(Editor’s Note: Adrian Dominicans Sister Cathryn Deutsch, OP, member of the general council, and Sister Maria Riley, OP, offer these reflections on the “Journey of Reconciliation” they made to the peace rally in Northern Ireland. Adrian Dominican Sisters in the Archdiocese of Atlanta serve in the Cumming area.)

To write about the “troubles” (as the Irish so euphemistically call them) in Northern Ireland after a one-week whirlwind visit is indeed a presumptuous act, if not an impossible task. One cannot unravel the 400 years of political, economic, social and religious conflict that intensified into outright civil war in 1969, but can offer some impressions of the stay in Belfast.

Belfast is a violent city. There is the overt violence of sectarian killings, bombings, tanks and armored cars patrolling, British soldiers with tommy guns always ready, security searches, extortion and threatening graffiti painted large on the walls on bombed-out buildings. But there is also the covert violence of grinding poverty, unemployment (68% in one Catholic ghetto), denial of civil rights, slums, imprisonment without trial, deep-seated fears and prejudices fed by 400 years of oppression. The cycle of violence is unrelenting and it is impossible in 1976 to separate some of the causes from the effects. The question is always asked, “Is there a solution?” This is a difficult question because on one level there is a solution, the level of logical arbitration and negotiation; however, the “troubles” of Northern Ireland do not operate out of a rational mode. They arise from a series of profoundly felt myths which defy a logical resolution to the civil war: the myth of sectarianism – Catholic and Protestant alike – the myth of British supremacy, the myth of power. These myths are passionately lived by various factions within Northern Ireland and so the “troubles” continue and will continue until another myth can capture the imagination of the people. This is the aim of the Peace People of Ireland; to generate a passion for peace, which is stronger than the violence, that has held the people of Northern Ireland in its grip. But peace cannot be the end; it is only the beginning. After the cessation of overt violence, a new social, political and economic order must be built to eradicate the more subtle covert violence, which control the land. The struggle in Northern Ireland is not only for peace, but for peace arising from a just social order. Pope John’s statement that “Peace is not the absence of violence but the presence of justice” is radically true for Northern Ireland.

However, Northern Ireland is a microcosm of the myriad faces of violence, both individual and systemic that are repeated over and over again throughout the world and within our personal and communal lives. We too need to be imbued with a passion for peace, so that the enormous task of changing the future will flow from the messianic vision of Isaiah:

In the days to come the mountain of the Temple of Yahweh shall tower above the mountains and be lifted higher than the hills. All the nations will stream to it, peoples without number will come to it; and they will say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the Temple of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways so that we may walk in his path; since the Law will go out from Zion, and the oracle of Yahweh from Jerusalem.’

He will wield authority over the nations and adjudicate between many peoples; these will hammer their swords into ploughshares, their spears into sickles. Nation will not lift sword against nation, there will be no more training for war.