Catholics used to have a spiritual mechanism for cleansing the soul of the stain of all sin: it was called a plenary indulgence. Nothing was immune to its power: no sin was too great to resist its purgative grace. Should even the most grievous of sinners die immediately after the receipt of a plenary indulgence, the pathway to paradise lay open, with Satan snarled impotently in his inferno below, writes Kevin Myers
Catholicism doesn't go in for that kind of stuff any more: and the last fortress to believe in the power of the plenary indulgence is Irish Republicanism. And so long as Irish Republicanism exists, its ability to bestrew itself with absolute forgiveness is central to its existence: for its indulgences are even more plenary than those sold by the Catholic Church when its money-raising antics so infuriated Luther.
Republicanism has always promised that if you kill in the name of the Republic, you are forgiven, no matter how innocent your target, because your deed has been authorised and sanctified by the cause. For the cause itself is a plenary indulgence; yet so, paradoxically, is the abandonment of the cause.
Two faces of morality
For these are the two faces of the morality coin, as minted by the theologians of republicanism. On the one side you have the head of Pearse, who glorified in bloodshed and who stated the central creed of republicanism at his court martial: "We seem to have lost. We did not lose. To refuse to fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, and handed on a tradition to the future."
The other side of the coin bears Collins. He killed all around him; and having killed, and killed and killed, discovered that killing of itself achieves nothing. He recognised he must finally do a deal with those whose servants he was murdering. He must find peace short of the goals laid by those who sought the Republic by war only. And by finally resorting to peaceful methods, by abandoning the pursuit of the Republic by violence alone, he bestowed upon himself that other plenary indulgence, that of peace-maker, thereby cleansing his soul of all deeds thereto.
Who did Collins begin his peace-making with? With British Intelligence, of course. The Treaty was almost certainly the product of the secret joint endeavours of Collins and Lt-Col Ormonde de l'Epee Winter, "O", who ran much of the British counter-insurgency operations in Dublin. Between them, they probably prepared the broth that within time was to be boiled into the Irish Free State.
Just like Collins, Gerry Adams was both ruthless enough and stupid enough to think that a good killing machine would bring about the Republic. Then, like Collins before him, he was clever enough to realise that violence without politics can achieve nothing. It's time for politics; it's time for the other plenary indulgence. Enter "O" again.
West Belfast
Yet for all his autobiographical evasions, the people of West Belfast always knew precisely who they were voting for when they elected Gerry Adams their MP; not some genial, pipe-smoking, story-telling uncle, the Val Doonican of Ballymurphy, but the man who ran the IRA with a fist of gunmetal. They always knew about Jean McConville and Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee and Bloody Friday; and they accepted it. That was yesterday; this is today. He has been granted his plenary indulgence, and he leads our tribe. That will do.
So he is twice blessed: blessed with a plenary indulgence for having taken to the gun; blessed again for negotiating his movement (largely) away from the gun. And look: does not history vindicate the power of these indulgences? Is he not welcome in Downing Street and the White House, where never his victims were seen, or would ever have been?
Do these indulgence things not work mighty miracles? They do. And not just in West Belfast. Even if it were proved that all the charges in Ed Moloney's book are correct - and I am confident they are - Gerry Adams could still stand in almost any constituency in the Republic and be elected to the Dáil. But to unionists, such indulgence towards a former terrorist is mystifying, a barbaric and pagan ju-ju.
For minds do not meet where tribes converge and moralities divide. There is no common ethos which binds Sinn Féin-IRA with the unionist people. Each represents an entirely different ethical tradition: one embodies the possibility of redemption and forgiveness by means of indulgence in this world; and the other rejects this, simply seeking earthly retribution upon the damned.
Tribalism
The peace process has not diminished tribalism. Indeed, the tribe governs more completely today than it did before the peace process began. Why is RTE broadcasting Celtic matches live? Is it because of the quality of Scottish football, though not one of its teams has qualified for the Champions' League? Or is it because Celtic is the soccer version of Irish nationalism? And who would safely wear a Rangers shirt while watching an Old Firm match in a Dublin pub?
The clock is now ticking on the peace process, but MI5 - "O" - is right when it tells John Reid that the Provisional movement is not going back to war. The peace indulgence, once granted, may not be rejected. But history is approaching a new and unfamiliar crisis; and I sense and fear that within the souls of increasing numbers of young nationalists, the moral authorisations of Pearse's plenary indulgence are at their evil work again.