Belfast is burning with...?

The violence on the streets of Belfast is a sad reflection of the fact that we still have a long way to go in the path to peace in this province. The easiest thing to do is to condemn the protagonists and hail the day when peace will come with couching words of piety and distance, as the Bishops of Down and Dromore and Connor did today in a hasty and ill thought out statement. The difficult thing is to try and understand the underlying grievances and hurt of a section of our community, and why they feel so disenfranchised that they would mobilise like this and take to the streets. Of course we all want peace; of course we all believe in a God who can transform everything and bring all things to himself. But we are God's agents on this earth and in this city, and these are our people. Condemning them outright and distancing ourselves from them will not change things one iota. Whether or not we can identify with the way they think or the way they express themselves, we cannot escape the fact that here is a section of our community which feels that they have no say in their own destiny in their own land. If history teaches us anything, then it is that we ignore them at our peril. At the moment, it seems to me that they are like sheep without a shepherd. We may content ourselves with beating them off the street for the time being, but one day some one or persons will step into the breach and unleash something more terrible and plunge us into another time of "troubles". Hysterical? Overly dramatic? I don't think so. Just look at the history of this province. If we in the Church cannot provide leadership without, I hasten to add, being partisan, then someone else will, and that is guaranteed. We have made great strides in recent years to modernise the way we outreach and evangelise, and also the way we worship, but the one great thing we have yet to realise is that we cannot just put a few guitars and keyboards and a screen in front of the Church and think that we have done everything to be relevant. Our Kingdom is not of this world, we proclaim, in deference to our Lord, and so it isn't. But we are charged with building God's Kingdom right here on earth - seeking justice and peace and love - Kingdom values right here in our own context. We have failed and are failing a sizeable section of our own people by keeping them outside, through our attitudes, our statements, our pronouncements, our judementalism and in some cases denying them a way into the Church through the sacraments. Let's begin a process of listening. Let's get to the heart of the problem and lead our people forward, out of this horrible situation. "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."