For Whom the Bell Tolls

Every day, twice daily, even the most pressing news and discussions are suspended while the Angelus bell tolls on RTE. On one level, it’s an engaging and vaguely sentimental reference back to a time when most people believed the same things and all were within earshot of a church bell or, further east, a minaret. But on another level, and specifically in an Irish context, it’s a bit problematic.

Why? Well, because it’s a Catholic thing. Its original adoption by the then national broadcaster was of a piece with the theocratic culture of the time in Ireland. Think mullahs and imams, think Taliban. And the bells were theirs.

Unionists didn’t have to waste too much time or energy proving that Home Rule was Rome Rule. Everything about the Free State and its successor, the republic known as Ireland, made their point for them, bells and whistles and all.

Okay, I don’t need to labour the point. We’ve all moved on. Well, we must have, because it came as a bit of a shock to hear RTE’s Marian Finucane recently end an interview with the DUP’s Arlene Foster with the words ‘and now we go to the Angelus’ at which point the bells began to toll. If we hadn’t moved on, it wouldn’t have been such a surprise, nor would the insensitivity have been so glaring.

On the other hand…

Six hours later, at the start of the Leinster-Brive Heineken Cup rugby match in the RDS, both teams and their supporters began a minute’s silence. The enormity of the calamity in Haiti was by then apparent to all and the hush was instant and absolute. And, it being precisely six in the evening, a chapel bell began to ring close by the stadium.

It was deeply moving, adding a pristine funereal note to the silence, the meaning of which was clear to all those present, from Ireland and the south of France.

And there are parallels. The French Department of Corrèze, in which Brive is situated, witnessed ferocious sectarian strife between Catholics and Huguenots after the battle of Roche-l’Abbelle in 1569. For more than twenty years royal armies, members of the Catholic League and Huguenots killed each other, plundered villages and starved local peasants.

Thankfully, and in marked contrast with other stations of the world, still including Ulster, I’m afraid, the French really have moved on from there. Ancient divisions between Catholic and Protestant are subsumed into the unifying framework of the republic.

France wasn’t always what it is today. But as it became France, as opposed to a patchwork of regional identities, it expanded into the world and, ironically, one of the places it colonised was Haiti. So the tolling bell rang a little closer to home...

So, though the French have moved on from the prejudices of the Reformation and the Hundred Years War, new prejudices and battles have emerged, and two in particular.

The first is essentially social and involves the formerly colonised of North and West Africa. These French residents share common ancestry with the Haitians (who are largely descended slaves imported from west African countries like Senegal) but are settled in France’s cities and most notably in the impoverished banlieues of Paris.

The second is more complex, comprehending religion, reason and world view. The French Government is contemplating a ban on various ‘extreme’ forms of Islamic dress in public. The foremost fears relate to modern extremists with roots in their own colonies and to the challenge that fundamentalist religion poses to reason, which is the fundament of democracy.

But, just as Fermanagh’s dreary steeples remind of dogged animosities, so too do France’s villages perchés evoke ancient memories of marauding Saracens…

So, I suppose, while we’ve (nearly) all moved on, where we’ve arrived is just as complex, just as prone to division and confusion and just as much in need of reason and thought and solution.
The tingling bell at the RDS overrode the good-natured hostilities of the sports field and the bad-natured divisions of peoples and histories. It reminded us of the absolutes – life, death, solidarity, empathy and generosity. It rang for all.

Clichéd as it may sound, the global tide of sympathy for the victims of the earthquake transcends animosities.
The Irish response, notwithstanding deep economic woes, has been admirable, and not for the first time. This shows our best side, a deep well of altruism, empathy and generosity, characteristics that were poorly reflected in the rí-rá of the Celtic Tiger era.

But then, we’ve all moved on from that too. Bells also toll for the once-lionised.
We’re in the midst of a social and economic earthquake. But after two years of shock and rage, of bile and venom and surveying the wreckage, it’s time to move on.

The same qualities of empathy, solidarity and generosity we show for those in far distant countries are going to be needed at home…with the exception of the cowboys that screwed the pooch (and I include the sheriffs of the time too).

We’re all in hock for the next generation on their account. They had enough empathy and backslapping in the boom years, now it’s payback time.

Round 2 of that fight is just beginning and I think I just heard the bell ring. It isn’t for prayers…