01.07.2024
Former President Welcomed as Changing Attitude Ireland Patron at Pride Evensong
This has been the best decade for LGBTIQA+ men and women in our country but there is a lot more work to do until “all that miserable hatred is squeezed out by Pride, by lived love of neighbour”. So said former President Dr Mary McAleese at yesterday’s (Sunday June 30) Pride Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
During the service Dr McAleese was welcomed as the new Ecumenical Patron of Changing Attitude Ireland (CAI), the organisation which coordinated the service. The service was celebrated by CAI Patron, the Rt Revd Trevor Williams and sung by the Cathedral Choir.
The address was given by Dr McAleese who noted that Christ Church Cathedral had been a gathering place of Christian worshipers for almost 1,000 years. This amounted to almost 100 decades of listening to the words of the reading [Romans 13: 1–10]: ‘“Love your neighbour as yourself.” 10Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’ She said it was a sad reality that we needed few lessons to teach us what happens when neighbour failed to love neighbour citing wars in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and nationally, the War of Independence, the Civil War and the Troubles.
“We need no more lessons in the damage done by an absence of love for in this gathering are people who can tell of the damage caused by the absence of that love in their homes, workplaces, street corners, sports clubs, communities, churches, the internet where hate filled invective, judgmentalism, cancelling and stereotyping has made life intolerable, driven people to despair, driven too many to see no point in continuing to be alive,” she stated.
This was a fortunate generation, Dr McAleese said, that had witnessed the “miraculous day” in 2015 when the voters of Ireland endorsed same sex marriage but life for LGBTIQA+ was still fraught with difficulties. She spoke of the malign influence of vulgar locker room homophobic language and the random unprovoked attacks on young gay men where that language was used. She suggested that in this overwhelmingly Christian country, racists, homophobes and misogynists will have heard the words of the great commandment to love one another but have ignored them or edited them “to fit the mean abusive God they have made in their own awful image and likeness”.
Dr McAleese said that the world needed to see love in action and see people gathered in loving solidarity. “This Pride Evensong in Christ Church, a cathedral which has proclaimed his name for one thousand years is a statement of intent about the next one thousand years. To the extent that we can we will insist on the right of all of us to love, to respect, to equality, to be free from wrongs inflicted by ignorance, bigotry and abuse of the Gospel and to call it out wherever it appears,” she said.
Pride helped to change attitudes and to change Ireland, she said. But she added that while this is by far the best decade for LGBTIQA+ men and women in our country, no one who proclaimed the commandment to love one another could settle for the way things are and there is a long road to travel to a place where love triumphs and proves its worth.
She thanked the Dean, Bishop Williams, Canon Ginnie Kennerley and members of the cathedral community for their warm and gracious welcome. She also expressed gratitude to chair of CAI Mark Bowyer and Canon Kennerley for the work they do to sustain and develop a tolerant inclusive Ireland. She was particularly grateful for the privilege of becoming a patron of the organisation that challenges Christians to break down the barriers that keep neighbours from loving one another as Christ commanded.
