Madam, - As a priest who acted as confessor to some of the 1981 hunger strikers at the Maze prison I must take issue with your TV preview writer Paul O'Doherty referring to the hunger strikers actions as "republican suicides" (Magazine, April 29th).
In my 30 years as a priest I have worked with many people who were suicidal. They were either depressed or felt cornered by some life situation and wanted a way out. The Maze hunger-strikers for whom I celebrated Mass and the sacraments were not depressed, did not feel cornered by a life situation and did not want out. In fact, several of them told me they did not want to die but felt that their death was their last and only weapon against the tyranny of the British occupation of their country.
I asked Bobby Sands during a totally non-confrontational conversation what he felt was the moral justification of his actions. He replied: "The statement in the Bible from your boss: 'No greater love has any man than a man would lay down his life for his friends'."
When I asked him if he feared death or what would happen when he met God he answered: "When I open my eyes the other side of the grave I will be staring into the eyes of Jesus Christ and for the first time in my life I will be meeting someone who fully understands who I am and what I've done."
May I make it abundantly clear to any suspicious reader that I am not an apologist for anyone and am neither an Irish republican or even an SDLP-type Irish nationalist? But the truth must always be the truth and if any man, with his full faculties, is willing to die for his cause, then the rest of us must give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he acts in good faith and clear conscience. We may or may not think that the Maze hunger-strikers were misguided, but those 10 young men did not commit suicide. They died believing that they were soldiers fighting for their country's freedom.
On the 25th anniversary of their deaths I look back with a tear in my eye and picture them and I celebrating Sunday morning Mass in a bare room in the Maze Prison's hospital wing. May they and all the other victims of the Troubles rest in peace. - Yours etc,
Bishop PAT BUCKLEY, The Oratory Society, Larne, Co Antrim.