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Primate backs ‘courtesy’

by
21 December 2012

utv

Forceful: Dr Clarke was striking the west door of St Patrick's Cathedral, when the top of his wooden crosier snapped off at the first knock. He held the broken pieces together, and proceeded into the cathedral

Forceful: Dr Clarke was striking the west door of St Patrick's Cathedral, when the top of his wooden crosier snapped off at the first knock. He held...

MODELLING the "courtesy of God" as co-workers, to improve the lot of all, should be the goal of all Christians, the new Primate of All Ireland, Dr Richard Clarke, said at his enthronement in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, on Saturday. Leaders of all the main Churches in Ireland attended the service.

Against a backdrop of renewed rioting in parts of Northern Ireland over the use of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall, Dr Clarke said that anger rather than courtesy was the prevalent behavioural pattern.

"Indeed, many seem to find their only focus and meaning in life through constant rage. Salman Rushdie has coined a useful phrase, 'outrage identity', for those who can find any meaning for themselves only in their anger at others. True courtesy is the converse of spiteful anger. And courtesy is not simply good manners - desirable as they most certainly are - but goes a great deal further."

He said that the essence of courtesy was that it treated "the other" - whoever or whatever that "other" may be - as an individual who is always worthy of respect, whose individuality is to be allowed an integrity of its own.

"This is how God treats us, accepting us as worthy of love, treating us as individuals deserving of respect, never intimidating or bullying us into abject submission, but listening with love and discernment to what we are saying.

"But courtesy - the word being used with care - goes further even than this. Courtesy goes beyond the strictly necessary or contractual, in giving to another. We can use the word quite casually in this sense - doing something 'as a courtesy', having the use of a 'courtesy car' - and, in fact, the meaning is not very different.

"It means generously going further than we actually have to go, in our service of another individual. It is the very reverse of manipulation, mean-mindedness, and calculated malice, which, sadly, can so easily be cloaked as moral high-mindedness. . .

"And if you and I cannot, and will not, model the courtesy of God in our dealings - one with another within the Church, and in our relationships with those outside the walls of the Church who are also made in the image and likeness of God - we have indeed fallen at the first fence in Christian faithfulness."

 

 

 

 

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