Irish Examiner view: Unions need to rediscover old idealism

Recovering social equity

'I'm a union guy: President Joe Biden.

There is a fable that may have, in today’s uber-capitalist world, lost some of its sting. It is, nevertheless, worth recalling, its tarnished lustre endures. It recounts a post-Second World War conversation between a European Christian Democrat and a war-bitten atheist from Khrushchev’s politburo. 

The democrat extols the guiding force his religious beliefs confer so passionately that the Communist encourages him to try Christianity as a model for society sometime. That stick-in-the-eye is as sharp today and events over recent days bring it into focus, maybe not around the place of religion but in how we give meaning to the beliefs we can shout from the rooftops.