Mr. Mayor, Rev. Hunter, Rev. Fr. Casey, Rev. Mawhinney, And Dear Friends,

 

For many years Mr. Arthur Dowling has been an outstanding supporter of this service. Unable to be with us today due to illness, I know that I speak for everyone in sending to him our prayers and very best wishes at this time.

We come here today to write yet another chapter in the illustrious tradition that this service has always so very worthily represented. Through so many arid years of official neglect of the memory of all those Irishmen and women who served, fought and died in the world wars, it was left to the dedication, courage and generosity of spirit of the late and much loved Mrs. Elizabeth Blackley and a few close friends to sustain this great annual Fermoy tradition of respect and remembrance.

This church stands at the very heart of that tradition. We remember in prayerful silence but also and very especially in music, music that fires the imagination and allows us to glimpse the invisible. Enhanced by the magnificent acoustics of this hallowed place, the singing of traditional hymns and the clarity of the superbly-played brass instruments of the Fermoy Community Band serve to roll back the years. It is as if the shades of old soldiers held forever in the youth and zest of their tragically short lives, file in here once more behind their regimental banners for church parade before answering the call to arms. Truly at such moments we touch the outer reaches of eternity.

I know that Mrs. Blackley would be so happy and so proud today to see upon the outer wall of the Town Park just across the way from here the elegant and dignified monument so recently unveiled to Fermoy’s dead of the Great War. Well over a hundred names adorn those polished slabs, names that are now fixed for all time in the memory and respect of this whole community. It invites contemplation of the sufferings and pain of those great men, most of whom who died so far from home whether in France, Egypt or Mesopotamia, their lives swept away by the fiery winds of world conflict. But we can be certain that their last thoughts and fondest memories were of home and loved ones left behind, hearing in their memory the low gentle thunder of the Blackwater cascading over the weir as we still hear it today.

For so long the town bore no tangible symbol, no fitting memorial to their sacrifice. But due to the outstanding and brilliant work of a dedicated local committee the names of the forgotten have been brought home not only from the distant battlefields where they fell, but rescued also out of decades of lamentable and begrudging silence. At last that ancient wrong is put to rights! At last their descendents and their kin can and do come to find the names of cherished forebears in the roll of honour and see their place in this country’s history so rightly and so fittingly celebrated. A very great achievement and one of which the committee and this whole community can be so justly proud.

The essence of that occasion was that the Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, came here as chief executive and leader of the Irish people to pay official tribute, honour and respect to the memory of the fallen, to embrace that tradition which they served with such heroism, courage and self-sacrifice. The symbolism was powerful and richly evocative in a year that witnessed the ninetieth anniversary of both the Easter Rising and the battle of the Somme where for every Irish Volunteer who fought in the GPO, sixteen Irishmen wore the uniform of the British Army.

As such the Fermoy unveiling gave an added emphasis to the significance of the Somme commemoration under a glorious azure summer sky at the war memorial of Islandbridge in Dublin. For both ceremonies offer eloquent testimony to the Irish State taking official possession of the memory of all those Irish soldiers be they Catholic or Protestant, nationalist or unionist from what would all too soon be the bitterly divided North and South, who fell in such huge numbers in a common cause rooted in ordinary people taking a stand against oppression and tyranny. We have seen Ireland’s lost sons reclaimed, the age-old quarrels of the dead laid to rest so that we might now go forward to healing the wounds of the living after thirty years of Northern violence and strife and to building a better future for everyone on this island.

On this day we remember old wars even as we think of the blessings of peace and of all that threatens it. We cannot forget or overlook that beyond these shores the outside world is still shaken by the huge repercussions of the terrorist attacks of September 11th some five years ago. Even as Afghanistan and Iraq descend inexorably into anarchy and chaos as the result of long established historical ills together with well-intentioned but ham-fisted military interventions, there is much talk of how these events form part of an epic conflict of civilisations between the Western and Islamic worlds. Of course, this is not in any sense such a cultural, still less a religious war, for Christians and Muslims alike both pray to the same God, we all share the same earth and seek only to live out our days in peace as best and as decently we can, seeing to the needs of those we love.

Rather is the issue one of power and control, between those who respect the freedom of others to be different and those who do not. We see a terrifying spectre of raw and uncompromising fanaticism that would seek to turn the clock back to some demented medieval barbarism. But that will not happen. Small bands of extremists, for all the danger they represent and the challenge they pose to public safety and security forces everywhere, cannot uproot and overthrow our culture and way of life in all its vastness of scale, its complexity, freedom of movement and ideas. They have nothing to offer but oppression and misery, a sick worship of death against all those with whom they disagree. Such a dark and utterly inhuman creed will be overcome and defeated sooner or later for nothing stands that is built on generosity and compassion.

On the contrary it is sometimes those who claim to defend our freedoms who perhaps by their actions strike the most damaging blows against everything our civilisation stands for. We have only to think of such evils as Abu Ghraib prison or Guantanamo Bay, the disturbing reports of secret rendition flights, the illicit prisons in third countries where torture and inhumanity is routinely meted out to innocent and guilty alike. You cannot uphold freedom by the brutal suppression of human rights.

The concept of human dignity, the belief in the moral, intellectual and physical integrity, the tremendous worth of each and every individual is not just an abstract Western concept, but part of the essential living reality of all humankind. It was to assert that right that the dead of two world wars gave their lives. And that reality must ever be upheld and vindicated for it alone offers us the only real prospect of a better and more decent world. The outcome of last week’s American congressional elections is a salutary reminder of how democracy - by its capacity to administer a necessary corrective balance - remains the world’s best system of government.

Finally, we are met at a time when once again the prospect of a lasting Northern peace settlement is so tantalisingly close. Our hopes are tempered by an awareness of so many false dawns that have gone before. Peace does come dropping slow. But it is coming, coming because it is needed, because it has been so long and so ardently sought and prayed for, coming out of the essential goodness, decency and compassion that drives the human heart. In our often scarred and broken world with all its hatred and division, the power of love is stronger than anything else. Coming from God, it is all we have, and it is enough. We can be certain that love will win the final battle for peace in all our days.

 

 

Thank You…