Madam, - Gerry Moriarty reports (The Irish Times, October 23rd) that the IRA veteran Joe Cahill has told his biographer, Brendan Anderson, that the Provisional IRA had brought about progress "by physical force".
I suggest that Mr Cahill should reflect long and hard before being satisfied that the PIRA campaign was justified. Throughout its many years of murder and mayhem the organisation never had any mandate from the people of Ireland, North or South. It was, and is, throughout this island, an illegal, private army.
Mr Moriarty reports that Mr Cahill is "a practising Catholic", but the PIRA's campaign of violence was never endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church. On the contrary. When Pope John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979 he spoke the following words: "Now I wish to speak to all men and women engaged in violence. I appeal to you in language of passionate pleading. On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace." (The Pope in Ireland - Addresses and Homilies, Veritas, 1979, p.22.) The PIRA rejected this most earnest and moving plea.
Two years later, the late Cardinal Tomas Ó Fiaich, whom I consider myself privileged to have known, addressed the same subject clearly and forthrightly from his theological perspective. During a sermon in St Malachy's Church, Armagh in November 1981, he said: "[I wish\] to add my voice to the unequivocal condemnation of the horrible murders which have taken place in recent weeks. . .Most of the murders have been claimed by the IRA. Let me therefore state in simple language, with all the authority at my command, that participation in the evil deeds of this or any other paramilitary organisation which indulges in murder, wounding, violence, is a mortal sin which will one day have to be accounted for before God in judgement. To willingly co-operate in any way with such organizations is sinful and, if the co-operation is substantial, the sin is mortal." (Quoted in Father Tom: An authorised portrait of Cardinal Tomas Ó Fiaich, by Billy FitzGerald, Collins, 1990, p. 81.)
Both Church and State throughout Ireland have consistently and emphatically rejected the violence in which Mr Cahill obviously has believed. If he really wishes to do all the people of Ireland a service, Mr Cahill should openly and without delay call for the disbanding of the PIRA.
May he do so in the very near future. - Yours, etc.,
Canon IAN M. ELLIS, King Street, Newcastle, Co Down.