THE SATURDAY PROFILE/Gordon Linney: Gordon Linney is unusual - a Church of Ireland cleric who is not afraid to speak his mind publicly. This week he attacked politicians and he will most likely speak his mind next week at the Church of Ireland General Synod. Patsy McGarry profiles him
You could say that were this England in the time of Henry II, Archdeacon Gordon Linney would no longer be with us. He would long since have been despatched to that home for turbulent priests in the sky. He is like a prophet of old, given to uttering unpalatable truth, come hell or high water. No institution escapes his gritty eye. Nor, for that matter, do you or I.
In a sermon last Sunday at St Paul's in Glenageary, Co Dublin, he once again refused to settle for the softest of targets - the politicians, though he did ask: "How do they get away with it election after election after election?" No. He pointed the finger beyond them at us and asked if the politicians behaved as they did, guaranteeing the promised land in our time (if not just yet) - and at no extra cost in taxes or otherwise, was it not because we encouraged such fantastic suspension of disbelief?
"Of course, we are concerned for the sick and the homeless and the young and all those other poor people. We don't like ugly scenes of need or desperation on our TV screens. And yes, of course, something should be done about it, but not at my expense, not by increasing my tax bill or reducing my spending money," he said. Ouch.
"Could it be that we want to be misled and, like them (politicians), don't want to be troubled? That we have a need to be assured that there is always more for us? Are we in fact the guilty ones who create the environment of greed and indifference and even corruption, which is not about voting for Councillor X or Senator Y but is essentially about voting for me?" he asked.
Not that he always gets his own way. Walking in Dún Laoghaire this week after his appearance on the Marian Finucane Show, he was stopped by a motorist who asked. "Are you the fella that was giving out about the politicians promising everything?" He admitted he was. "But sure that's nothing to ye fellas. Don't ye promise life after death!" he was told.
However, despite his critique of "us" and the politicians, there was an extraordinarily positive reaction to what he had to say on Marian Finucane this week.
Gordon Linney is a man of most uncommon sense, not least in the world of church where, so often, clergy seem more preoccupied with symbols rather than the things of which they are emblems.
He was the first clergyman to speak against the abortion amendment earlier this year, arguing that the absolutist line it proposed would make for harsh humanity. Last year he described as "a regime of sickening dishonesty and exploitation by Government and State agencies" a Department of Health policy which deprived elderly people of their statutory entitlements to care.
In 2000 he said that ordinary people had been "betrayed and their proper interests neglected by the very people elected or appointed to represent them in order to satisfy the wishes of a privileged few with money and connections". That same year his criticisms of the Orange Order's behaviour at Drumcree brought upon his head the order's wrath and an Orange "promise" to picket the Church of Ireland General Synod in Belfast that year.
And, lest a self-satisfied liberal milieu in the South became over-enamoured with itself, he reminded them the truth was "that it has not been easy making the progress we (a minority) have made so far in the Republic and there is still a long way to go".
Other issues he has addressed as forthrightly include sectarianism, the Government's treatment of nurses and ecumenism.
His great inspiration has been F.D. Maurice of the Christian Socialist Movement in 19th-century England, who once said: "We have doused the people with religion when what they seek is the living God".
On a more personal level, a profound influence was the late Otto Simms, later Archbishop of Armagh, who was chaplain to his primary school in Dublin's Kildare Place. Chief among his heroes in the church is Dean Victor Griffin, former dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, with whom he worked in Dublin's inner city for 5½ years.
"Victor did something for the Church of Ireland that was almost unique. He contributed to national debate as a person, not as a member of a minority," he said.
Born 62 years ago in Dublin's Inchicore, Gordon Linney's father William was chief clerk with CIÉ there. His mother Hazel was a housewife. There were four in the family, three boys and one girl. Over 34 weeks in 1987/88, one brother died from an aneurism, his mother died "of a broken heart" and his sister died of cancer. He has a surviving brother Ken, who is a retired chief superintendent of Thames Valley Police in England.
HE BEGAN adult life as a bank clerk and became family breadwinner at 23 when his father died. In 1962 he got TB and spent a year recovering. In 1965 he married Helen, and from October 1966, he attended the Church of Ireland Theological College at Rathmines, Dublin. He was ordained in 1969 and served first at Portstewart in Derry, then at Downpatrick, Co Down.
In 1975 he was asked by Dean Griffin to come to Dublin as a canon of St Patrick's cathedral and serve the Liberties area of the inner city. He came to love the work and the people over the next 5½ years. "I don't think you could live within 300 yards of St Teresa's Gardens and not be affected," he said.
He became involved with the Adelaide hospital there and has been a member of the Adelaide/Tallaght hospital board for 18 years. He has played a significant role in canvassing for government funding for denominational schools, in tandem with representatives of other churches and religions.
He was honorary secretary of the standing committee of the General Synod from 1992 until 1998. In 1980, he was appointed rector of St Paul's in Glenageary and archdeacon of Dublin in 1988.
He is close to the outgoing Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Walton Empey, whom some say he may succeed. He feels the next archbishop should be someone who can stay in the job at least eight to 10 years. Whether he is in the running, one thing is clear, Gordon Linney will continue to call it as he sees it. Meanwhile he enjoys his family before all else, Helen, his two daughters and one son, and he considers himself "blessed with three beautiful grandchildren".