03.10.2011
Address by the Archbishop of Dublin at the Annual New Law Term Service
The Church of Ireland Annual New Law Term Service was held today, Monday 3 October 2011, at St Michan’s Church of Ireland Church, Church Street, Dublin 7. It was attended by Uachtarán na hÉireann (President of Ireland), Mrs Mary McAleese; The Hon Mrs Justice Susan Denham, Chief Justice, and visiting judges from Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, as well as political leaders, members of the Irish judiciary, An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces and the Diplomatic Corps.
The following address was given by The Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, Archbishop of Dublin, who spoke of how ‘Society needs a shared, collaborative, generous understanding of living community with all of the concessions to one another which that entails’:
(Readings: Isaiah 35; Mark 2.15–17)
I wonder if any of us, when we bought our first mobile telephone, would have thought that one day we might be drawing a fairly strong thread of connection between social networking and anti–social behaviour. There is always a sort of naivety which sets in when we get our hands on something which makes life more convenient, enables multi–tasking to be that little bit more multi–, and, most of all, saves us time. This sort of evolving sophistication happens time and again worldwide and about most of it we know absolutely nothing.
Theories abound as to why the rioting, looting and vandalism which erupted in the United Kingdom during early August did so with such precision and such sophistication. Not only did we see CCTV footage of people as young as seven years old trying on shoes and the like to make sure they were the proper fit and the right size before they left shops with them by the armful, but we also saw principled local individuals who were seeking to quell the violence and destruction being run over and killed on similar CCTV footage. The consummate irony was that this was happening in the evenings when, during the day, Olympic Venues for 2012 across London were being ‘signed off’ by means of Test Events to show that those newly designed facilities, often in ingenious locations, were: fit for purpose. Those images also, I imagine, were being sent around the world by people who felt privileged to be present, using similar means of social networking with entirely benign intention. And so, the irony continues.
Whatever theories we adhere to about the causes of the insurrections of those momentous few days and nights in August of this year, it seems clear that social networking greatly facilitated the orchestration of them and in many ways proved to be the Achilles heel for their perpetrators. They had convinced themselves that being unseen meant the same thing as remaining invisible. This is ever the point at which illusion and delusion meet and find, all too readily, their genetic likeness and, having found it, want to go on pretending that they really haven’t.
Policing privacy – whether it is appropriate at all – must feature fairly significantly in the thinking of lawyers gathered here today to worship God at the beginning of another Legal Year. There have to be moments in the life–cycle of all professionals when we wonder: what next; what loophole will have to be plugged; what modern advance must, for the good of all, become a legal fly–trap. The absence of precedent does not need to imply the absence of principle. Surely this is where jurisprudence comes to our aid. Within our every action, there has to be a pulsating philosophical rationale, otherwise we preside over a riot, not of fermenting creativity, but of rank incoherence.
For myself, it is this idea of: for the good of all which binds us together here this morning, however we understand our creed, however we apply our professional acumen, however we use our particular gift and flair. The Christian tradition may have lost its sparkle for some, it may be of no relevance to others and for others again it may be the life–blood of their motivation and energy. But the catch–cry: for the good of all never has been, nor can it ever be, the preserve of any one religious tradition yet it is an ideal which binds together people of principle and practice. This same idea: for the good of all binds us to the communities in which we are set here in this ancient part of Dublin. I say this because these communities who observe us day by day, whether we know anything of them or not, either look to us or look away from us for the continuity of integrity in a wildly confusing world. Can exuberance and diversity continue to exist when privacy becomes a place of secrecy which considers itself free from either legality or morality? Does not morality constantly ask of legality the following question: Ought I not to be able to tell in the light what I am doing in the dark? Questions such as this may not bring God into your equation, but I imagine they bring the need for a point of reference beyond the circularity of your own experience. And yet, at the same time, they bind you irrevocably to the experience of all other human individuals.
It is tempting and it may even offer us a rather large slice of our favourite comfort food to say: That’s ok – he’s talking about England, not Ireland; it has nothing to do with us. If, however, there is an economic underbelly to the rioting and the looting, if it is perhaps the next stage in a response to celebrity culture and the cult of the unattainable which such a culture feeds, then it does have something to say to those who are citizens of struggling European economies, and that is a label which we cannot easily sidestep with our eyes open.
We have generally become so accustomed to the vocabulary of economic downturn, cut backs, austerity measures and infrastructural rethinking that we rarely, I imagine, realize just how frightening these freshly minted sound–bites are to those who have no sense of engagement with a society which less and less displays any tent pegs of meaning above ground. Getting people spending once more, flipping the pancake of consumerism at home in another round of Celtic Tiger–ism will not create society or indeed community out of the fragments of alienation which careless privilege and self–regulating speculation have bequeathed to the young people who are the engine–house of new life for tomorrow.
The abuse of globalization, the debasing of convenience and the commodification of value have brought us to where we are. Such concepts, if I dare grace them with names like this, cannot themselves enable a new society to grow and flourish. Commodification is turning beauty into a thing for sale and purchase and turning you and me and everyone else into functionaries of that same thing. The unattainable becomes the fantasy of our aspiration and it is simply a matter of good or bad luck whether or not we get caught. Society needs a shared, collaborative, generous understanding of living community with all of the concessions to one another which that entails.
A society such as ours which is searching with an ever more frantic frenzy for a moral compass looks to those who have privilege to share generously. Such a society seeks leadership even though instinctively it is wary of taking its directions from those of whom it is inherently suspicious – that is those who are members of seemingly impenetrable institutions. Carefulness and attention to people who hold deep feelings of alienation and exclusion, along with enabling them to emerge from the reality of pointlessness as a matter of urgency, will contribute to the new creation which is always the goal and the expectation of those who see the face of Jesus Christ in the face of other people. The summum bonum (the greatest good) of earlier ages and generations may not be on our Agenda Papers right now. It may indeed currently be beyond the framework of our society. However, people generally and people particularly look for living examples of service of the greater good on the part of those who are custodians of what is right. Such custodianship carries within it the urgency to respond. Sacrifice and service are always incumbent on those who can walk or drive away from any and every situation.