CATHOLIC PRIMATE Cardinal Seán Brady has condemned as "unjustified, morally repugnant and an offence to the ideals of the Easter Proclamation" the murder of British soldiers Quincy and Azimkar in Antrim and Constable Carroll in Lurgan, Co Armagh, last March. He was speaking yesterday at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Dublin's Arbour Hill during a requiem Mass for all those who died in 1916.
Among the attendance were President Mary McAleese and Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
Cardinal Brady said the achievement of subsequent generations which would be most applauded by those who died in 1916 was the "final political settlement in Northern Ireland".
He continued: "In my view, the only true inheritors of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising are those who are fully committed to the will of the Irish people and their definitive support for the ideals and institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.
"The tiny numbers of people who continue to use or threaten violence as a means of achieving a united Ireland bring shame on that legitimate and still noble ideal. The Irish people have spoken. They have said an historic and definitive 'no' to the misery, mayhem and futility of violence as a means of achieving a united Ireland.
"They have said 'yes' to mutual respect and reconciliation, to building trust and healing hurts, to shared institutions and the principle of consent."
He appealed to anyone tempted to resort to violence in the name of Irish freedom, "especially those too young to remember the tragic waste of life, limb and economic opportunity that was 'The Troubles' . . . to respect the sovereign will of the Irish people".
He called on such people to "turn your energy and your idealism instead to the search for political and peaceful solutions to the many urgent human and social problems which confront the people of this island, North and South.
"Turn your back on those who betray the Irish people by killing or threatening those who serve the sovereign will of the Irish people through the institutions and principles of the Good Friday Agreement.
"I have no doubt that this is what those who died for Irish freedom in 1916 would ask you to do."
There was, he said, "no other solution. There is no viable way forward in the historic relationship between the Irish and British traditions on this island other than that which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Irish people, North and South, in the Good Friday Agreement."
Speaking more generally, he said "today people long for something to give them confidence and hope . . . for a society that has the common good of all people, and of the whole person, as its primary goal."
Those who died in 1916 would have understood language like that, he said.
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