Archives for January 2008

The leader of the Mormon Church and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church have died on the same day. I suspect that history will record that this in one of the very few things Archbishop Christodoulos had in common with Gordon Hinckley.

Who amongst us hasn't nodded off in church? At least we don't have the world's press following us around to record the moment. Unlike Bill Clinton. Worse still, it was during a special service at a black Baptist church in Harlem marking Martin Luther Kind Day. Clearly, Martin Luther King was not alone in having a dream.

Because there is simply not enough trust in our community to sustain the appointment of a single commissioner to champion the cause of victims. That's according to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, speaking on today's Sunday Sequence.

As I mentioned on today's programme, the crossbench peer Lord Alton is coming to Belfast this week, as part of a UK-wide tour, to try to stimulate an ethical debate about the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. He will address a public meeting in The Spires Centre in Belfast on Thursday 31 January at 7.30 pm. The new Bill includes a proposal to allow scientists to create animal and human hybrid embryos for experimental purposes, a practice that is banned in France and Germany. The Bill will also allow an increase in embryonic stem cell research. He claims:

If we permit the creation of these predominantly human interspecies embryos and full hybrids, we will be crossing an important ethical line – crossing human and animal. But for what? For the sake of technology that we know will not be the future.

Other speakers at the public meeting next Thursday include Jeffrey Donaldson MP MLA, Mark Durkan MP MLA, Iris Robinson MP MLA and local Church leaders. I will be recording an extrended interview with David Alton, which will be broadcast in full on next week's Sunday Sequence.

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Brian Kennaway has weighed into the debate about Ian Paisley's participation in a service during which a Catholic priest led prayers. Mr Kennaway, a Presbyterian minister and former member of the Orange Order's education committee (before he broke with the Order), wonders why people are so surprised. In a letter published in today's News Letter, he notes that Ian Paisley was present at the June 26, 1982, service of thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral which marked the end of the Falklands War. Cardinal Basil Hume was one of those who led prayers on that occasion. Mr Kennaway writes: "Evidently, the seeds of ecumenism are slow to spread from Westminster to Ballymena." What's different in the December 29, 2007 service in Ballymena is that Dr Paisley actually participated in the service, by giving the address. Father Paul Symonds argues that the Ballymena service was not "ecumenical", but few members of the Free Presbyterian Church, I suspect, would accept his narrow definition of "ecumenical".

Meanwhile, Wallace Thompson of the Evangelical Protestant Society has been taking some flack for his claim that the papacy represents the Antichrist. He was also displeased to discover that rosary beads are being sold in a Church of Ireland cathedral. (Rosary beads, of course, play a role on the spirituality of many Anglo-Catholic Christians.) It soon emerged that Mr Thompson is a civil servant and an advisor to the enterprise minister, Nigel Dodds. Can it be right, some have asked, that a civil servant in such a role should be making public statements of this kind? Mr Thompson was, clearly, not speaking on behalf of the government or his department; his religious views were stated in his capacity as a private individual who enjoys the same freedom of speech as other members of our society. One suspects, on the other hand, that he may have faced a few frowns in the office this week.

Clearly not.

I love Van Morrison. I've seen him in concert many times (with and without Brian Kennedy). And I rate him very highly indeed. As a songwriter, he's in the same league as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. No question about it. As a lyricist/poet, his acknowledged influences include Yeats, Blake and Joyce. But, much as I admire the living legend from Hyndford Street, I can't agree with Lindy McDowell that Van is a better writer than Yeats or Joyce. In fact, in her Belfast Telegraph column today, Lindy suggests that Morrison is a better writer than "any Irish poet (northern or southern) you'd care to mention".

Without doubt, Morrison has not been given the recognition he deserves. Even the government has managed only an OBE for him, when other less significant talents have been knighted. (And Sir Van Morrison has a ring to it.) I think it's also true that Belfast, Morrison's home town, has not yet recognised him appropriately. But a greater writer than James Joyce? In one song, Morrison says, "Been too long in exile / Just like James Joyce, Baby". I'll grant you that: they are both exilic prophets (... ish), but a greater writer than Joyce and Yeats? Rave on.

Photo credit: Art Siegel

We do, obviously. Or we think we do. Oil makes the world go around. It heats our homes, runs our cars, powers our societies, finances economic development -- and triggers international wars. But the world's oil supplies are running out -- fast. Some think the global supply of oil has already "peaked"; we are already using up the second half of the planet's supply. With a fast-growing global population, how much time do we have before the deman for oil vastly outstrips supply? Some analysts think we will face resource wars in our own lifetime, and a global economic depression provoked by our dependence on oil. The result, according to A Crude Awakening, a new documentary, could be a petrochemical apocalypse. Hydrocarbon Man is doomed. I chaired a post-screening discussion on life beyond peak oil at the Queen's Film Theatre this week. On the panel were David Blevings from the NI Oil Federation, John Woods from Friends of the Earth, and Fiona Smyth from Amnesty International. The audience were terrific and focused the panel's discussion on the key issues for our world and this society. We recorded the discussion for radio, and you can hear it tomorrow morning, right after the 9.00am news, on BBC Radio Ulster. We'll also podcast the debate on the Everyday Ethics free download this week.

I've been working on a new TV project about alcohol, having a few planning meetings and thinking through my own attitude to booze. It's a 60-minute authored personal exploration of a subject rarely out of the headlines; but because it is partly my personal journey and I am still trying to work out my own ideas, I find myself talking to just about everyone these days about their relationship with alcohol. I'm working with Ronan Feely and Brian Henry Martin from Doubleband Films, and will be reunited with Mark Garrett, who was the cameraman on Frozen North, the documentary I presented back in 2005 about climate change. If there is such a thing as TV magic, Mark is the wizard; so this will be fun. Ronan and Brian are brimming over with ideas. We start filming on Friday.

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Today's London Times picks up on our Sunday Sequence story about Ian Paisley's participation in a service led by a Catholic priest here. Dr Paisley now maintains that he was unaware that a priest would be involved in the service until he turned up at the Peoples' Park event on 29 December. Fr Paul Symonds suggested that the service in question was not in fact "ecumencal"; but the mere presence of a Catholic priest in the room taking part would be sufficient for most Free Presbyterians to describe the service as ecumenical. Essentially, Dr Paisley's statement on the Sunday Sequence programme amounts to the claim that he took part in an ecumenical service by accident.

At Sunday's service in Martyrs' Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, Dr Paisley addressed his congregation at some length about the Sunday Sequence story and denies Fr Paul Symonds' claim that he had taken part in the service in Ballymena knowing that a Catholic priest would be leading prayers. He explained that he turned up at the service to discover that a priest was taking part and that he only participated in the service because young people would be pledging allegiance to the Queen as part of the scouting event. In the same service, he also made it clear that he would not formally greet the Pope if there was to be a papal visit to Northern Ireland. In Dr Paisley's address, entitled "The Final Settlement of All Things" (listen here), he responds to critics within the Free Presbyterian clergy who have claimed that he signed papers giving a grant to Belfast Gay Pride and that he personally apologised to the Rev David Armstrong over an anti-ecumenical protest many years ago. Dr Paisley tells his congregation that he refused to sign papers authorising grants to "the gays". He told his civil servans, "They're not getting one ha'penny from me." He also says that he was warned that he might be imprisoned for refusing to sign papers authorising this grant, and responded, "Roll on the prison; I've been there before." On the issue of David Armstrong, the First Minister denies rumours circulating "on certain websites" that he made an apology to Mr Armstrong.

A terrific picture of the new Superior General of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits -- traditionally nicknamed "the black pope". Today, Father Adolfo Nicolas of Spain celebrated his first mass as head of the Jesuits at the Church of Jesus in Rome.

The transformation of Ian Paisley is clearly not yet complete. Many seasoned observors of politics and religion in Northern Ireland will be surprised, to say the least, to learn that the First Minister recently attended and gave the address at an event in Ballymena marking the centenary of scouting in mid-Antrim. Roman Catholic priest Fr Paul Symonds led prayers at the event and is featured in a report on tomorrow's Sunday Sequence exploring the future of Free Presbyterianism following the resignation of Dr Paisley as the church's Moderator. I'll also be interviewing Father Symonds about the event. The event took place at The Peoples Park in Ballymena on Sat, 29 December, when Dr Paisley was still, technically, Moderator of his church.

His successor as Moderator was elected last night at a meeting of minsiters and elders in Dungannon Free Presbyterian Church. I don't like to call attention to my colleagues's misspellings -- just in case they trawl through my many blunders on this site -- but the new Moderator's name has been widely misspelt by the press, even in headlines. He is the Rev Ron Johnstone (with an "e"), who previously held office as deputy Moderator.

Update: Dr Paisley contacted Sunday Sequence personally to give the programme a statement clarifying his involvement in the service with Fr Paul Symonds. This statement is uncluded below.

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On tomorrow's programme, we feature an exclusive interview with the co-chairs of the Consultative Group on the past, which was set up to look at how best to deal with the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In an extended interview, Lord Eames and Denis Bradley talk about the dilemma they face in drawing up their report on the past, how they would respond if the government decided not to publish their report, the access they have been given to secret government files, and the complex ethical issues their Group must resolve before their report is published in the summer -- including the relationship between truth recovery and "amnesty" and the definition of "victim status". The interview will be aired immediatly after the 9.00am news on Sunday morning. So far, the debate in the media surrounding the Eames-Bradley commission has focused on two main issues -- whether amnesty could be on the table as a trade-off for exposing the truth about the past, and whether the Troubles amount to a kind of "war". I suspect the debate will now turn to the definition of victim status and whether members of armed groups, such as the IRA, who lost their lives, or their limbs, in the conflict should be accorded recognition as "victims". This debate is just as divisive as our recent public discussion of amnesty and war.

My work sometimes throws up some surreal moments. Add to that growing list the photoshoot I've just done in the main quad of Queen's University. A table, complete with table cloth, wine glasses and silverware, was set up in the quad and I took turns acting as a diner and a waiter with one of the university Welcome Centre's staff. Look out for the picture in the local press. The photoshoot was to publicise our Out to Lunch interview series at Queen's, which returns on Wednesday 23 January.

The idea is very simple: I interview some leading academic, cultural or political personality in the company of more than a hundred lunch guests, who also have the chance to put questions and engage in conversation. The whole thing was inspired and developed by Lynn Corken, and it's already proving enormously successful. Since beginning last October, I've interviewed distinguished historians Roy Foster and David Livingstone, and the writers Marie Jones and Sam McAughtry. We'd full houses for each event. In the new series, we'll be having lunch with the playwright Martin Lynch and the comedy writer and performer Nuala McKeever (on 23 January), the novelist Glenn Patterson and poet Sinead Morrissey (on 6 February), the community activist Baronness May Blood (on 27 February) and the historian Lord Bew (on 19 March).

Lunch is included and tickets are available in advance from the Queen's University Welcome Centre. Tel: 028 9097 5252. E-mail: [email protected].

Christina Bradley, the woman minister at the centre of the Presbyterian gender row in Portadown spoke out for the first time on Sunday Sequence this morning. A traditional joint Christmas Day service involving two Presbyterian churches in the town was cancelled this year after the male minister of First Portadown church, the Revd Stafford Carson, was not prepared to share his pulpit with the female minister of Armagh Road Presbyterian, the Revd Christiana Bradley. Mrs Bradley described how her ministerial colleague had hurt her "deep down to the marrow of my bones". She said:

I can't go for a sex change just because some people don't like it that the Lord called me as a minister.

Our programme has been in touch with Stafford Carson, but he has so far declined to be interviewed. I re-issued that invitation on air this morning.

Many people have already paid tribute to the priest and writer John O'Donohue, who died last week. John was buried today in county Clare. One of the most moving tributes I've read was written by Gareth Higgins. Gareth was a close friend of John's and introduced me to him a couple of years ago. I'm glad that he was able to travel to county Clare for the service.

Those who were unable to do that may wish to attend an Ikon event in Belfast's Black Box venue tomorrow night (Sunday). It's billed as "Eternal Echoes: an evening inspired by the life and work of John O'Donohue" and starts at 8.00 p.m.

This afternoon, I recorded a short tribute of my own which will be broadcast as part of a montage of tributes tomorrow on Radio 4's Sunday programme. It turns out that the long interview I conducted with John in December is the last he ever gave (listen again here). On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, I'll be talking to one of John's friends, Father Kevin Hegarty. John And Kevin were students together for seven years at Maynooth. In an article Fr Kevin wrote just before John's untimely death, he explains why John left the priesthood for the life of an independent writer. He writes:

His ecclesiastical superiors became suspicious of his growing reputation. They sought to clip his wings by imprisoning him in a busy curacy where they hoped he would have less time for flights of fancy.
They may have hoped that his imagination would wilt somewhat under the sodden weight of careful clerical conversation in the presbytery. It was as if (former All-Ireland club champions) Crossmolina GAA confined the contribution of (star footballer) Ciarán McDonald to carrying the jerseys for their third-string team.

I've attached Kevin's full article below.

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Human rights campaigners are staging demonstrations in many cities across the world today, marking the sixth anniversary of the opening of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Amnesty International is holding an "Orange Friday" protest today at 12 noon in Belfast. They are inviting the public to dress up in Guantánamo-style orange boiler suits, and participate in a chain-gang through Belfast City Centre.

Update: See picture from today's demonstration here, courtesy of Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's Northern Ireland director.

My interview on Sunday with the Presbyterian Moderator, Dr John Finlay, seems to have triggered a further row within the church over the ordination of women. Dr Finlay appeared on Sunday Sequence in order to respond to the controversy in Portadown, where two churches found themselves in a liturgical stand-off over Christmas. Since then, the issue has been covered on monday's editions of Good Morning Ulster and Talk Back.

The two congregations -- First Portadown at Edenderry and Armagh Road - have held a joint Christmas Day service for almost 60 years. But this past Christmas that traditional was abruptly ended because the new minister of First Portadown, the Revd Stafford Carson, refuses to share his pulpit with a woman minister, the Revd Christina Bradley.

In my interview with the Moderator, Dr Finlay confirmed that he voted against the ordination of women when the church debated the matter 35 years ago. Since then, he says, he has personally tried not to "frustrate the law of the church". In other words, he has been prepared to share services with women ministers even though he voted against their ordination. One could read that reply as a criticism of Stafford Carson. Is Mr Carson "frustrating the law of the church"? The Moderator wouldn't go that far when pressed -- he dodged the question and maintained that this is a very personal matter of conscience for those involved.

I suspect that there may be some discussion of the controversy at next June's General Assembly, though probably in a private session if at all. This isn't a matter of law for Presbyterians: the church's law is clear that women may be ordained and those men who disagree in conscience with that ordination are permitted to voice their disagreement. The issue is really about how a church can make space for different opinions on such as divisive issue -- and how individuals can express generosity and respect while honouring their own convictions.

So far, Stafford Carson and Christina Bradley have refused to be interviewed by the broadcast media. I have spoken with both of them about the controversy and I have the sense that a compromise is possible in this situation; that both parties can maintain personal integrity while making space for each other.

The Irish poet, priest and philosopher John O'Donohue has died, suddenly, while visiting friends in France. He was 53 years old and died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday. He is perhaps best known as the author of the internationally bestselling books Anam Cara, Eternal Echoes, and Beauty: The Invisible Embrace.

Two weeks ago, we broadcast an extended interview with John about his new book, Benedictus: A Book of Blessings -- what turned out to be one of the last interviews he ever gave. Some people can think well, write badly, and talk dreadfully. Others can write beautifully, even though they think slowly and talk nervously. John thought passionately, talked poetically and wrote luminously -- and that was, again, evident in the interview he gave me.

I first heard of him a few years ago when he was interviewed by Joan Bakewell on Radio 3. It was a 30-minute programme, and I was so taken with his language that I stayed in my parked car until the interview was complete. Language was his greatest gift -- and his greatest blessing to others. He was also one of those rare people whose presence alone helped others make sense of the world, because he was held together, himself, by a sense that "[T]here is an unseen life that dreams us; it knows our true direction and destiny. We can trust ourselves more than we realize, and we need have no fear of change." Those are his words. And his words survive him, like children.

"When your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight. "

JOHN O'DONOHUE (1954 - 2008)

Update: A tribute to John posted by a close friend, David Whyte.

I spent a very pleasant couple of hours last night in a coffee shop next to Broadcasting House with Carole O'Kane, one of the Blueprint producers. We were finalising the script for the second programme in the series, before the voice-overs are dubbed on Sunday afternoon. When we left the coffee shop, a car passed us and Carole noticed a dusting of snow on its roof: "Oh, look, that car has snow on its roof. Has it been snowing?" We'd just been working on the section of the programme dealing with the Ice Age, so we had a joke about that and said goodnight.

By the time I found my car and made one stop at a shopping mall, the Ice Age looked like it was returning. Today's news tells the story. So much snow seemed to fall so quickly, that I had trouble getting my car home. In fact, I had to abandon it at the bottom of a fairly steep hill that leads to my house and walk the rest of the way home carrying my new DVD purchases. Other drivers did the same. Before giving up and parking the car, I found myself being pushed (well, not me -- the car was pushed) by two complete strangers; and afterwards I was pushing someone else's car. Everyone was in remarkably good spirits; but that's snow for you -- it seems to bring out the latent child in all of us.

The Free Presbyterians were supposed to elect a new Moderator at their General Presbytery meeting tonight, but they've parked that meeting because of the weather. I'm expecting some commentator to perceive divine intervention triggering the weather conditions which have caused the postponement of a meeting to select Ian Paisley's successor. Watch this space.

Why is it that an evening of snow can bring parts of Northern Ireland to a standstill? By contrast, tens of thousands of voters in snow-white Iowa left their homes last night to vote for a black man who is running for the presidency. Even the candidates brought snow-shovels. I don't even own a snow-shovel, but after last night I'm buying one and keeping it in the boot of my car.

This is billed as Barack Obama's "victory" speech after topping the Democratic polls at the Iow caucus. It's a great speech from a candidate who has sometimes seemed, presentationally, too careful and rather bland. In this speech, he is presidential. The term "victory" is a little premature, of course.

Hillary Clinton surprised many by coming third, and Mike Huckabee seems to have worried some leading Republicans by coming first. But Clinton is certainly not out of the race yet. Bill Clinton came third in 1992; Jimmy Carter came second in 1976; and both went on to win the presidency. It's also worth remembering that the state of Iowa doesn't have an impressive record in electing women -- it has yet to elect a woman to Congress. This is clearly still a three-way race for the Democratic nomination.

John Edwards, who came second, has been criticised as graceless for not congratulating Barack Obama, but there are good political reasons for his silence. He is in a very good place, and could still emerge as the Democratic candidate for president. He could win in the south, and he could win in middle-America; he could also win the votes of those who are nervous about Obama's lack of experience and Clinton's personal associations.

The Republican race just got extremely interesting. Mike Huckabee, the six-day-creationist Southern Baptist pastor and former governor of Arkansas, has surprised many by looking like a serious candidate. He is against gun control, for the death penalty, supported the war in Iraq and the troop surge, once advocated quaranteening Aids patients, still argues (though he whispers it now) that gay people present a public health risk, has a blanket opposition to abortion, and perceives no serious legal or ethical problems with the Guantanemo Bay detention camp. In other words, he is the ideological heir apparent to George W. Bush. If he was to become the Republican candidate, those positions, under scrutiny, may worry many "undecideds" and quite a few secular Republicans who are looking for more than Bush-Lite in their next candidate. In any case, the Huckaboom revolution is not an inevitability. Mitt Romney did badly (finishing six points behind the Huckster's 31 per cent), but he will regroup and New Hampshire will be more telling. His Morman faith discourages some voters in the US, but he also has leading Protestant and Catholic supporters. I don't rate Thompson's chances very highly, though some commentators have compared this former actor to Ronald Reagan. He may emerge as a secular alternative to a creationist Baptist and a once-pro-choice-but-now-pro-life Mormon. The real loser is Rudi Giuliani, who scored only 6 per cent. If he survives, Bill Clinton will have lost his claim to the title "come back king".

The Church of Ireland Gazette has launched a rather surprising new year attack on the idea of a bill of rights for Northern Ireland. A draft bill of rights is due to be finalised by March, but the Gazette's editorial calls for proposals to be dropped. In essence, the editorial protests that such a bill would make Northern Ireland a consitutional exception within the UK, and is part of a movement linking Northern Ireland with the Republic more closely:

"It is obvious that there are those in the Stormont establishment who want a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, as opposed to the UK as a whole, because they want Northern Ireland to relate more closely to the Republic of Ireland than to the rest of the UK. That is an undemocratic and, therefore, unacceptable agenda."

Clearly, the leader writer believes there is already enough law in Northern Ireland to protect everyone, including minority groups; he or she perhaps believes that many bills of rights around the world are surplus to requirements. But the argument that Northern Ireland shouldn't have a bill of rights until the rest of the UK has a bill of rights is a curious one. It is perfectly possible for a legal entity within a larger state to carve out a distinctive legal arrangement. It is already the case in Northern Ireland, which has a separate judiciary and legal system, as it is the case in US states. Magna Carta is a wonderful document, but the world has changed a great deal since 1215. Would a new bill of rights for Northern Ireland be such a bad idea?

Incidentally, the Gazette is an independent church publication, so its editorials are not official statements of church policy.