Press Releases24 Apr 16

Extracts from the Archbishop of Armagh’s Sermon at 1916 Centenary Service, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

‘Generous remembering … Generous envisioning’

The Most Revd Dr Richard Clarke, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, preached the sermon at a special service to mark the centenary of the events of Easter 1916 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, this afternoon (Sunday, 24th April).

Archbishop Clarke’s theme was ‘Generous remembering, generous envisioning’. In his sermon, he said: ‘The ideal of a wider and generous remembering is one deeply rooted in Christian thought and religious observance. We are gathered here in the season of Easter, when more than at any other time in the Christian year we remember the entire gamut of reality – the darkness of Holy Week as well as the light of Easter, the forsakenness of Christ on the cross as well as the triumphant cry of faith at the point of death; the denials of St Peter but also the great commission he is given … So we also, at another level, seek to commemorate the totality of 1916 in a generous remembering … one that can encapsulate idealism as well as destruction and death, division and mistrust as well as hope.’

Archbishop Clarke went on to say, ‘There is more than one narrative in 1916 and its Rising; we must live with a plurality of narratives, or our commemoration is a self–serving and disingenuous pretence. This single narrative pretence is a place we all have known so well in the history of this country. It is a place where, as Eavan Boland expresses it,
…every inch of ground
Was a new fever or a field soaked
To its grassy roots with remembered hatreds.
Coupled with our generous remembering should surely be a generous envisioning, an envisioning of the future that is generous and is for all.’

Finally, Archbishop Clarke drew on the fascinating figure of Tom Kettle who, he said, ‘believed fervently that it was only when Ireland looked outwards that she would ever achieve her true potential as a nation, or that any harmony or peace … could ever be achieved.’ He concluded: ‘It is not simply looking outwards to those who may enhance our economy but looking outwards also to those who need our help and costly compassion that will prove the generous envisioning that will make any commemoration of 1916 a worthy project.’

The service followed the order for Evensong and included music from Irish composers Charles Villiers Stanford and George Hewson. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, The Most Revd Eamon Martin, and the Aide de Camp of the President of Ireland also attended the service.

EXTRACTS FROM ARCHBISHOP CLARKE’S SERMON:

‘What we are called to undertake – fifty years on from 1966 – is to reach out for a wider view, to discern a narrative that is both more nuanced and less politicised. I would want to call this generous remembering. We must therefore recognise that the Rising was indeed one of the accelerators that accentuated the many fissures within Ireland, not simply those of national identity and adherence but also of mutually exclusive cultures, of diverging contexts and differing religious traditions. We should also seek to place the context of 1916 into the larger background of the First World War, where many convinced Irish nationalists felt impelled by conscience to fight in British uniform on the slaughter fields of Europe…

It was not simply about Irish patriots and British soldiers. There were also many deaths among the general population (particularly in Dublin city), far more than has ever been widely acknowledged until now. Emphasis is now rightly been attached to the more than two hundred people who died in crossfire simply by being in ‘the wrong place’, and this figure includes some forty children, some of whom were very young children indeed. We remember this, not for reasons of vituperation or for the apportioning of blame, but simply as the reminder that nobody has a monopoly on victimhood.

…The ideal of a wider and generous remembering, is one deeply rooted in Christian thought and religious observance. We are gathered here in the season of Easter, when more than at any other time in the Christian year we remember the entire gamut of reality – the darkness of Holy Week as well as the light of Easter, the forsakenness of Christ on the cross as well as the triumphant cry of faith at the point of death; the denials of St Peter but also the great commission he is given; the scattering of the disciples but also their regrouping by grace as those who would conquer the world in the name of Christ. So we also, at another level, seek to commemorate the totality of 1916 in a generous remembering, a generous revisionism, one that can encapsulate idealism as well as destruction and death, division and mistrust as well as hope.

…There is more than one narrative in 1916 and its Rising; we must live with a plurality of narratives, or our commemoration is a self–serving and disingenuous pretence. This single narrative pretence is a place we all have known so well in the history of this country. It is a place where, as Eavan Boland expresses it,

…every inch of ground
Was a new fever or a field soaked
To its grassy roots with remembered hatreds.

Coupled with our generous remembering should surely be a generous envisioning, an envisioning of the future that is generous and is for all.

…There is rhetoric in the Proclamation but there is also aspiration, in the style of the American Constitution, with which few could cavil – envisioning a state which is to provide ‘equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally’ … A celebration which does not recognise the abject failures to follow through on these goals, both in the reality of increasing homelessness on this island and in a growing imbalance throughout the entire country between those who have and those who do not have, can scarcely claim either integrity or significance. The dignity of any individual is, in the Christian understanding, paramount and imperative. Christian disciples believe that every human person is made in God’s image and likeness, and that there is an inherent God–bestowed dignity in every human person.

…Tom Kettle was a convinced Irish nationalist. He was also a one–time MP in Westminster, an academic, a writer and poet, involved with the Irish Volunteers, and a friend of many of those who led the Easter Rising, but who nevertheless fought and died in British Army uniform … Tom Kettle believed fervently that it was only when Ireland looked outwards that she would ever achieve her true potential as a nation, or that any harmony or peace within this country could ever be achieved. His challenge remains today.

…It is not simply looking outwards to those who may enhance our economy but looking outwards also to those who need our help and costly compassion that will prove the generous envisioning that will make any commemoration of 1916 a worthy project.