Church has a duty to challenge drug gangs

THE contrast between the Pope’s clear-eyed commentary on America’s presidential race and the fawning, wrong-headed, and offensive indulgence afforded to those who turned the funeral of murdered gangland figure David Byrne into a three-ringed circus contrived to express untouchable power and indifference to the victims of crime could not be greater.

Moreover, that contrast could hardly be more perplexing for those who still hope that Christian values, even in the loosest sense, might help inform our civic morality.

Pope Francis was impressively unambiguous when asked about Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border from Texas to California and expel 11m people who are in America illegally if elected. Pope Francis said that anyone who wants to build such a wall isn’t Christian.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” the Pontiff said. “This is not in the Gospel.”

Unsurprisingly, the preposterous and dangerous Mr Trump responded forcefully, though he dodged the issues in play, saying that it was “disgraceful” that a religious leader should question a person’s faith.

The Byrne funeral on Monday, held in the 220-year-old church of St Nicholas of Myra, named in honour of Nikolaos the Wonderworker, a fourth-century saint who, it is believed, brought victims of an evil butcher back from the dead, heard Fr Niall Coghlan warn that hatred, revenge, and tit-for-tat was not the way of Christ and not the way for any community. An eye for an eye left everyone blind, he said.

Fr Coghlan continued and asked: “Could David have been murdered if he had been seen as fully human? If the killers had looked into his eyes, and seen in their reflection the smiles of adoration of two daughters, Daisy and Dottie, could he have been murdered?” as if he was speaking about a local community worker or someone who organised meals on wheels for the aged, and dependent of inner city Dublin rather than a cog in one of the crime empires that has ruined so many lives and devastated communities afflicted by their presence.

Mr Byrne was, of course, entitled to a funeral in a church but surely it would have been appropriate to limit the scope of the event, to confine it to the barest ceremony, one without such a misjudged homily or eulogy? Surely it would have been appropriate to prevent the event being turned into an expression of contempt for the society the gangland drug lords prey on?

This argument rings especially true in an area where far more victims of drug abuse have been buried than drug dealers. It must be acknowledged that Fr Coghlan was in a difficult position, but it must also be remembered that he comes from a Church that has no difficulty denying school places to four year-olds if they are not baptised or, in some cases, vetoing music chosen by a couple for their wedding ceremony, so asserting authority is not a problem.

The Christian message of unquestioning love is one of the great challenges faced by humanity, but if that objective is pursued blindly, without context or limiting criteria, surely it is an ideal waiting to be abused — as it was last Monday.