Good people and religious people should reclaim the image of the millennium from those who see it only as an opportunity for self-indulgence, a conference in Limerick has been told.
Addressing the Glenstal Ecumenical Conference in Co Limerick, Prof Sean Freyne, professor of theology at Trinity College Dublin, said: "Millennium talk as practised by the global market economy's advertising apostles is intended to divert our attention from the past and the present, so that it can sell us what we think we need. The obscenity of the proposals for self-indulgence to usher in the new millennium only becomes apparent when considered in the light of so much need and so much suffering in our world now. "Religious people and people of goodwill should reclaim the image as one that is intended to generate hope," he said. Speaking on "Millennium and Jubilee: A Christian Perspective", Prof Freyne said: "We are currently being bombarded by an advertisement campaign of mammoth proportions that will lead to an orgy of consumerist waste unparalleled in the history of human civilisation. Yet all over the world millions will still be dying from malnutrition, others will be homeless and still others left without any hope of escaping from the trap of penury and destitution.
"Nothing will have changed in real terms except that those who are the victims of our Western arrogance will have one other confirmation of what they know already, namely how little we care about their plight. At a recent international meeting of theologians I was taken aback to hear how millennium celebrations were being viewed in India, with a sense of fear that the East would once again be confronted by an exhibition of Western triumphalism and arrogance.
"May God forgive us our innocent mirth. We do need a new language to describe our global sin," he added.
Here in Ireland, "we must not be distracted by millennial madness, but begin to think how our jubilee aspirations could be given concrete expression within our own communities and that, of course, means beginning with our churches. Nobody, least of all modern Ireland, will take us seriously if we as churches do not own up to our past failures and present inertia and confront these with a renewed vision of the inheritance of radical thinking that is ours.
"Deeds will speak louder than words if the Christian churches are going to have a serious voice at the round table discussions that will shape the values of the new Ireland," he said.
Referring to prisons he said that despite all the comments on the inadequacy of the system, he had heard very little debate as to who made up the vast majority of prisoners in Ireland and why that might be the case. As long as the prisons functioned in keeping undesirables at a safe distance, then most of us were happy to turn a blind eye to the serious underlying questions of who, why and for what. He considered that the legal profession was in urgent need of a serious public review of its attitudes and standards. "On what grounds are the exorbitant fees for many legal practitioners justified and what price `justice for the people' and in whose interest do the tribunals function?
"If the criteria for legal costs are simply those that the market can bear, what does that do to the profession itself? Clearly the power and trust invested by society in barristers, lawyers and judges calls for some public accountability. To the lay person, sentencing and release often seem arbitrary and erratic." The examples of Gordon Wilson and the families of other victims who have pleaded for no retaliation required all of us, individually and collectively, to find ways other than retaliation and penalisation to deal constructively with our aggressors, he said.