29.12.2025
Words–R–Us: … the language we use and the people we are …
Op ed by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson for The Mail on Sunday, 28 December 2025.
Language itself is a fascinating Aladdin’s cave of expression, of understanding and misunderstanding as well as a tremendous way of connecting people together. It is quite amazing how things can change overnight. Take, for example, the way in which The President has foregrounded the Irish language. I hear more and more people conversing in Irish on the streets. People on the radio are increasingly at ease with using Irish naturally and unaffectedly – and then translating it into English for those of us whose grasp is limited!
A word spoken at the right time expresses shared excitement, shared compassion and, as we all know from personal situations, silence itself can frequently be the best way to communicate. Carefulness is often kindness. Language can also be the very way in which we get things spectacularly wrong. Just think how talking by TEXT has landed you in it! You imagined you were communicating something clearly, but the person receiving your message takes another meaning from it and you both have to untangle yourselves. Then there is the realization to which we have all come: the relationship between social media and the unending and undying character of our digital output. Not only will our telephones live on beyond us, so also will their content. An obvious worry for many people now, for example, is what they have on their ‘phones as they seek to gain entry to USA in particular.
Language can also hurt and harm. Sweeping caricature is the friend of nobody. Neither is the rising temperature of language. Caricature is where we move away from being centred in a shared humanity and where we project on to others who we don’t want them to be. It is where we generalize negatively. And in the Season of Christmas as the old year fades, we can all too readily veer towards the negative. But, like us, these very people are who they are. And all of us feel entitled to our identity. The fact is that there needs to be give and take, a little generosity of spirt – and sometimes a lot of it, to keep things from going sour and nasty.
As 2025 sweeps towards its conclusion, we can all hear the words that have moved into our regular use of language ringing in our ears: antisemitism, racism, sectarianism, Islamophobia to name but a few. All of these are expressions of yet another –ism, extremism. And it is not our friend for 2026. There is the all–too simple flow of thought which connects refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers and uses this simplistic connection to explain the shortage of housing and the scandal of homelessness. Many of us still probably never thought we’d see Irish people homeless and yet we do, particularly children. Let us pause and think too how it is for children from the somewhere which to us is a nowhere because they do not have the language or the self–belief to communicate with us in their freezing fear. In the capital city, it begins to look like Dickens’ Dublin. Our language and our frustrations move from speech to hate speech. Hate speech can readily move to hate crime. After all, the Hebrew word dabar means both word and deed. This is a stark realisation: we do what we say. Both are intimately interconnected. Both define us. Our language frames our identity. We can do something about it, if it is distorting our lives and the lives of other people.
… the language we choose and the people we can become …
It can be different. As we take the opportunity of this unique time of the year when change is in our hands, we can make it different. Language may look like the words we use. However, it brings us directly into a relationship with The Other. Who, then, is this Other? The Other is the person we are not, but the person that he or she is. What we frequently do not get is that to this person, we ourselves are The Other. Are we really as self–explanatory as we think? Do we really expect them to accommodate themselves to us rather than our accommodating ourselves to them? If it is ‘our country,’ ‘our town,’ ‘our street,’ has it not been someone else’s before us and will it not be someone else’s after us? The goodness of human curiosity about The Other comes to pass through good use of language. St Augustine, who was and remains the great inspiration of Pope Leo, speaks about weight in terms of energy as the motive force in our everyday lives. Augustine’s preaching was in the big church set in the docklands of Hippo Regis in North Africa in the fifth century. His words are useful to us today. Things do not always change as much as we imagine! For Augustine, because there is always weight there is always energy. We call it physics today. The movement associated with weight he uses as an illustration of magnetism and of love. We are attracted, therefore, to what we love. And for Augustine, this is the God of Christianity because as Christmas and the person of Jesus Christ tell us, year after year, God first loved us. Other Faith Traditions express it in different ways, differently powerfully. We need their perspective too.
Our use of language boils down to what attracts us, what makes us move, what keeps us going, our emotional physics if you like. It is our weight. The ways in which we can change for good, turn down the decibels of caricature and of hatred in ourselves, in our society and in our world are grounded in what attracts us. We should never be ashamed of self–interest. It is a good thing. It is the motivation closest to each one of us. It is to be treasured, developed, celebrated and shared. Self–interest, once we work it through, moulds our interest in others into an interest for others. When people meet and talk, there is no longer room for a 200% space. There is only a newly–minted 100% space.
Realization, recognition and reconnecting are the three wise gifts of 2026 to us. We can centre our weight as our love. Our language can carry us forward differently from 2025. Our New Year Resolution might be to reimagine our self–interest as an interest not only for myself but from myself. It will take some effort but I can assure you that it will be worth it. I wish everyone a Happy New Year in 2026 and please enjoy the last precious days of 2025.
This article was written by Archbishop Jackson for the Mail on Sunday, December 28 2025.