only a
fraction of the 4,600 million years. The swarm of microbes will disappear
when the sun gets a little cooler or a little hotter. And we know that
at one stage it will get hotter than cooler and that the swarm will
not be able to survive. What is the human race on the hypothesis that
there is no God and no hereafter? It is just a swarm of microbes on
a lump of matter hurtling through space and all our social movements
are aimed at nothing more than making the microbes a little fatter before
the a swarm dies. Life on this hypothesis is meaningless. It is a mockery.
This debate about the ultimate meaning of life is taking place in the
human race and perhaps this is the kind of battle that I saw at 16 –
that the human race will come to see the meaningless of life without
a supernatural dimension, without a beyond.
I believe there will be a profound recall to religion... It seems
to be that the existence of God is something that I would find impossible
to doubt."
A fascinating man, indeed. A churchman who stood firm during a time
of bloody sectarian strife and intense pressure. His death was marked
with tributes from across the political and religious spectrum. The
British government spoke of his inter-communal bridge building, quiet
dignity and wise counsel.
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