Martin appeals for equality in society

THE Catholic Archbishop of Dublin has urged solicitors and politicians to work towards achieving a more just, equal and caring society.

His comments came as the Church of Ireland Bishop said recent rioting in Britain should be seen as a warning to Irish society.

Diarmuid Martin, meanwhile, said that serving what is “right and truthful” would not be determined “by slick spin-doctoring or by smart soundbites used often to attack the other, rather than to search for or ascertain the truth”.

“Spin may gain popularity for the day, but it leaves the real problems to be addressed tomorrow. A healthy society requires courage, honesty, integrity, equity and solidarity.”

While noting that scandals have damaged the credibility of what the Church brings to society, he urged that the “fundamental role of faith for the building of societies which are truly pluralist should not be overlooked”.

In his homily at a Mass at Saint Michan’s Church to mark the opening of the new law term, Dr Martin said these difficult times “are perhaps going to be among the more creative times for our society in Ireland”.

Addressing a congregation including judges of the Supreme and High Courts, Attorney General Maire Whelan, representatives of the Scottish and Northern judiciaries and Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan, he said we live at a time of rapid change and ferment.

He found it “particularly saddening” that “a moment of forward-looking cultural change and reflection on society, as we have today, occurs precisely at a moment in which the economic means to turn dreams into reality is not there”.

“We find ourselves perhaps today in an unhappy situation because in our self-assuredness we lost the art of asking the right questions.”

The Church of Ireland Archbishop, Michael Jackson, said lessons must be learned from the recent rioting, looting and vandalism in England.

Dr Jackson said it might be tempting to say what happened in England had “nothing to do with us”.

“If however there was an economic underbelly to the rioting and the looting, if it is perhaps the next stage in a response to celebrity culture and the cult of the unattainable which such a culture feeds, then it does have something to say to those who are citizens of struggling European economies and that is a label which we cannot easily sidestep with our Irish eyes open.”

Among those attending the service were President Mary McAleese and Chief Justice Ms Susan Denham.

Dr Jackson said we had become so accustomed to the vocabulary of downturns, cutbacks, austerity measures and infrastructural rethinking that he believed we rarely realised just how frightening these freshly minted soundbites are.

“Getting people spending once more, flipping the pancake of consumerism at home in another round of Celtic Tigerism will not create society or indeed community out of the fragments of alienation which careless privilege and self regulating speculation have bequeathed to the young people who are the engine house of new life for tomorrow,” said Dr Jackson.