Pilgrim Ways

Population Not Poverty Malthus argued that the population should be attacked - not poverty. His twenty-first century followers continue to promote these theories through the British-funded coercive one child policy in China and aid programmes which only deliver if population targets set by the West are being achieved. One hundred and fifty years ago Peel repealed the Corn Laws as Malthus wished, but in an act of discrimination which would become all too familiar, he did not apply the new law in Ireland. There would be cheap corn for the English; but no corn for the Irish poor. For them, Peel offered a new Coercion Bill. Daniel O‟Connell begged Dublin Castle to open the port, to stop the export of Irish wheat, to stop distilling, to give employment on railways, to use the Crown rents on the Irish woods to repay a loan for the relief of the hungry. The pleas fell on deaf ears and through political inertia and indifference Ireland became a country of corpses and walking skeletons. What questions are there here for us on our pilgrim way as we consider the situation in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, not least the continuing impoverishment caused through indebtedness?

The Hungry Are In Our Hands In February 1847, knowing what was happening to the people living in areas such as Knock, a sick and tottering O‟Connell spoke in the British Parliament. It was his last speech in the Commons: “Ireland is in your hands...She is in your power...If you do not save her, she can‟t save herself. And I solemnly call on you to recollect that I predict with the sincerest conviction that one quarter of her population will perish unless you come to her relief.”

O‟Connell‟s challenging words resonate down the pages of history, speaking prophetically to the indifference and hardened hearts that characterise these times.

Culture of Death Pope John Paul has called this “the culture of death. ” It is a culture which in the past chaotic century led to more people dying in wars than in all previous history. Millions die through recreational use of drugs, drink and tobacco. A baby born in an American city has a statistically greater chance of being murdered than an American soldier had of dying in battle during World War Two. Our civivilisation is saturated with violence. The culture of death begins before birth. Five million unborn babies have died through abortion in the past thirty years; over the last decade, a million human embryos have been destroyed or experimented upon. Now some want to create and then destroy yet more embryos to enable the manufacture of human clones. In Ireland (both north and south) a concerted campaign is underway to introduce the same values into a country which has thus far resolutely insisted on the upholding of human dignity and on the sanctity of human life. If it does so it will have forgotten all of the hard lessons of the Famine years. The Culture of Death begins at fertilisation but it does not end at birth. One hundred million children die every year of readily treatable diseases. 1.3 billion people live on less than seventy pence a day; a further three billion people live on under one pound fifty. Through laws which permit the sale of arms or which allow for the killing of the disabled or terminally ill we entrench the very values which 150 years ago led to such human misery. The old mistakes are simply dressed up as new ideas. I wrote about these issues in Life After Death (Christian Democrat Press, 1997) These are all questions which involve human dignity. They are all questions which involve the sanctity of human life. During the Irish Famine the political classes and the powerful turned their backs on their brothers and sisters who were suffering. At Knock the modern pilgrim has the chance to reflect on these momentous questions and to ask who is my