Christopher Dickey: What an Irish Terrorist Teaches Us About Tolerance
[Christopher Dickey is the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor for Newsweek Magazine.]
I was just beginning to think that this long summer of intolerance was coming to an end. American hysteria about the non-mosque that’s not at Ground Zero seems to be subsiding just a bit. The French government might be backing away from its ginned-up xenophobia amid reports the prime minister isn’t really on board with the president’s right-wing rhetoric. There’s even a chance that peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians will get back on track at a summit in Washington next week. Whew. Then I picked up a copy of this morning’s London Times and discovered a whole new reason for some people with old wounds to start hating each other anew.
Splashed across two pages is the story of a Roman Catholic priest who appears to have participated in car bombings that slaughtered nine people, Protestants and Catholics alike, in the little village of Claudy in Northern Ireland back in 1972. Among the dead were a mother of eight, two teenagers, and a little girl. Police investigators concluded that the late Father James Chesney had a role in the act, and he may even have ordered it.
In the aftermath, church officials allegedly helped protect Chesney from prosecution—and colluded with British officials in the process. Their ostensible motivation was concern that public knowledge of a priest’s involvement would have made that bloodiest year of the sectarian Troubles in Northern Ireland even bloodier. So the church hierarchy, typically, thought the best approach was to move him to another parish, out of the way and out of the reach of the law. Chesney died in Ireland of natural causes in 1980. In 2002, after the 30th anniversary of the attack, the case was reopened. But there has never been a conviction.
The basic account of these events and conspiracies is drawn from a detailed report published this week by the police ombudsman of Northern Ireland, Al Hutchinson. This is not rumor. It is the result of extensive government investigations, and the case it makes against Father Chesney and those who covered for him is, to say the least, damning.
So should we now think twice or three times about letting anybody build a Catholic place of worship or community center in our town?..
Read entire article at Newsweek
I was just beginning to think that this long summer of intolerance was coming to an end. American hysteria about the non-mosque that’s not at Ground Zero seems to be subsiding just a bit. The French government might be backing away from its ginned-up xenophobia amid reports the prime minister isn’t really on board with the president’s right-wing rhetoric. There’s even a chance that peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians will get back on track at a summit in Washington next week. Whew. Then I picked up a copy of this morning’s London Times and discovered a whole new reason for some people with old wounds to start hating each other anew.
Splashed across two pages is the story of a Roman Catholic priest who appears to have participated in car bombings that slaughtered nine people, Protestants and Catholics alike, in the little village of Claudy in Northern Ireland back in 1972. Among the dead were a mother of eight, two teenagers, and a little girl. Police investigators concluded that the late Father James Chesney had a role in the act, and he may even have ordered it.
In the aftermath, church officials allegedly helped protect Chesney from prosecution—and colluded with British officials in the process. Their ostensible motivation was concern that public knowledge of a priest’s involvement would have made that bloodiest year of the sectarian Troubles in Northern Ireland even bloodier. So the church hierarchy, typically, thought the best approach was to move him to another parish, out of the way and out of the reach of the law. Chesney died in Ireland of natural causes in 1980. In 2002, after the 30th anniversary of the attack, the case was reopened. But there has never been a conviction.
The basic account of these events and conspiracies is drawn from a detailed report published this week by the police ombudsman of Northern Ireland, Al Hutchinson. This is not rumor. It is the result of extensive government investigations, and the case it makes against Father Chesney and those who covered for him is, to say the least, damning.
So should we now think twice or three times about letting anybody build a Catholic place of worship or community center in our town?..