Church of Ireland leader: Our Covid plan may not have been perfect, but it worked, in the sense of keeping people safe and – by and large – sane

The General Synod, which is the Church’s governing body, is meeting in Assembly Buildings in Belfast over three days, concluding on Friday.

In the course of his presidential address, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, the Most Revd John McDowell, said: “Contrary to what many people believe the Church is not some vast bureaucracy which can draw on limitless human and financial resources in the face of a unique set of circumstances.

“Taking what we could from the advice being given by public health authorities in both jurisdictions a very small group of people – some staff and some bishops – put together our Protocols and rolling guidance.

“What we came up with may not have been perfect, but it worked, in the sense of keeping people safe and – by and large – sane and providing some solid ground on which the set our feet.”

He also said that social media is “the single biggest contributing factor to this atomisation of the public space”.

Archbishop McDowell went on to say: “Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that social media is largely to blame following the turn it took when it became less about people connecting with other people, and more about people performing for like-minded people – dissolving social capital, chronically suspicious of institutions and, to use the jargon, refusing any meta-narrative.

“The effect has been, as one commentator has put it, to turn nations into ungovernable protest movements. That in turn has led to governments even in some democratic countries, to choose, to manage these divisions by deepening them rather than by healing them.

“And it is important, in fact vocational, for a number of reasons, that civic society, including Churches, contribute to public debate on these matters.”

The Archbishop said that the Christian experience of reconciliation is not transactional: “It is not a case of me bringing my change of heart to God, which he then is almost obliged to reward by forgiveness and reconciliation. It is the presence of Jesus that creates my change of heart and I am his debtor for my repentance as for everything else in those transforming experiences and encounters.”

The address concluded with an appeal to Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, to help to bring the war in Ukraine to a “just end”.