LAST September, immediately after the party for the 70th anniversary of its consecration, the Church of the Holy Name, Greenisland, in Co. Antrim, was severely damaged by arson (News, 6 September 2024). Sunday Sequence (BBC Radio Ulster) explored how the congregation reacted, once it turned out that the perpetrators were three boys, two aged 11, and a ten-year-old (News, 13 September 2024).
Instead of being prosecuted, the boys entered a government-sponsored restorative-justice programme, which culminated in their doing practical maintenance and repair tasks under the supervision of one of the parish’s clergy, and building relationships that lead to the boys’ getting involved in the parish youth programme.
A case in which the perpetrators are so young is easier to deal with — but the American Mennonite Dr Carl Stauffer embedded this in a wider discussion about restorative justice. At the core of the practice is repentance: the process can start only once someone, or some institution, acknowledges that a wrong has been done.
It is obviously easier to apply this practice when nobody has been physically hurt, but Dr Stauffer spoke of doing this at the level of homicide. I found it interesting that letter-writing, a dying art, could still be effective in facilitating restoration after serious crimes, especially if accompanied by significant power imbalances.
Depressingly, Dr Stauffer said, “Forgiveness has become a dirty word for many.” How should the Church speak into a moment when forgiveness can be mistaken for collusion with injustice?
As flags sprout across the country, The Long View (Radio 4, Tuesday) looked back to 1780, when it was Roman Catholic emancipation rather than immigration which was seen by nativist populists as the great threat to British national integrity.
At the root of the new liberal policy were labour shortages: an unpopular war with the still decidedly Protestant American colonies meant that the army needed to enrol many more soldiers, primarily from Ireland. Hence the 1778 Catholic Relief Act.
Lord George Gordon, a sort of mainland Ian Paisley avant la lettre, gathered signatures across the country to a huge petition seeking to overturn the legislation. Against the advice of wiser sympathisers, he brought a flag-flying crowd of 40,000 to Westminster to present the petition in person. When Parliament refused to accept it, the ensuing anti-Catholic riot, almost certainly carefully orchestrated, was the capital’s most destructive event since the Great Fire. The authorities crushed the violence, and 25 ringleaders were hanged. Lord George was tried for high treason and acquitted.
This year’s flag-flying fad started in Birmingham — ironically, the city where Gordon improbably converted to Judaism several years after his trial.
While most of 2025’s flag-flying has been peaceful, there have been incidents of racist messaging and vandalism to property belonging to members of minority communities. Let’s hope all this doesn’t culminate in latter-day Gordon Riots.
