Sir, - Rev Martin Clarke (January 1st/2nd) provided a detailed defence of the church's handling of the asylum-seeker issue. He was responding to criticism by Mr Gordon MacKenzie (December 11th) and others of perceived church inactivity. The true measure of the adequacy of the Catholic or other churches response has to be its effect on public opinion. The churches may not be the all-powerful formers of public opinion their critics like to say they once were. However, if they cannot influence the public on so clearly Gospel-based an issue as the welcoming of vulnerable strangers, then something is seriously wrong.
The evidence that neither they nor anyone else is succeeding in doing so is clear. Three polls, two published by the Irish Independent and one by The Pilgrim, Catholic newspaper, in 1998 provide almost exactly the same figures. Approximately 70 to 75 per cent of the Irish electorate want (in the Independent's words) the minimum number of refugees to be allowed to stay.
In a report on the situation of immigrants and asylum seekers in Ireland to be published later this month by The Pilgrim, details are given of the other side of the story: 156 asylum-seekers were interviewed over a three-month period with a view to understanding their experience of being in Ireland. For those who would like to think that response of Irish Christians to those who have sought refuge in this country has been adequate the report will make appalling reading. However, it is not the stories of almost universal racism against Africans, harassment and fear which are most disturbing but the simple, unacknowledged fact that most of those who have sought refuge in this country over the last three to four years are gone.
It is difficult to read Fr Clarke's defence of the church's handling of the refugee crisis when the crisis we speak of is already almost over. How is it that we, a nation of emigrants, have so conspicuously failed to welcome the only, and tiny, influx of immigrants we have received in modern times? Why have Trocaire, the missionary orders and the aid organisations who are totally familiar with the day-to-day reality of life in Somalia, Angola, Congo and Nigeria not been calling on the Government, as did Bishop Fiacra O'Ceallaigh on Christmas Day, to grant an amnesty to all asylum seekers.
The applause that greeted Bishop O'Ceallaigh's call is not an illustration that the Irish Independent's survey is wrong in claiming that most people are opposed to welcoming asylum seekers, as Mr MacKenzie suggests. It is, however, an indication of what could be achieved if the leaders of the main Christian churches, the missionary orders and aid organisations were to stand clearly and unequivocally behind Bishop O'Ceallaigh's statement. - Yours, etc., Helena O'Leary,
Pilgrim House Community, Inch, Co Wexford.