Sir, - I am sure that I am not alone in welcoming Una O'Higgins O'Malley's reflections on healing the wounds caused by the violence of our shared past. She is right to point out that these wounds can still throb surprisingly painfully after so many decades.
Our separate histories but particularly our mythologies, whether nationalist or unionist, Protestant or Catholic, can still serve to divide and hurt us. However, as we all know, it is not just mature people, but also mature societies who are able to recognise violence done or suffered, face conflict, be reconciled to difference, and try to forgive themselves and others for the pain endured.
What we seem to need, as we seek to move beyond sectarianism towards the peace of a mature society, is an ethics of remembering and an ethics of forgetting. Such themes are currently being debated by academics philosophers, but while we await their conclusions we might do well to look to the history and experience of other peoples in the European Union. Next year we commemorate the Edict of Nantes (1598) which helped to give Protestants and Roman Catholics in France an experience of pluralism quite unique in the Europe of the time, although it was sadly shortlived.
The National University of Ireland, Maynooth will host one of the many conferences being held in 1998 to commemorate the Edict. Una O'Higgins O'Malley and others are welcome to join us from September 3rd to 6th as we reflect on issues of memory, identity and toleration in the historical experience of another European people.
As I hope we shall see, the memory of violence or persecution does not have to destroy. In fact, if managed ethically, it can function as a force for reconciliation, and for healing the wounds of the past. - Yours, etc.,
Professor of French, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.