One of the issues facing our country in the weeks ahead is of course the referendum on the Nice Treaty. It would be evasion on my part not to make some mention of it. 

First of all, it is the duty of every citizen to seek to understand issues and policies at stake, and to vote in every referendum and election. As someone who has always believed in the European ideal (even if I have at times been bitterly disappointed by the lack of real soul within the entire European project) I have no doubt but that I will vote in favour of what is, in essence, a widening of the European Union. I say this although I am of course aware that there are many people who will vote against the Treaty on grounds entirely of conscience. 

In Ireland we have received a great deal from our membership of Europe, not least financially. If people do feel that they should vote against the Nice Treaty, let it not be reasons that are unrelated - such as using a “No vote” as a way of embarrassing the government - but on genuine grounds of conscience. I would suggest that those who vote against should also think very carefully about so doing if they have not consistently opposed European membership in the past, even at a time when it was clearly in our material interests to be inside the EU.

Above all, do not opt out of your duties as citizens. Vote.

Giving to overseas aid.

A number of years ago, I asked the Diocese if they would be prepared for a limited period to give 0.7% of our diocesan income (as a first call on that income) to the cause of overseas aid. I was delighted that there was total agreement. This suggestion was in line with a resolution of the Lambeth Conference in 1998. Sadly It is a resolution which has received far less attention throughout the Anglican Communion in the western world than it should. 

It may seem that the amount we donate from the Diocese as a first principle will do little for good, but that is simply not true. We must do all we can, at diocesan, parochial and personal level. Tens of millions of people are in imminent danger of starvation in Africa and we cannot claim that it is nothing to do with us. I urge you to give as generously as you can to the Bishops’ Appeal. But the 0.7% is also, as I have said, a principle. It is one that I very much want us to continue. It is also crucially important that what we require of others we are prepared to do ourselves. This appeal of 0.7% of GNP has been made to the governments of the developed countries. Sadly our own government is talking more the language of aspiration than of achievement in this matter. Ireland, we are told, hopes to give 0.7% of GNP to overseas aid by 2008. By then millions of lives which we, as a country, might easily have saved, will have been needlessly lost to preventable disease and starvation.. 

Please urge of your public representatives to insist that this target of 0.7% is reached now.

But what then is the Church to be in the Ireland of today?

There is much that the Church cannot pretend to be and that it should not pretend to be. 

The Church in Ireland cannot pretend that it has the respect and admiration of the country at large, in particular of its young people. Count the number of 15-35 year olds in the average church of any mainstream Christian tradition on any average Sunday if you think otherwise.

Nor should the Church imagine that it is a major player on the national stage. It is largely ignored unless it is doing or saying something that is either so foolish as to make us look even more ridiculous than usual, or is so shockingly nasty that it has to make the news.. but to our shame. It may also just about gain a couple of centimetres of newsprint if it manages to clamber painfully on the sort of radical chic bandwagon that the liberals of the chattering classes are already becoming bored with…

Of course it is very easy for the Church, or what the newspapers quaintly call “churchmen”, to snipe at all the soft targets – politicians for their dishonesty, tribunals for their apparent inability actually to achieve anything, the media for their smug cynicism.. We should remember that the Church is itself an even easier target for others – for our lack of integrity, for our inability to do much else than blather, for our own smug churchy brand of cynicism and begrudgery..

So what are we to be in the Ireland of today?

We should realise, I believe, that we are in fact are set in an Ireland that has become two Irelands – on the one hand an Ireland of wealth but also of underlying fear, and, on the other, an Ireland of deprivation, but a deprivation allied to bitter resentment.

We have only to take our heads out of the sand for a few moments to realise that the extremes of prosperity and poverty are becoming more pronounced in this country than in the rest of the European Union. We only have to look around us to see that we are a welfare state more in name than in reality. Employment may have risen in this country, but the number of people living in poverty, defined as less than 50% of average household disposable income, has also risen, probably to as high as 1/5 of the population…

There are two Irelands: 

• One Ireland which has benefited, to some degree at least, from economic changes over the past years but which lives in fear – fear that the good times won’t last, fear that we won’t be able to afford the future, fear of crime, fear of violence, fear of the hostility of those who are part of the other Ireland, fear of what the country is becoming… 
• The other Ireland which has been left outside – an Ireland for whom there seems little hope on the horizon, and Ireland which has no likelihood of joining in with the luxury and materialism of the other Ireland, an Ireland which resents and loathes the complacency and hard-heartedness of those who possess the good things they are denied and which they will never be given voluntarily. 

Has the Christian Church anything Christian to say or to do in such a setting? Has it a ministry to the Ireland that has been left out in the cold - the Ireland which sees us as irrelevant, frozen-hearted and hypocritical.

It is here that I want to introduce the idea of what is called “civil society”. As a sociological concept it is of great value if we want to see what God is calling the Church, even the Church of Ireland, to be. Civil Society can mean many things but it is normally taken as meaning those areas in society which are not connected with (or dependent on) the primary power blocs of “the state” and “the market”. The state and the market are, by their very nature, highly competitive, and will inevitably see people as commodities to buy, to sell, or to persuade to vote in the right way.. The state and the market are to do with end results rather than compassionate means. Consequently they are disconnected from human relationships, and often from humanity itself.

The Church most certainly has a role in a society where people have become anonymous, where they are angry and fearful, a society where people feel vulnerable, where they feel distanced from decision-making. But it is not a role which the Church can fulfil by cosying up to the mighty of state and market. The Magnificat has a great deal to say about where God is to found, and it is not in the corridors of secular power.

If the word righteousness has meaning any longer, it is about making good relationships, making good relationships between people and God, creative relationships between people and community, even in helping broken and crushed people to relate to themselves. That has always been the task of the people of God. In a polarised and divided society, it has become both a more complex task but also a responsibility which if taken on with vigour will not ingratiate the Church to those whose interests lie in keeping society exactly the way it is. 

I believe that if the Church is ever to be what it is called by God to be, it will make itself vulnerable in order to speak with integrity to those who have been made vulnerable.

A changed ministry

And this, in its own way, links with a theme that we will explore in our open discussion later on – that of ministry. Because, in the Church of Ireland, we are at present looking at what we mean by ministry but it is, I rather fear, without any sense of either adventure or of radicalism. At the opening of the Summit on Ministry, I said (as chairman of the Ministry Commission) that we have all somehow to grasp with our hearts as well as our minds that Christian ministry is fundamentally not any human individual’s ministry, or even the Church’s ministry, but Christ’s ministry of which we are all equally a part. 

All Christian ministry is Jesus Christ’s ministry to and through the Church - it is a ministry into which you and I enter by our baptism. Whether, therefore, one exercises part of the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ on earth as a deacon or as a bishop, as non-ordained or as a priest, is entirely secondary, indeed positively trivial, in God’s scheme of things. The ministry is first to last Christ’s ministry into which we enter.. 

The hard question we must therefore pose about all ministry is this : Is it effectively doing the work of Jesus Christ in the world, and if not what are we going to do about it? And so - 

• Our structures as a diocese or as a Church are to be judged on whether they are serving Christ’s ministry - his teaching, preaching, healing, saving ministry - or whether those structures are actually impeding it…
• Our ministry of worship is to be judged on whether it is exalting Christ, or whether it is merely flying the Church of Ireland flag for an hour on Sunday morning…
• Our ministry of service to the community is to be judged on whether it is making Christ’s love known and his thirst for peace and justice a reality, or whether it is lip service to a well-mannered tradition of genteel benevolence…

One of the themes that emerged again and again during the Summit was the need for the laity of the Church to be trained to be what we might call “front line troops” in the battle for Christianity. In the world in which we live, there is an absolute necessity for every adult member of the Church to be able to speak intelligently and convincingly of his or her faith. 

In this context I want to encourage all of you to use the resources we now have in this diocese for adult Christian education. Already a group has completed the pastoral studies course and most of those who took part in that project are continuing on to a course in theology. There will be another pastoral studies course available as soon as it is required. In thanking Revd Olive Donohoe for the work she has put into these courses I would urge lay people of the diocese to contact her and consider whether this is not something you should be doing. A laity which is articulate and knowledgeable in the faith is not a luxury – it is an absolute necessity if the Church is to function effectively in the society of today and tomorrow.

As in this diocese we look at ministry afresh, I believe that much will depend on just how courageous we are prepared to be. If our vision for ministry is only a seeking of ways to deal with a shortage of clergy, or if our dream for ministry is purely to find ways of conserving our finances or of preserving our buildings for the indefinite future, then the bad news is that there won’t be any Church to require either our finances or our resources. We must approach this central question of ministry from the motive of working only for what is the best way of witnessing to Christ in this country in the years and in the decades ahead. That will require not only vision and courage, but also the willingness to “think the unthinkable”, to take great risks, and (perhaps of most importance) a determination to hold our nerve…

I’m “on for it”. Are you?

The Gospels remind us that a Church policy of survival at all costs is doomed to failure.. The Gospels remind us also that the salvation of the Church is always at a cost, at a high price – the price of real sacrifice, of utter commitment and of genuine unselfishness..

Which policy do we as a diocese wish to pursue?