All through the year, the bombings continued, with attacks on bookshops, shopping centers, government offices and train stations. On April 10, a huge truck bomb exploded in the center of the city, killing three, critically injuring others and destroying a historic building. The terrorists acted with seeming impunity, and the city's residents cowered in fear. If you are thinking this must be a tale of Baghdad or Beirut, think again. The year was 1992, the city was London, and the terrorists were the nominally Catholic Irish Republican Army, or IRA.
At the time, our oldest daughter was spending a semester in London, and my wife and I anxiously followed each day's newscasts. When we spoke to our daughter on the phone, we warned her to stay out of the subways — better known as tubes — because they were frequent targets. Of course, for a college kid without a car, that proved to be a near-impossible task.
I am reminded of this frightening period on St. Patrick's Day, an occasion to celebrate the Irish and even claim to be "Irish," if only for the day. The campaign of bombings and random shootings, waged to gain independence from British rule and to form a republic, is long over. On July 28, 2005, after years of negotiations and false starts, the IRA issued a document that "formally ordered an end to the armed campaign ... All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means." The decommissioning of weapons was "to be witnessed by clergymen from Catholic and Protestant churches."
I can't help but see a parallel between Ireland's long-going religious and nationalist conflict, known as "The Troubles," and our own terror-filled times. But there's a key difference. While the terrorists were carrying out their campaign, one didn't hear Catholicism decried as a violent religion, even though the IRA's avowed foes were the Protestants of Northern Ireland and England. You didn't hear claims that the IRA had twisted its faith and misinterpreted its holy book to rationalize the brutality.
Oh, I know that today's terrorists seamlessly blend religion and killing by screaming, "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Greater" just before they pull the trigger or push the detonator on their suicide vests. ISIL regularly makes an emphatic point of waging a Holy War against infidels. Most likely, IRA soldiers weren't thinking of the Deity or some of the more violent passages from scripture when they did their dirty work. But it can't be denied that at the heart of the IRA was Roman Catholic culture. Its members were able to mingle their faith with politics for a cause they thought worth dying for. Their enemies didn't share this faith and were using a political culture to subjugate them, and they had to pay the price.
Much mischief has been produced throughout history by mixing religion with politics, by believing that causes are righteous because they are pursued in God's name. Examples can be as banal as the six presidential candidates who claimed they were running at God's behest (Walker, Kasich, Carson, Perry, Santorum and Huckabee), or as heinous as the Crusades, launched by a succession of popes.
Speaking of popes, there are some critics who accuse Pope Francis of mixing religion with politics when he advocates aggressive reforms to battle climate change. But only in the U.S. is climate science transformed into partisan politics. That's because lobbyists have politicized the topic at the behest of carbon fuel barons who line politicians' war chests with campaign dollars. Remedying climate change simply means being good and faithful stewards of the Earth and guardians of creation, roles that are fully compatible with one's religious beliefs, be you pope or plebian.
One can pray that if peace was possible between the factions in Northern Ireland, it is also possible in the Middle East, though the challenges in this clash of cultures are much greater. We have ancient fractures along ethnic and religious lines, and arsenals that make the IRA's bombs pale in comparison. But perhaps for the moment we can place our trust in an old and timely Irish saying: "May peace and plenty bless the world with joy that long endures. May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!"
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears Fridays. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
