Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Joe Kelly, Bowling Green, (Anniv).
11.00: John Murray; Christina, Kevin & Noel Naughton, (Anniv).
6.30: Eddie & Ellen Reynolds, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

This week a 3-year-old toddler, Margaret Hill, was seized for ransom on her way to school in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. BBC journalist Alan Johnston had just been released in The Lebanon after his 114 days of captivity.

Hostage taking was common in ancient Ireland. The Roman Empire too kept whole tribes 'sweet' by taking members of the royal tribal family as hostages. Treaties were guaranteed by the hand-over of a firstborn son. The more closely related to the submitting party, the greater the value of the hostage. Hostages could be honourably treated while the submitting party remained loyal and pliant; but they could be chained, blinded or executed in case of rebellion.

In the current age of terrorism, hostages have again become central. The practice vanished in the eighteenth century, only to emerge again in the last couple of decades. Hostage-taking by common criminals, as in Nigeria today, is an historical constant.

However, we in Ireland can't afford to look down our civilised noses at the brutal hell-holes of Lebanon and Nigeria. During the troubles here not even the basic conventions that offered some protection to hostages in primitive societies obtained. People were executed and buried like animals in the dead of night. Layers of civilisation are stripped away in an instant as society slides into brutality.

While Ireland emerged from that bloody darkness, Lebanon remains a brutal quagmire. Alan Johnston had the misfortune to be sucked into it. But his release brings him into that unique company of people: Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan - who survived their ordeal. Johnston will have a remarkable story to tell too, because all who stare death in the face are changed by the awful experience. Terry Waite's account below conveys some of the tedium and terror of that experience.

Brian Keenan gave a harrowing account of his own captivity in his book 'An Evil Cradling'. He talked about his 'descent into the inner hell' in his isolated cell. He found himself actually introducing estranged aspects of his personality to each other. Elements that had lain neglected since childhood surfaced to be introduced and integrated into the adult self.

Keenan felt that his soul had been 'filled out and rounded off' through intense isolation and suffering. His testimony is a parable of what must happen in the Middle East, a reconnecting of fragmented stories, a reconciliation of different aspirations. All four men talked about 'drawing on resources I never knew I had'. All four have spoken of the absolute necessity of forgiving their captors. 'If the experience embitters me, I remain a hostage' said Waite. All four are powerful witnesses to the great dignity of humanity, just as their original dilemma highlights our capacity for brutality. And now little Margaret Hill is caught in the web.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Captivity Remembered

(Church envoy Terry Waite was held hostage in Beirut for 1,760 days before being released on 18 November 1991. His family had not hard from him for five years. Here he recalls his ordeal)

I remember saying three things to myself after I was taken hostage.

Solitary confinement

But I had no contact at all with my family for five years - they didn't know that I was alive or dead for about four years when the news got to them from the Irish hostage Brian Keenan. Brian knew I had been in the next cell and of course when he was released he went and told my wife. I was in solitary confinement and I used to communicate with hostages in the cell next door by tapping on the wall in code. You can't use Morse code on a wall because you can't differentiate between a dot and a dash, but you can use the laborious code of one for A, two for B, three for C.

For about nine months I depended on the news being tapped through the wall. It was then that I regretted my name was Terry Waite, because it's a long way down the alphabet when you want to communicate your name. They had a radio and, for about nine months, I depended on the news being tapped through the wall.

Depression

Although I had tried to put my family and friends out of my mind - to dwell on them would have made me deeply depressed - I was always concerned about them. And particularly about my children - the eldest of whom were in university, and I thought perhaps my actions had wrecked their family life. That wasn't true, because I underestimated the enormous resilience of children and the enormous strength of my wife to deal with this very complex situation.

Final journey

When freedom did come, it was a rather a low key event. They simply came into the room and said, "You're going to be released", and threw in some clothes, which were all far too small - I looked ridiculous. I was taken out, blindfolded again, put into the boot of a car, then another car, and when they took the blindfold off I was with a Syrian intelligence operative, who drove me to the Syrian intelligence headquarters.

When I was on the plane bound for the UK a former colleague of mine, Richard Chartres, who is now Bishop of London, came out to meet me. He asked me to make a statement. I was still on duty as envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury! He then told me my family was waiting, a very emotional encounter. My son who was a teenager when I'd been captured had now grown up and I didn't recognise him. I remember my youngest daughter simply saying to me, "Daddy, take all the help that they're going to give you here." That I did, and thus I mended.

Poetic Judgment

"Of course I miss the great poetry of the psalms, the Song of Songs, the Book of Revelation. I find the dreary forced 'modernity' of music at Mass now wholly wearying, after the glories of Bach and Palestrina. I find that the Christian message is being couched today in a language that is lowered in intensity and seriousness to accommodate a lethargic faith. I know that the use of words like 'immaculate conception', 'transubstantiation', 'pyx', 'ciborium', 'monstrance', even commoner words like 'sacrament' and 'mercy', are almost meaningless to a younger generation. Christmas has become a time (now months long) for spending and buying, for overeating and over drinking; Easter has become a time for Chocolate eggs and bunnies and the notion of Lent has become an opportunity to try, once again, to ease back (for the sake of one's health) on smoking or alcohol. I know I exaggerate a little, but only, I think, a little. And all of the ills to which our society is subject, relate back to a lack of structure in life, to a failure of purpose. If motivation gives energy to act, then lack of motivation leads to lethargy, depression and even suicide. Christ back, then, upon Irish souls!"

-John F. Deane, Poet and Lecturer.

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