Press Releases20 Apr 11

Archbishop of Armagh's Address at 99th Anniversary Service of Titanic Disaster, Southampton

The Archbishop was in Southampton to honour the links between Belfast and Southampton. 

Transcript of the Archbishop of Armagh's Address:

Peace, be still
Mark 4.39b

In the rare flat calm of a moonless Atlantic night 99 years ago, the White Star liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of 1,517 souls. Only 706 survived.

The crew numbered 899. Of them only 214 -23.8% - survived. The situation of Third Class passengers was almost as bad: only 174 of the 710 – 24.5% - survived, compared with 60.5%, 199 of the 329 First Class passengers. The poorest paid the highest price in loss of life.

In this city of Southampton almost 1000 local families were directly affected. Nearly every street in the Chapel district lost a resident; more than 500 households lost a member. And all took place in the flat calm and pitch black of a cold, moonless night. On occasions such as these it is people that matter. We are here to remember and to reflect.

It is 100 years this year since Titanic was launched in Belfast at the shipyard of Harland and Wolff. She seemed at the time to be a potent symbol of engineering skill and craftsmanship. Over the years Titanic has achieved such iconic status that the river frontage of the old shipyard is now the location of a huge development already known as 'The Titanic Quarter'. It is Europe’s biggest waterfront regeneration project, within walking distance of the city centre, bringing residential, commercial and academic facilities to Queen's Island itself, heart of the old shipyard. In the scale of its ambition it rivals Titanic herself.

Yet who can escape the irony of commemorating the long and distinguished history of shipbuilding in Belfast at Harland and Wolff by memorializing a tragedy. Why a vessel which sank on her maiden voyage with huge loss of life should be so celebrated, while famous and equally ground breaking vessels like the Canberra, with its innovative turbo electric propulsion system and extensive use of aluminium are casually forgotten, raises fascinating questions about human psychology. 

Our act of remembrance and reflection today is undertaken in the context of much traumatic and violent loss of life, much destruction of homes and hopes throughout the world, whether through natural disaster or the exigencies of conflict and war. So, now that the very last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic has gone to her rest, and the generations in this city directly touched by the disaster are with us no more, what is the point of continuing with this occasion? Come to that, what is the point of commemorating Armistice Day amongst the ashes of so many natural disasters, current conflicts and forgotten wars?

The citizens of Wootton Bassett – Royal Wootton Bassett – give their answer to my rhetorical questions. It is about honouring the dead with dignity. In certain circumstances it is about conferring dignity where dignity has been denied in death; and it is about standing alongside the sorrowful and bereaved to accompany them silently in their loss.

It is also about committing the dead to God, making no judgment as to the eternal destiny of the deceased but commending them to the love and grace of the God who quietened the maelstrom of the waters with the command, 'Peace, be still!' It is about sustaining the vision and hope of the fragile bark of fearful humanity brought safely to a haven of content.

In that context, remembrance of the Titanic begins to offer itself as an opportunity to commemorate not just the victims of one sinking but of all passengers and crew lost at sea in the commercial shipping fleets of the world and particularly of Britain and Ireland. In their own way the foundering of the 'Princess Victoria' on the short sea crossing from Stranraer to Larne in 1953 with 133 lives lost, or the capsizing of the 'Herald of Free Enterprise' near Zebrugge in 1987 with193 lives lost, deserve acknowledgment equal to that of the victims of the Titanic in 1912 – perhaps they and the uncounted multitude of others lost at sea can be commemorated beneath the banner of the White Star Line, for it is right to remember and reflect upon the sacrifice of 

'Those who go down to the sea in ships
and ply their trade in great waters.'

Remembering the dead and reflecting on death are two quite different things. Remembering is a word of deep and therapeutic meaning. It speaks of joining together once more, remembering, reuniting. It connects the present with the past, it unites the living with the departed and, where partings have been acrimonious, it can sometimes articulate forgiveness and sometimes provoke contrition.

Reflecting on suffering and death, however, is more demanding. Christianity has much to say about death including violent death that is more than a false and glib religiosity. The crucifixion and resurrection and our understanding about the God who shared in the experience of ignominious and painful dying is uniquely significant. Christianity, and the relevance of Christianity to the human condition, is made immeasurably more powerful by our understanding of God who was also fully human.

'Twas much', wrote John Donne, 'that man was made like God before, But that God should be made like man, much more.' [Holy Sonnets XV]

Indeed John Donne, had much time, much opportunity and much reason to think deeply about death and to put it firmly in its place. It is the common lot of all humanity to die, but, as a Christian, Donne knew that in dying we shall not fall out of God's hand. As in baptism Christians are connected to Christ, so in death we shall not be separated from him. Therefore, as Donne famously wrote of the death of anyone who is a member of the Body of Christ,

'Any man’s death diminishes me because I am engaged in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,
it tolls for thee.'
[Devotions upon Emergent Occasions]

The bells to which Donne referred were the bells that tolled from the churches of his City of London as the mortal remains of people were brought for burial. It was a sound all too familiar to him for he buried six of his twelve children as well as his wife Ann, who died in childbirth. Lying on his sickbed, he both understood the personal diminishment of death and had ample time to contemplate not only its reality but also the power of the resurrection.

The Christian understanding of the resurrection as articulated by St Paul is tough stuff, earthy, physical. We shall not become disembodied spirits but whole people, changed, no longer perishable and mortal, but imperishable and immortal. We should not pretend, and certainly Donne did not, that this is an easy thing to believe in – the immortality of the body can only be believed in by faith. How can a body, burnt a thousand years ago, its dust scattered in the furrows of the earth be remembered? How can a bone, shattered by a shot, be put back together? How can a body that lost an arm in Europe and a leg in Asia be reassembled? Only by God’s power, Donne replies,
God knows
in what part of the world every grain of every man’s dust lies and…he whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints, and in a twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements, is set down at the right hand of God in a glorious resurrection:
Death be not proud…
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.

The consistency, over many millennia, of this image of a God whose power does not inhibit but does transcend death is celebrated by the Psalmist:

Those who go down to the sea in ships
And ply their trade in great waters,
These have seen the works of the Lord
and his wonders in the deep.
For at his word the stormy winds arose
and lifted up the waves of the sea.
They were carried up to the heavens and down again to the deep; their soul melted away in their peril.
They reeled and staggered like a drunkard
and were at their wits end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out of their distress.
He made the storm be still
and the waves of the sea were calmed.
Then were they glad because they were at rest,
and he brought them to the haven they desired.

Commemoration must be about more than sentiment; it must be about resurrection. It must be about hope and continuity, new life and eternity; about engaging with and celebrating the whole human person and not merely our frail mortality.

Last Sunday, on my way home from a Confirmation service in the Parish of Drumnakilly, just outside Omagh in Co Tyrone, I called in at the home of Mrs Nuala Kerr, the mother of Constable Ronan Kerr whose funeral I had attended four days previously.

The murder of her son leaves Nuala Kerr in that initial, phase of numbness in grief. She told me that, at this moment she has no anger, although perhaps anger will come. She spoke of the need for young men and women like her son to be part of the police service and that many young people she knew were keen to join and to be part of the solution to the ills of our society. She told me that she does not believe that those same young people will allow themselves to be intimidated out of their intention to shape a community of the future released from the curse of the divisions of the past. Somehow, despite the survival of archaic sectarian dinosaurs, this feels like a different time, a different place, a different era.

At the funeral mass for Ronan, a community came together and cried out to the Lord in their trouble. Tragedy was transformed by a shared sense that recovery from corporate sickness and common distress is taking hold. It is possible to believe that our cry to the Lord has been heeded for he calmed the sea and stilled the storm that so easily could have blown up out of that terrible deed. It was a moment of grace, an aspiration and apprehension rooted in the divine will. God alone enables death to be transcended and new life to spring from the grave. Christians will celebrate that conviction and the hope that goes with it next Sunday because history did not stop and God's purpose was not thwarted in the blackness of the night of Good Friday.

Equally, history did not stop, nor was God’s purpose thwarted in the blackness of the Atlantic night that claimed the Titanic and so many lives. Hope does triumph over history, and just as it is right that we should remember and reflect, it is also right to move on, not paralysed by past tragedy but inspired by fresh opportunities our fathers never knew.

Belfast’s rising Titanic Quarter represents just such a triumph of hope over history. It is rooted in the desire of nearly every citizen to transform the present and create a new future out of a past released from tragedy, accident, error and evil. This is the way to commemorate loss – to remember respectfully, to try harder, to reach higher and be thankful to God for the opportunity.
ENDS