And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, I’m actually going to talk about the news!
Sinn Fein is now the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly. This has something to do with Solomon and St Paul. I don’t think Jesus is that bothered.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-KbtkTFSTv8T4Jpz3Y6ms6JO4lmIBRjv/view?usp=sharing
Platitude of the Day 
‘The older generations of Irish people recall a time when they lived in fear; fear of a corrupt, vindictive and aggressive organisation – the Roman Catholic Church. The church insinuated itself into every aspect of people’s lives and was an existential threat to unmarried women who bore children; to those (and many other) children; to families from which it exacted payment to maintain the church, and condemned to a life of poverty owing to its ban on family planning and contraception whilst lacing sexual relations a heavy sense of guilt. Homosexual people lived lives of deceit and shame.
But the people eventually saw that they could escape the poisonous tentacles of Rome, reject the (male, celebate) Pope; embrace the modern world; could expose the wrong-doing of child- molesting priests, violent nuns and so-called Christian Brothers who beat and shamed and abused young boys. This is change welcomed almost universally in Ireland, where the currency and influence of the RCC has been devalued and exposed for the horrific and malevolent regime it really is, and finally rejected. The Irish have since elected a gay Head of State, introduced same-sex marriage, and younger generations care not for, and utterly disregard, any utterances of ‘The Apostle Paul.’ Change can be great; and in this instance the future can be great as a consequence.’
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Very well said Liverpudlian.
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To add to Liverpudlian’s eloquent account, Sinn Fein (both north and south of the Border) have moved a long way from their one-time position as leaders and defenders of the RC community in Northern Ireland. To be a nationalist is no longer necessarily to be a Catholic.
But to be a Unionist almost always continues to mean being a Protestant. Those who are fed up with Unionist intransigence are now switching to Alliance in large numbers. This does not necessarily turn them into nationalists: the latest opinion polls suggest the proportion of the population in favour of a united Ireland is about 40%, which has changed remarkably little in recent years.
Still, religion is well on its way to becoming irrelevant in the politics of both North and South. The old-style fundamentalist Protestants could in time be on their own path to irrelevance. Hope so.
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I am sorry but I really dont think Rhidian in all.fairness is worthy of the attribution of such anti religious and biased diatribe as you draw from his musing on the victory of Sinn Fein. There was none of your humanistic fervour and glee for its causes in what this medioce judge of character and countries chose to say. Today you have provided the Distort and Rhidian has babbled without real implication in his time honoured way. He is supposed to be a Christian .then so were Gerry Adams and Martin Macguinness and you are atheists and materialists attaching yourselves to something not completely as you would see it. Don Quixote thought the windmills were massed enemies for his jousting lance. Ireland will.go under the sea before the Second Coming of Christ and WB Yeats said of its politicians
The best lack all conviction
Whilst the worst are full.of passionate intensity
Things fall apart the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
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“Holding a grievance is easier than letting it go,” was a genuinely useful thought to question ourselves about how much we are willing to forgive and forget.
Although Paul’s “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed in the renewing of your mind,” is simply a challenge to his readers to forget what they have learnt from their previous life, sign up to being a Christian, and then forget about questioning anything in the bible ever again. But it is clearly a useful challenge to all of us every day.
I like to think that I move on and try not to hold grievances, but there is no way I will be happy until Boris is no longer PM. Some grievances can be held when justified and help us maintain our strong beliefs in rights and morality. The Rees Moggs of this world want us to forgive and forget “trivial” parties, the Roman Catholic Church hopes we forgive and forget their appalling handling of sexual atrocities, colonial apologists want to maintain statues that remind us of some of our appalling history.
There wasn’t anything remotely religious in Brook’s thought that challenged me today, but it was a useful challenge to reimagine some of my relationships and ideas.
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