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Holy Week resources and reflections

Irish church leaders welcome IRA’s arms ‘decommissioning’

DUBLIN -- Two prominent Northern Ireland clergymen chosen to monitor a key part of an internationally-backed peace process say that, "beyond any shadow of doubt," the arms of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) have now been put beyond use. 

The clerics, the Rev. Harold Good, a Methodist, and the Rev. Alec Reid, a Roman Catholic priest, witnessed the IRA's recent act of decommissioning, in which the armed group put all its remaining weapons down, after decades of violent struggle.  

However, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and leader of the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionists, rejected the declaration on Sept. 27.

Paisley said, "(The IRA's decommissioning) illustrates more than ever the duplicity and dishonesty of the two (British and Irish) governments and the IRA." He said the clerics who witnessed the decommissioning "were approved by the IRA and therefore ... in no way could be independent." 

DUBLIN — Two prominent Northern Ireland clergymen chosen to monitor a key part of an internationally-backed peace process say that, “beyond any shadow of doubt,” the arms of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) have now been put beyond use. 

The clerics, the Rev. Harold Good, a Methodist, and the Rev. Alec Reid, a Roman Catholic priest, witnessed the IRA’s recent act of decommissioning, in which the armed group put all its remaining weapons down, after decades of violent struggle.  

However, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and leader of the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionists, rejected the declaration on Sept. 27.

Paisley said, “(The IRA’s decommissioning) illustrates more than ever the duplicity and dishonesty of the two (British and Irish) governments and the IRA.” He said the clerics who witnessed the decommissioning “were approved by the IRA and therefore … in no way could be independent.” 

The largely Roman Catholic IRA waged a violent campaign between 1969 and 1997 against British rule in Northern Ireland. In July 2005 the IRA ordered its members “to assist the development of purely political and democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means.” 

In Belfast, Good, a former president of his denomination in Ireland, said: “We wish to assure everyone, and especially those in Northern Ireland, that decommissioning is now an accomplished fact.” 

The process was agreed as part of the Belfast Agreement, the accord brokered between the British and Irish governments and most of Northern Ireland’s political parties and signed on Good Friday 1998. Retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain was appointed to oversee the process; he reported on Sept. 26 that the IRA had put its entire arsenal beyond use. 

The statement by the clergymen appointed to monitor the process said: “We are certain, utterly certain, about the exactitude of this report, because we have spent many days watching the painstaking way General de Chastelain went about the task.” 

The Rev. Harry Uprichard, the moderator of Northern Ireland’s largest denomination, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, said: “The final act of decommissioning by the IRA is welcome, and I acknowledge it as most helpful in the present situation.” 

Ireland’s Roman Catholic bishops, speaking in advance of their September general meeting in Maynooth, said: “This represents an immensely significant confidence-building measure in favor of a more peaceful and stable society in Northern Ireland.” 

Describing the event as “a massive step,” the leader of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland, Archbishop Robin Eames, said, “It can become a major step towards a peaceful and just society if it heralds the end of all criminality and violence in future.”

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