Archbishop Eames's outspoken statement yesterday condemning sectarianism as "a cancer in this society" will be echoed by everyone, on both sides of the Border, who has watched, with growing anger and frustration, the upsurge of wanton destruction and barbarous attacks in the North following the ritual flaunting by the Orange Order at Drumcree last July. No one can doubt Dr Eames's deep personal commitment to the cause of communal peace. He has played a prominent role in the ongoing ecumenical contacts between the churches, and his adjurations against religious extremism and thuggery have been a recurrent reminder of the decencies individuals owe each other in civilised society.
Dr Eames has not been a lone voice among the churches in the North. Condemnation by all the church leaders, and many of the occupants of humbler pulpits, are a common occurrence after particularly heinous acts of violence. Yet the message is clearly failing to get through. Northern Ireland, which has nominally one of the largest numbers of regular church goers in western Europe, has many who are singularly untouched by the Christian gospel. Genuine Christianity is also common, but the two - the best and the worst - exist side by side in the same church organisations in an unedifying symbiosis, the good seemingly incapable of influencing the evil.
Andy Pollak's report yesterday of the loyalist attacks on Catholics going to mass in Ballymena ended with the chilling words that "no local Protestant minister has made any significant gesture of solidarity (with the beleaguered Catholics) by, for example, visiting the besieged church and its priests".
There have been instances, at times of tension in the past, where the clergy of the main denominations jointly raised the flag of reason against the bigots in their various flocks. It is difficult to recollect any persistent example for many years. Where they did so, they invariably helped to spare their communities from the worst excesses of division and encouraged their more moderate parishioners.
It is not difficult to come to the conclusion that it is this lack of firm moral leadership at the level of towns and villages that is the most crying need to fill if the North is to break out of the cycle of inter community hatred. The clergy come under many pressures, not least, in some of the churches, of financial viability and the fear of eroding numbers. Holding a parish together often means compromising with a minority of irreducible opponents of peaceful coexistence with neighbours of a different faith. But, when all allowances are made, men (mostly) who hold, or should hold, authority and respect in their communities are not performing their function as they should - if, indeed, they are not actively promoting sectarian differences.
As far as the Protestant churches are concerned, the main issue to grapple with is the pervasive influence of the Orange Order. Its supporters have developed a form of self justification that defies logic or rational discussion to exculpate the most horrendous kinds of provocative behaviour. The Church of Ireland Gazette carried a letter recently excusing the attacks on Ballymena Catholics against Protestant critics in the Republic who described them as un Christian, on the ground that Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution were equally offensive to Christian teaching because they violated the commandment not to covet one's neighbour's property. Until the churches make it clear that their Christianity rests on a firmer basis than this kind of sophistry, and that they have the courage to break their link with organised extremism, any change from the present fruitless conflict is unlikely.