Clonard's Reconciliation Ministry

 

Clonard’s Reconciliation Ministry has never been an exclusively Redemptorist activity. To have attempted to work on our own would have been not only impossible, but also counterproductive. We have always been blessed with the help of many committed Catholic co-workers and with support from Protestant congregations of the Church. Since 1980 we have invited many Protestant ministers and lay preachers to speak to the Catholic people at Clonard. Their preaching has contributed significantly to breaking down the “dividing wall”.

Since 1981 we have developed a special relationship with Fitzroy Presbyterian congregation which represents a profound change in the Church at grassroots level in Northern Ireland. We have laid to rest the polemic of the past and have come to see ourselves as Catholic and Presbyterian for one another, not against one another. The link with Fitzroy is now an essential part of Clonard; the link with Clonard is now an essential part of Fitzroy.

We are now able to address together significant issues of difference between our Churches. The ability to do so in friendship is an immense contribution to the transformation of the whole society of Northern Ireland. In 1999 Pax Christi awarded its International Peace Award to the Clonard/Fitzroy Fellowship commending it for: “exemplary work at grassroots level towards building the kingdom of the Prince of Peace”.

Since 1985 Clonard Monastery has had an ongoing partnership with Cornerstone Community - a small inter-Church community on the west Belfast Peace Line. When people were being killed on both sides, one of the priests from Clonard combined with the Methodist leader of Cornerstone Community to visit together the homes of the bereaved, both Protestant and Catholic. This ecumenical ministry had a profound impact on the grassroots communities on both sides.

During that time priests from Clonard Monastery were able to use the Cornerstone Community house as a safe place to develop links with representatives of the Progressive Unionist Party in the service of peacemaking. Towards the same end we organised secret dialogues at Clonard between leading members of Sinn Fein and Protestant friends from Fitzroy Congregation, Cornerstone Community and beyond.

After the 1994 cease-fires the good-will which Cornerstone Community enjoyed with the Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Methodist churches of the nearby Shankill enabled Clonard Monastery to develop its own special relationship with these Churches. Visits by our “unity pilgrims” a few times annually to each congregation have since then transformed relationships. We have discovered together what we call “the grace of the unity pilgrimage”. That grace is a new awareness of the Holy Trinity at work in the whole Christian community, making us one Church in many Churches.

By going to worship with Protestant congregations on the Lord’s Day, our unity pilgrims are helping to end the destructive alienation of Christians from one another which has benighted Northern Ireland society for hundreds of years. And so they now have a key role in Clonard’s ministry of reconciliation.