Rite & Reason: Defining the present in terms of past sacrifice is wrong

Recent articles in The Irish Times revisited the question of the relationship between sacrifice and religiously sanctioned political violence. Since 9/11 theologians, political scientists and psychologists have scrambled to understand this lethal relationship.

The Irish experience has a great deal to contribute and our reflections are needed in the light of the Irish resurgence of sacrificial language and rituals in 2016 and also because of religiously sanctioned political threats throughout the world.

The annual competitive parades to the graves of Irish martyrs speak volumes. Sacrificial discourse establishes a hierarchy of beneficiaries, often with competing groups claiming the spoils. Anthropologist Nancy Jay once wrote that ancestor cults are not simply worship of the dead. They are ways of organising relations among the living.

War dead

Nowhere has this been more evident than in

Ireland

where there are many types of sacrifice competing for authority. In international terms (and in some places in Ireland), the sacrifices of Irish soldiers who died in the first and second World Wars were considered to be legitimate and were commemorated in universities, schools, cathedrals and gardens. In the new Irish Republic, initiated in 1916, the sacrifices of those who died in the major world wars (including two of my own maternal granduncles) were considered irrelevant.

Following the first World War, the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the National War Memorial Gardens at Kilmainham. In the new Irish Republic these gardens were left go to wrack and ruin until Ireland joined the European Union and needed to claim sacrificial shares in the European project. The monuments were recuperated; the commemorations revived.

Such Irish experiences speak powerfully of the role played by sacrificial discourse in the politics of identity. To which sacrificial political arena did we belong: British, Irish or European? Issues of identity have always played a role in marking religious or political allegiance.

No greater love

Fr

Dennis Faul

, knowing what would happen if the hunger striker

Bobby Sands

died, made desperate attempts to persuade him to end his fast to the death.

But Sands replied: “Greater love no man hath than to lay down his life for his friend.” Fr Faul responded: “Bobby, I have no answer to that.” Later, the priest reflected: “I felt that they were beating us at our own game.”

In societies where religion and politics are now intimately enmeshed, the language of sacrifice knows no bounds. Sacrificial acts are no longer confined to churches, battlefields, mosques or synagogues. They can be performed in cafes, bars, arenas and concert halls, and with social media, acquire a perverse and diffuse legitimacy and recognition.

The Roman Emperor and the Christian Churches ruthlessly controlled the apparatus of sacrifice in the interests of their respective power structures. But now the genie is out of the bottle and it would behove all concerned to interrogate the word for its unconscious and manipulative undercurrents. The language of sacrifice has enjoyed immunity for far too long.

In contrast, mercy acts to contain rather than proliferate violence. The major prophets of all religions cried out in no uncertain terms that they desired mercy not sacrifice. Mercy refuses the option of seeking one’s identity at someone else’s expense.

Reflecting on our troubled history, we in Ireland should play our part in developing strategies and images based on redemptive love, and eschew forever those political and theological supports for sacrificially supported redemptive violence.

Dr Mary Condren lectures at the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin