The Church of Ireland Primate, Dr Robin Eames, has called on all paramilitaries in the North to "tell us by word and action that the past is over, the war is ended", writes Patsy McGarry in Armagh. He described sectarianism as a "blasphemy" and warned against the danger of treating the RUC as a political football.
In his presidential address to the Armagh Diocesan Synod yesterday, he said accountability in political terms lay in the ballot box and politicians were keenly aware of that fact. "But they must also be conscious of the trust of those who elect them to do a job," he said.
For that reason he said that surely the message of the synod must be "in God's name go on trying. Keep trying. Too much depends on a way forward. We must never, never fall back into the darkness of the past."
He told delegates they must recognise the complexity of the decommissioning issue. "But from the heart of a diocese which has seen such loss of life during the past 30 years surely we must say that we want a future in which no one, loyalist or republicans, Protestant or Roman Catholic, will ever again feel the need to resort to murder or violence to pursue a political aim," he said.
He called on paramilitaries to "heed the cry of the people of this province to take the final step. Tell us by word and action that the past is over, the war is ended - and prove that you want to play a part in building a new society for all of us and for our children."
But there was more to the peace process. There was reconciliation, he said. "How much do we really want to make reconciliation at the ground level a fact of life?" The world was "showing impatience with us, people cannot understand how our divisions are lasting so long." The question was, "What price reconciliation?"
He said: "For gone are the days when the church could claim that those divisions are purely political. Those divisions are religious as much as political. Sectarianism is alive and well in Northern Ireland. Its depth is frightening and shattering. There is sectarianism of the mind and in word as well as action.
"But how far have we been active in actually facing up to it - and in doing what we can in or immediate relationships or surroundings in confronting it? Is it just possible that we find a strange identified comfort in falling back into sectarianism because it is familiar and does not demand any step into the unknown?" he wondered.
"Let us be completely open about it as a diocese this morning," he said. "To judge a person by their political outlook or their religious label rather than as a person made in the image of God is a blasphemy."
Speaking about the Patten report, Dr Eames pleaded for the greatest possible sensitivity "towards any widespread changes in policing while we continue to endure the levels of violence as at present". No large-scale reduction in the police presence could be contemplated "before this entire society has moved forward", he said.
He felt there was insufficient reference in the report "to the losses endured by the police during the past 30 years".