Responsibility for PMS must be shared
IT is easy to preach morality, but how many of us have what it takes to act properly when there is a personal cost involved?
A social psychology experiment carried out amongst students at Princeton Theological seminary in 1977 set out to find the answer.
Princeton is an elite, Ivy league institution, most of whose students go on to become ministers in that denomination.
As part of their coursework, a number of clerical students were invited to deliver a talk on the parable of the good Samaritan at a studio on the other side of the campus. They were warned that their performance would be evaluated by the seminary's supervisors.
John Darley and Dan Batson, the researchers, divided the students into two groups. As each member of one group completed his preparation, he was told that he had only minutes to reach the studio.
Members of the second group were told that they had plenty of time but might as well head over now.
Each student walked alone to the presentation area and passed a person slumped and coughing in an alleyway, in obvious need of help.
Nobody else was around to give help. The majority of those who thought they had time on their hands, and that stopping would cause them no problems, stopped to help.
In the other group, 90 per cent of those who thought they were late walked straight past. They ignored a person in need in order to give a lecture on helping others.
In the interests of openness, I should point out that I was brought up a Presbyterian.
Although I am no longer a believer, I value the denomination's traditions of democracy, independence of thought and self reliance.
In Sunday school I was taught that "by their fruits ye shall know them"; in other words that a people's moral worth and faith could be seen in their actions.
It is fair to say that I would not be tempted back, or impressed much, by the attitude the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has shown to the savers in the Presbyterian Mutual Society.
These believers were encouraged each year at the General Assembly, and often by advertisement in the Presbyterian Herald, to invest in a society which would help their own church and were assured that their money was safe.
All of them are now more than sixteen months without access to their funds and, apparently, no nearer to a resolution.
The church's attitude so far has been to deny liability and lobby the government for money. It is undoubtedly true that central government should underwrite the savings so that they can be transferred to a bank.
Gordon Brown bailed out the Dunfermline Building Society in his own constituency and his government has also provided billions to help British savers with the failed Icelandic Banks.
Our own Department of Enterprise, as the recent Treasury report pointed out, had all the facts and should take some share of responsibility for not raising the alarm.
Instead, they have also washed their hands. DETI isn't fully liable but the refusal to offer any help at all, even as a junior partner to central government, shows what a Mickey Mouse administration Stormont still is.
If the institutions are to command respect, they must take responsibility for the bad things, as well as the good ones, which happen under their watch.
If all our local ministers can do is hold the begging bowl out to London we would be better off under direct rule.
As far as the PCI is concerned, Dr Norman Hamilton, the Moderator designate, seemed to signal in a BBC interview on Sunday that he had nothing practical to offer either.
Hamilton told William Crawley, himself a former Presbyterian minister trained at Princeton, who has done all he can to highlight the issue, that his message to PMS savers was: "We really do care about what happens to you but we can't fix it."
Dr Hamilton made the right noises about fellowship, compassion and care but there was no concrete offer of help, only the hope that it would all be sorted out by the time he takes office in June.
Like the Princeton seminarians who hurried past, the PCI could help if it prioritised the needs of the suffering.
It could mortgage property and set up a hardship fund, it could explain why none of its 42 million central investment portfolio is in the PMS and say whether these and other monies could be used to sweeten the deal with a bank.
None of this would be easy, but it would be impressive if it happened. It would send out a message that Presbyterians don't just preach a demanding moral code, they practice it too.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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