The Orange Standard is the official newspaper of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. The Standard covers a wide range of issues but obviously concentrates on issues affecting Orangeism and Ulster unionism. If you wish to subscribe to the 'Orange Standard', (the annual subscription rate for 11 issues is - British Isles £10.00 Stg., Republic of Ireland £15.00 Stg. and Overseas £20.00 Stg.(Air Mail), please contact:
The Orange Standard, "Schomberg House", 368 Cregagh Road, BELFAST, Northern Ireland, BT6 9EY
Telephone 028 9070 1122, Fax 028 9040 3700, e-mail:- [email protected]
It can be read online here
July 1999 Issue
http://www.grandorange.org.uk/osnjul9.htm
The Orange Standard - July 1999
Enjoy The Twelfth
Walk with pride and honour
Another Twelfth is almost upon us and Orangemen and their supporters look forward with optimism that their dearly cherished culture and traditions will be upheld to the highest standards at the various demonstrations under the auspices of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.
Orangeism, despite the intense opposition it now faces from its enemies and some people in high places in the church who once purported to be its friends, must put its best foot forward over the coming days and weeks and show to the world the sound Christian and democratic principles that members rightly espouse.
Our parades and demonstrations must continue to be totally peaceful and dignified, notwithstanding the obstacles and provocation that may be placed in our way. There is no place in our Institution for those who would ferment trouble and strife.
We would commend a key objective contained in the resolutions to be proposed at our Twelfth demonstrations which states: that the future of Northern Ireland can be bright, but only if people think and act with responsibility.
The Orange Order wants fair dealing for its members and everyone else in Northern Ireland. This is being denied to us now by Her Majesty's Government through the imposition of the totally undemocratic and unaccountable Parades Commission and the appalling attempt to put into Assembly executive positions those who are backed by armed and still active republican terrorists.
There is no place for Sinn Fein in the government of Northern Ireland unless the I.R.A. fully decommissions its illegal terrorist armoury and disbands its organisation.
The Northern Ireland which the Orange Order strives for will respect the political and cultural aims and aspirations of all its citizens, provided these are promoted peacefully, and treat them justly and with equity. We want no preferential treatment. No one should expect it because of their religion, race or politics.
As Orangemen living up to the principles of our noble Institution, we work for a society which cares for the well-being of all its people, whatever their needs, free from intolerance and injustice and the animosities and antipathies which have divided our people here for far too long.
Orangemen stand unashamedly for the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and by the truths of the Protestant Reformation. We would strenuously oppose attempts by ecumenical clergy within our main Protestant denominations in Ireland to dilute the Reformed church position, by undermining the declarations they made in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the 39 Articles of Religion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Churchmen Unbalanced In Their Judgements
Time was when the proceedings of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Irish Methodist Conference were fully, if not totally, reported on in words and pictures in our newspapers. Time is that little coverage is given to these annual meetings except for the few controversial issues in which members are involved. The concentration on these by press, radio and television means that articles, features and programmes provide information, insights and debates on them and little else. Because these are necessarily brief, regulated by space and time, the material when it reaches us is edited and we get extracts from it of what is regarded by the media as important. Carefully chosen quotations from speeches can fairly represent what has been said at greater length. We had several of them from the General Synod and especially from the Primate's address in which he dealt with the major issues to be considered and debated - sectarianism, the loyal orders, flags and emblems and Drumcree. The positive reception of a typically carefully ordered and presented address was reported as a balanced, sensitive and realistic accounting of the problems affecting this church. The speeches in the debates sometimes lacked that balance and sensitivity for they were partisan and one-sided. No Synod, Assembly or Conference is without speakers who are determined to say something when what they have to say is of no value in serious discussion. A few of these received undeserved media mention to show that sense and nonsense are usually present when people meet together. Readers of the Church of Ireland Gazette were provided with a comprehensive General Synod report. That means that the very large number of church people know only what the secular media tells them. And because what happens at Synod may be of little interest to parishioners - their concentration is on their local church - they are concerned with the headline making decisions and suggestions only. The Synod was wise then when making appeals on the flying of flags it did not insist that the Union flag must not be flown on church towers. It is most unlikely that those who have flown the flag for generations, for their own good reasons, would have countenanced any such directive. This recognition of a reality prevented other negative proposals from being accepted, among them the closing of Drumcree Church to Orangemen who regularly attend service there each year. The requests to Orangemen to honour the Primate's obligations on them were reasonable and actions to meet them were to be expected. These were to do with the sanctity of worship and the conduct of worshippers after a church service. The General Synod left us wondering about omissions in the Synod Report book, published pre-synod, and the debates. Why was there nothing said about things that have been happening in the Republic which have made the media concentrate on political sleaze and the scandal for months? The situation in Northern Ireland was of paramount importance but that should not have prevented the church expressing its unease at what is happening in the South. The concentration on the North left the South free from any criticism of the kind to be expected of the Church of Ireland. But then an observer could have concluded already that throughout the Synod there was a lack of balance, especially in the treatment of Orangemen and the restrained approach to the Garvaghy Road residents' associations in the Drumcree debate. Whatever the reactions to General Synod 1999, we wonder about what it has done for the Church of Ireland. Those who have spoken of a new show of strength may find they have to make another judgement in the light of subsequent events. It should be recognised that the General Synod as presently constituted does not properly represent a church which is hugely concentrated in the North but dominated by the South. It is to be hoped that attempts to strike better balances will be successful. The debate on Orangeism in the Presbyterian General Assembly, on Wednesday, June 9 was memorable to this observer for the contributions of two Orange Order clerics, Bros. the Rev. William Bingham and the Rev. Dr. Warren Porter. Their forthrightness, sensitivity and honesty contrasted with those others who made suggestions and offered advice of questionable value in situations where emotions and antagonisms dictate, and rational thought and action are discounted. The Orangemen were precise and practical in their descriptions of Orange Order attitudes and strong in their condemnation of those whose violence at Drumcree was scandalous and from which the Institution totally disassociated itself. Their explanations on why the Portadown brethren act as they do in the face of Sinn Fein/I.R.A. orchestrated plots to discredit them were necessary for too often the facts of Drumcree are hidden in the verbal gymnastics of those liberals who are so jaundiced against Orangemen that they make them the whipping boys for everything which goes wrong in this divided society.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Institution Unfairly Targeted
The Orange Institution is taking a very heavy hammering these days from some prominent churchmen. The leaders of the "main" churches have expressed their annoyance and anger at what they regard as the Order's refusal to obey the law as laid down by the Parades Commission. They deplore the refusal of the brethren to accept that the right to march on the Queen's highway is conditional and the approval of resident associations is a necessity. They do not accept that the Sinn Fein/I.R.A. orchestrated campaigns are aimed at the destruction of Orangeism and that Orange and Protestant customs and culture are in jeopardy. They condemn the Orangemen and in so doing show sympathy with those who are opposed to them. Their silence when the stubbornness of residents is seen to be a cause of confrontation is a refusal to properly apportion blame. Their advice to Orangemen on how they should act should in honesty be addressed with equal if not greater force to the residents. If the intention of these churchmen is to encourage better community relations they are being singularly unsuccessful. What is seen as one-sidedness has caused offence and the anger and annoyance of the churchmen is fully reciprocated by the Orangemen. The Institution has found it hard to withstand the assaults on it. The reason is that it is faced with such antipathy and antagonism from those arranged against it that it lacks the resources to compete with them. Lack of understanding from the church leaders allied to a media unsympathetic to it has made it difficult for the Order to hold the goodwill of people informed and influenced by them. And yet there are a great many people who deeply resent the targeting of the Institution so much so that they refuse to heed what is said by churchmen strident in their criticisms, who claim to speak for them and by a media with a bias against Orangeism and Protestantism. The reactions to the pronouncements of some church leaders will be apparent in ways likely to make them less and less influential and the media more and more distrusted. Now is the time for the Institution to continue to act rationally and circumspectly, to be true to its Christian principles and honest and honourable in its dealings with everyone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Address By Bro. the Rev. William Bingham.
(Grand Chaplain of County Armagh Grand Orange Lodge)
I am a Presbyterian minister and an Orangeman and proud to be both, though I am not always proud of what individual Presbyterians or individual Orangemen do for either of their causes. There has been much criticism in past months and possibly today of the Orange Order, some of the criticism may be justified and I would be the first to hold up my hands and say we have made mistakes. But some criticism has been unwarranted and I believe there are those within the church and society who would be happy to use the parades issue to do down the Orange Order because they strongly object to some of our core values and principles both political and religious.
We stand foursquare for the Union and are opposed to the ecumenical movement. We hold to both these positions unashamedly.
Everyone here has an opinion on the Orange Order and it will be somewhat coloured by the Orange Order that you are familiar with around you: I was born into the Orange Order and I chose to remain part of it because I believed in its principles. Contrary to some public misrepresentations we are not all red-faced, bowler-hatter bigots, but the vast majority are decent, God-fearing, law-abiding men, many of whom especially in rural parts play an active part in the life and witness of their church.
80 per cent of all men attending church in Pomeroy and Sandholes are members
of the Order.
90 per cent of the men who attend the prayer meeting in my church are
members of the Orange Order.
100 per cent of the new elders elected in Sandholes last year, and there were five of them, are members of the Orange Order and one is our representative elder here today.
For some ministers to attend some of the lodges in the country it would be as if they were at a church committee meeting with a few extras.
This General Assembly needs to give more support to the many members who are in the Order and want to steer it in the right direction, it needs to have a better understanding of why someone like myself who feel they cannot sit down with Sinn Fein orientated residents groups when many young men of my congregation lie in our graveyards as victims of I.R.A. violence. The Assembly needs to understand and seriously address the concerns of many Orangemen whose perception is that their traditions, faith and culture are being continually eroded and undermined. Many have felt let down by their churches lack of understanding and support.
I wish for a few moments to address two issues identified in the report as ways forward for the Order: 1. Dialogue with residents groups; 2. Full engagement with the Parades Commission.
There are those who continually say that if the Order would simply sit down and discuss their differences with the residents' groups they could get things sorted out. I have been involved in proximity talk after proximity talk and it seems to me that both sides are as far apart now, if not further, from when the processes began.
It is our perception that a close examination of many of these residents groups have political masters in Sinn Fein/I.R.A. and that they have been cleverly designed to heighten communal tension to create division and segregation rather than accommodation, and that no accommodation will be genuinely sought until it is politically expedient for Sinn Fein to do so.
I certainly for one, either as a minister or an Orangeman will not negotiate my rights with any such groups while the I.R.A. represented by the political masters of many of these residents groups' have sought to deny many Presbyterians the very right to life for almost 30 years. The County Grand Lodge of Armagh has alone lost almost 100 of its members to the violence of the I.R.A. Could this Assembly even conceive of asking us to negotiate our parades in some cases with convicted terrorists? If you do then you do not really know your people as you ought.
Many of these groups are also completely unrepresentative of the communities in which they are placed. For example in the village of Pomeroy where I live, few if any of the local residents' group lives on the route of any Orange parade in the village. Indeed, in a recent court case over 20 people were summonsed for blocking a legal parade of Orangemen in the village, over 75 per cent lived more than five miles from the village, they had come a long way to be offended. The Assembly is asking me to be involved in dialogue with such groups. Why should I discuss an Orange parade with people who don't even live near a route of an Orange march.
Portadown District is headed each time it parades with an ex-serviceman's lodge, are they going to be asked by this Assembly to negotiate with someone who was convicted of blowing up their Royal British Legion, whilst at the same time the same terrorist organisation was involved in a systematic campaign to ethnically cleanse the Garvaghy Road area of all Protestants. This Assembly would at this time be asking too much I fear, especially since there has been no sign of remorse or repentance.
We are told that as Christians we should talk to anyone, I am quite happy to talk to anyone about the Gospel and have done so with members of residents' groups but I will not engage in negotiations with people about my rights when some of those very same people would want to take every right, including my right to citizenship, off me.
We are asked to co-operate fully with the Parades Commission, this I would have no problem doing if the Parades Commission was both independent of political control and its remit fair and balanced. It is certainly not free from political interference as was so obviously exposed last year when for purely political reasons the Prime Minister ensured that an initial report on the parades issue was not released when the Commission had previously declared it was to be.
Neither is the remit of the Parades Commission fair and balanced. Presently the Order is considering taking the legislation to the European Court of Human Rights, our legal advice is that in light of recent judgements made over contentious parades in Austria and Germany we have a good chance of success. The government was made fully aware at the time of the dangers of implementing legislation which was ill-thought out and imbalanced. As currently constituted I would have no confidence in the Parades Commission and would find it extremely difficult to fully engage with.
That said I would add we have a divine obligation to obey the law whatever we may think of it, but that must also be balanced by the rights to protest against a bad law in a peaceful and lawful manner.
In closing may I say something about the situation in Portadown and Drumcree. May I make it absolutely clear to this Assembly that as County Grand Chaplain for Armagh, Portadown District has my fullest support in demanding its right to walk the Garvaghy Road and I hope that one day their legitimate rights will be restored.
Few rights are absolute, and exercising of all rights must be done responsibly and where a conflict of rights occur, flexibility and accommodation should be sought. It is my opinion that the Order in Portadown has made significant compromises in the past which have not been given the full recognition they deserve.
I know the lengths to which many of our lodges have gone to listen to others, explain their position and make compromise.
Portadown District and County Armagh Grand Lodge so far have: entered into five sets of proximity talks and two bilaterals; met with and discussed their faith as Orangemen to members of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition; listened to objections from nationalists of our parades, some of which included the fact that we wore suits on parade through a working class area, or that we were responsible for poor social and economic conditions that existed in the Garvaghy Road whilst many of our members came from exactly the same socio economic background.
We have written to everyone on or near the Garvaghy Road and invited them to make a response. Portadown has already given up 10 of its so-called contentious parades and on top of that now limits its parades along the Garvaghy Road to members of Portadown District only, no music, a minimal amount of flags, and walking six deep to allow the parade to pass as quickly as possible.
David Trimble has entered into direct talks with the coalition with little fruit yet to show for it. To all of this what has been the response, 'NO ORANGE FEET ON GARVAGHY ROAD'.
There are no simplistic political answers to the Drumcree situation. May I say that I believe we are entering into the most difficult and dangerous period of all the last five years and this church needs to be diligent in prayer. Last week we launched a prayer initiative within the county asking the churches to take a time for intercessory prayer and to distribute prayer cards.
Sometimes we can get so taken up with the political initiatives and resolution that we lose sight of the one thing that can really change people and situations, the Lord Jesus Christ".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seek Peace
The relative peace and quite since the cease-fires have reminded us of what life could be like if we were able to live with peace as the norm of our existence. What we have had recently is the promise of peace. While the beatings, burnings, maimings and murders go on, real and lasting peace is elusive.
Peace is not just the absence of violence in the pursuit of political objectives. It is that state of mind which refuses to accept that force of arms can be justified in our circumstances. The pursuit of peace is not only for those whose task it is to secure the safety of the citizen. It is the duty of every citizen in a good society to seek peace in himself and to live at peace with his fellows. We are living as we should if we are at peace within ourselves and with other people. That is the pattern for living which when spread would change the situation here and better the circumstances of everyone. We should be the spreaders of peace for peace is not to be found in retreating from life, cocooning ourselves from people and things which would disturb and distress us.
To the Christian peace is the gift of God to all who trust in Him and God never encourages us to avoid the responsibilities and problems of life. He helps us to face them and to live with their consequences.
When Jesus offered people His peace He was at the storm centre of a world seething with unrest, terrorised and tormented by powerful malignant forces. At that time and in that place He gave to people the good news of a loving God and showed them how to live at peace with God and with their neighbours. His behaviour was an example to them in the days when He suffered at the hands of those determined to destroy Him. On the cross He refused the myrrh which would have soothed His senses and clouded His mind against the pain He suffered. His faith in God and the peace of mind it brought Him was all He needed in that final hour.
He showed by His life that when there is trust in God, and hearts and minds are attuned to Him, we are at peace. He said that harmony between God and people made peace possible. St. Augustine echoed that thought when he prayed, "Thou, O God, hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee."
The peace of God sets the divine and true valuation on life. It put Jesus beyond the reach of many of the things that trouble us. He had no dependence on money, possessions or property. He was unaffected by the scorn of men. He knew that popularity was a fleeting thing for He had days when the people flocked to see and hear Him and the others when all forsook Him and fled. The deeper we sink our roots into the earth the more we are affected by the tremors of the earth. The more dependent we are on material things the more we expose ourselves to anxieties and disappointments.
A main strength of the church in its early days was its lack of power, position and possessions. How very different has been the state of the church down the centuries. When it became wealthy, powerful and with incredibly valuable possessions, it was often least effective in what should have been its priorities, evangelism and social work. We have the position even now that when the church is poorest materially, it is strongest spiritually. We do not need to labour that point, the evidence is in the weaknesses of the older churches and the strengths of the younger churches, especially in those countries where church growth is at stampeding speed.
Christ-like love of people for people is the way of peace. That selflessness has been the characteristic of great souls. Men like Abraham Lincoln, when people were saying things about him that nearly broke his heart, said, "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds to care for the widow and orphan, to do all that may achieve a true and lasting peace for ourselves and all mankind." There was no pettiness, no bitterness, no grudge, nothing that would hinder the coming of peace.
The lesson in this is - we cannot receive the peace of God for ourselves without wanting that peace for everybody else. "The love of God is a tide which will carry us into the lives of others and give us over to the world's agony."
Christians have the assurance of God's loving care for us. Paul describes his experiences in hard times to encourage other believers, "We are handicapped on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled but never in despair. We are persecuted, but we never have to stand it alone, we may be knocked down but we are never knocked out." (2 Cor. 4:7)
The prophet Isaiah provides words for this thought: "Thou wilt keep
him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth
in Thee." (Isaiah 26.3)
