The Catholic Primate, Dr Sean Brady, has said the recent spate of murders in the North had terrified and angered many. Speaking in Newbridge, Co Derry, at a "Day for Life" Mass yesterday, he said "the right to live, the right to follow one's conscience, and practise the religion of one's choice as well as the right to work and earn one's living and support one's dependants, all of these are being disregarded". Such murders were "a terrible indictment of those who have the power to change the bigotry and hatred which underpin such conduct and who fail to do so".
Those desperately trying to wreck the search for agreement in the North he described as "the enemies of life and pedlars of death". They were like those who deal in arms and drugs. They promote a "culture of death", he said.
The "Day for Life" was celebrated in Catholic churches throughout Ireland yesterday following an initiative by Pope John Paul in his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life. This is the first year it has been celebrated in Ireland, where the theme chosen was the sacredness of human life from its beginning.
Taking up that theme in Dublin's pro-cathedral yesterday, Archbishop Desmond Connell called for another abortion referendum. "Only a referendum to restore the constitutional protection for which we voted in 1983 can now provide what justice requires," he said. "Surely," he continued, "if we wish to protect life it cannot be beyond our capacity to find a wording that would reflect medical reality."
Dr Connell also referred to the recent killings in the North, and called for prayers that the spirit of God would open hearts and guide them to courage on the difficult road to peace. Addressing the increasing incidence of violent crime, he suggested a weakening of faith was leading to a cheapening of life and "a loss of the respect that we owe towards others".
Dr Brady said attacks on human life were "a disgrace to those who carry them out; they poison human society and are a supreme dishonour to God, the source of all life". Yet in modern times new and ever more serious threats to life had emerged, he said. "Now human life is being attacked at its beginning, through abortion. It is being attacked in its closing days through euthanasia or so-called `mercy killing'. As we know only too well from recent events in the North of Ireland it is being attacked continually by those who murder and maim in the name of political ideology. It is attacked by whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any kind of genocide and wilful self-destruction."
The life of any one person must be recognised as being worth the same as any other, he said, adding that "true parity of esteem begins here". The church did not isolate the defence of unborn life from the defence of human life and dignity in other areas where these were being cheapened, endangered or destroyed. "One must have absolute respect for human life as coming from God's hands at the very first moment of conception and as remaining under God's care on Earth until he takes it back to himself again in death," he said.
Dr Brady also spoke of fears that Britain's Abortion Act would soon be extended to the North, despite this lacking the support of any MP there. The politicians' stance reflected "the overwhelming opposition of the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland to such a move", he said.
Criticising a tendency to see abortion as a "legitimate expression of individual freedom", he pointed to what he described as "an implicit contradiction" in such a view, in that it publicly affirms the value of life while at the same time denying or trampling on the right to life.
Both he and Dr Connell emphasised the tragedy of the circumstances in which a woman might find herself facing an unexpected pregnancy. "We must stand by her side," said Dr Brady, "anyone who claims to be pro-life must be emphatically pro-mother as well," while Dr Connell said "we must always be mindful of the loneliness and vulnerability of such women".
