The Church Mission Society Ireland has appointed the Rev Patrick Comerford as its new Regional Officer based in Dublin. CMS Ireland – the principal mission and development agency in the Church of Ireland – has a vision of every parish in mission and playing a meaningful role in the World Church by 2010.
As regional officer, Patrick will help carry forward this vision for a fast-growing programme of churches in mission. He will be part of a dynamic team responsible for promoting and developing the work of CMS Ireland, both in Ireland in partnership with dioceses overseas.
He expects to visit churches throughout Ireland, preaching, speaking and organising mission events and building a support network of parishes and people.
Patrick Comerford is a priest in the Church of Ireland and has worked for 30 years as a journalist with leading provincial and national newspapers. For the past eight years he has been Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times and has travelled throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia reporting on international affairs.
Born in 1952, Patrick has a B.D. in theology from Maynooth, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Ecumenics from Trinity College Dublin and carried out post-graduate research in mission history at NUI Maynooth. He has a strong commitment to Muslim-Christian dialogue and chairs the board of the Church of Ireland Gazette. He has contributed to a number of books on church history and theology, including Christianity (ed. Patsy McGarry) and the forthcoming history of the laity in the Church of Ireland, All Sorts and Conditions.
He is married to Barbara, a social worker and they have two sons, Jamie and Joe. They enjoy holidays in Greece and Wexford and he includes poetry and the classics among his many other interests.
Patrick hopes to take up his new post with CMS Ireland on Monday 29 July 2002.
This press release was issued by the Church of Ireland Press Office on 24 June 2002
COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
08 June 2002
Vienna plays pivotal role in promoting dialogue with Islamic world
WORLD VIEW:
By Patrick Comerford
Vienna was an appropriate venue this week to debate the links between the European countries and the countries of the Mediterranean basin. From a negative point of view, Jörg Haider and his xenophobic Freedom Party (FPÖ) remain a focus for the European far-right, which has intensified its vitriol towards Arabs, Muslims, and the Islamic world since September 11th.
From a more positive perspective, Vienna is the location of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which has been reporting on anti-Islamic reactions in the 15 EU member- states since the attacks nine months ago. Despite the strong response from the EU member-states to the FPÖ’s participation in the present Austrian coalition, successive Austrian governments have been playing their part in promoting dialogue between the European and Mediterranean countries.
“Over the past ten years, Austria has actively promoted numerous events and activities in support of … dialogue between cultures and civilisations,” says the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ms Benita Ferrero-Waldner. “It is precisely this form of dialogue which gives me the hope that, if only we try hard enough, there is a realistic opportunity to overcome the often misleading perceptions we have of one another.”
On no less than three major occasions in history, events at Vienna have come close to defining the boundaries between European society and the Islamic world. When a Mongol army reached the gates of Vienna in 1241, the future of western Christendom looked doubtful and was rescued only when the Mongols suddenly withdrew to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan, and failed to return.
The Turkish siege in 1529 was a much closer-run thing, but historians remain baffled by the unexplained Turkish decision to withdraw when Vienna was defended by a small garrison, and at least 1,500 people had been killed.
When the Turks were finally defeated at the gates of Vienna after a two-month siege in 1683, the furthest limits of Islam in European society appeared to have been permanently defined, and the victorious Habsburgs celebrated their triumph in an outpouring of baroque monuments and architecture over the next hundred years.
In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat, the basic outline of modern Europe was fixed by the mapmakers who carved up Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
But since then, the boundaries and limitations of Europe have been threatened by events that took place in Sarajevo, a city that was once an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: events in Sarajevo in 1914 triggered the first World War, the eventual collapse of the mighty European empires, and the formation of new nation states; and, more recently, Sarajevo has come to symbolise the horror of ethnic cleansing, and the failure to accept that European identity can embrace people with different ethnic, cultural and religious identities.
The Euro-Med programme, initiated in Barcelona in 1995, involves 27 countries and embraces such diverse cultural images and labels as Europe, Africa, Middle East, Maghreb, Orient, Arab, Western, Christian, Islam and Judaism. The images and labels are not always exclusive, and they often complement each other and overlap in surprising ways, as we heard at a seminar in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna this week that brought together journalists, writers, academics, and religious leaders from the 27 Euro-Med countries.
Hayat al-Howayek Attie, a Maronite Lebanese journalist and writer now living in Jordan, described herself as “a Christian by religion and a Muslim by culture”. Ms Attie reminded us that Arab and Islamic culture once spread from Andalucia in western Europe to Constantinople in the east, and had inspired the Renaissance and the revival of European culture.
But she decried the realities of present cultural dialogue between Europe and the Arab/Islamic world. “Dialogue is not between a voice and an echo, but between two equals,” she said. Dialogue begins with the search for knowledge, seeking to know and like, and in the recognition of the right to be different and to hold different values. It involves exchange, reaction, and interaction.
In her work, Ms Attie has translated 22 books – 20 are from European languages into Arabic, but only two are from Arabic into European languages. “Why isn’t Arabic literature being translated into European languages?” she asked, and she wondered whether this was symptomatic that even educated, cultured and well-read people in the West had no genuine interest in understanding the Arab and Islamic world.
Daoud Kuttab, the Palestinian writer from Ramallah and director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University, said the role of “writers is to be prophets and to speak the unspoken”. But he is worried that popular culture and the mass media is being dominated by the Hollywood-style portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as fanatics and terrorists, particularly in the wake of the events of September 11th.
As the former UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, pointed out, the reactions of fear and mistrust created after September 11th underline the urgency of permanent cultural dialogue. The Euro-Med countries share a common history, geography and destiny, he said.
The problems of the south Mediterranean are fast becoming the problems of the European Union. There is an inevitable interdependence between our societies, and Vienna was an appropriate venue to wrestle with resistance to the dialogue we need and to rejoice in the opportunities it offers.
Patrick Comerford is an Irish Times journalist and a Church of Ireland priest
• This ‘World View’ column was published in The Irish Times on Saturday 8 June 2002. It was later republished as ‘Vienna plays pivotal role in promoting dialogue with Islamic world’ in Euro–Med dialogue between Cultures and Civilizations: the Role of the Media, eds E Brix, M Weiss (Vienna: Diplomatic Academy, Favorita Papers, special ed, 2002), pp 32-34.
By Patrick Comerford
Vienna was an appropriate venue this week to debate the links between the European countries and the countries of the Mediterranean basin. From a negative point of view, Jörg Haider and his xenophobic Freedom Party (FPÖ) remain a focus for the European far-right, which has intensified its vitriol towards Arabs, Muslims, and the Islamic world since September 11th.
From a more positive perspective, Vienna is the location of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which has been reporting on anti-Islamic reactions in the 15 EU member- states since the attacks nine months ago. Despite the strong response from the EU member-states to the FPÖ’s participation in the present Austrian coalition, successive Austrian governments have been playing their part in promoting dialogue between the European and Mediterranean countries.
“Over the past ten years, Austria has actively promoted numerous events and activities in support of … dialogue between cultures and civilisations,” says the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ms Benita Ferrero-Waldner. “It is precisely this form of dialogue which gives me the hope that, if only we try hard enough, there is a realistic opportunity to overcome the often misleading perceptions we have of one another.”
On no less than three major occasions in history, events at Vienna have come close to defining the boundaries between European society and the Islamic world. When a Mongol army reached the gates of Vienna in 1241, the future of western Christendom looked doubtful and was rescued only when the Mongols suddenly withdrew to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan, and failed to return.
The Turkish siege in 1529 was a much closer-run thing, but historians remain baffled by the unexplained Turkish decision to withdraw when Vienna was defended by a small garrison, and at least 1,500 people had been killed.
When the Turks were finally defeated at the gates of Vienna after a two-month siege in 1683, the furthest limits of Islam in European society appeared to have been permanently defined, and the victorious Habsburgs celebrated their triumph in an outpouring of baroque monuments and architecture over the next hundred years.
In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat, the basic outline of modern Europe was fixed by the mapmakers who carved up Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
But since then, the boundaries and limitations of Europe have been threatened by events that took place in Sarajevo, a city that was once an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: events in Sarajevo in 1914 triggered the first World War, the eventual collapse of the mighty European empires, and the formation of new nation states; and, more recently, Sarajevo has come to symbolise the horror of ethnic cleansing, and the failure to accept that European identity can embrace people with different ethnic, cultural and religious identities.
The Euro-Med programme, initiated in Barcelona in 1995, involves 27 countries and embraces such diverse cultural images and labels as Europe, Africa, Middle East, Maghreb, Orient, Arab, Western, Christian, Islam and Judaism. The images and labels are not always exclusive, and they often complement each other and overlap in surprising ways, as we heard at a seminar in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna this week that brought together journalists, writers, academics, and religious leaders from the 27 Euro-Med countries.
Hayat al-Howayek Attie, a Maronite Lebanese journalist and writer now living in Jordan, described herself as “a Christian by religion and a Muslim by culture”. Ms Attie reminded us that Arab and Islamic culture once spread from Andalucia in western Europe to Constantinople in the east, and had inspired the Renaissance and the revival of European culture.
But she decried the realities of present cultural dialogue between Europe and the Arab/Islamic world. “Dialogue is not between a voice and an echo, but between two equals,” she said. Dialogue begins with the search for knowledge, seeking to know and like, and in the recognition of the right to be different and to hold different values. It involves exchange, reaction, and interaction.
In her work, Ms Attie has translated 22 books – 20 are from European languages into Arabic, but only two are from Arabic into European languages. “Why isn’t Arabic literature being translated into European languages?” she asked, and she wondered whether this was symptomatic that even educated, cultured and well-read people in the West had no genuine interest in understanding the Arab and Islamic world.
Daoud Kuttab, the Palestinian writer from Ramallah and director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University, said the role of “writers is to be prophets and to speak the unspoken”. But he is worried that popular culture and the mass media is being dominated by the Hollywood-style portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as fanatics and terrorists, particularly in the wake of the events of September 11th.
As the former UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, pointed out, the reactions of fear and mistrust created after September 11th underline the urgency of permanent cultural dialogue. The Euro-Med countries share a common history, geography and destiny, he said.
The problems of the south Mediterranean are fast becoming the problems of the European Union. There is an inevitable interdependence between our societies, and Vienna was an appropriate venue to wrestle with resistance to the dialogue we need and to rejoice in the opportunities it offers.
Patrick Comerford is an Irish Times journalist and a Church of Ireland priest
• This ‘World View’ column was published in The Irish Times on Saturday 8 June 2002. It was later republished as ‘Vienna plays pivotal role in promoting dialogue with Islamic world’ in Euro–Med dialogue between Cultures and Civilizations: the Role of the Media, eds E Brix, M Weiss (Vienna: Diplomatic Academy, Favorita Papers, special ed, 2002), pp 32-34.
01 June 2002
Yugoslavia consigned to history,
replaced by Serbia and Montenegro
By Patrick Comerford
Foreign Desk Editor
The Yugoslav parliament voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favour of a plan to abolish the Balkan federation and replace it with a looser union between its last remaining members, Serbia and Montenegro.
The move clears the way to work out the details of a new constitution from the blueprint, negotiated by the EU in March. The west is keen to head off a drive by Montenegro for independence that it fears would destabilise the region.
The parliaments of Serbia and Montenegro already had approved the plan, which would consign Yugoslavia to history after more than seven decades of existence in various forms. But analysts and diplomats still expect protracted negotiations over the details. The upper house passed the plan by 23 votes to six against and the lower house approved it by 74 to 23.
“Many people will see this day as the day when Yugoslavia died, because the name is no longer mentioned in the agreement - the new state is called Serbia and Montenegro,” the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Yugoslav deputy, Mr Zarko Korac, said.
The two republics would have broad autonomy within one internationally recognised state with its own president, parliament, cabinet and army to replace the federal institutions.
The original plan, signed on March 14th in Belgrade, envisaged a new constitution would be ready for approval by the three parliaments by the end of June. However, many analysts, diplomats and politicians say interpretations of the blueprint and ambitions for the new union already differ so widely that the prospect of agreement by then is remote.
The Speaker of the Lower House, Mr Dragoljub Micunovic, said he expected the new draft constitution to be finished by the autumn. Yugoslavia would cease to exist when it is adopted.
Pro-independence Montenegrin parties, for whom the scheme is at best a necessary evil to retain Western favour, set great store by a clause that allows them to revive independence plans in three years. But pro-Yugoslav parties there want close links to Serbia, and a directly elected parliament with a strong mandate.
For now, at least, the EU and NATO Secretary-General Mr Javier Solana have headed off Montenegrin independence. They feared that a planned breakaway referendum would encourage further violent redrawing of borders in the Balkans.
Yugoslavia – meaning southern Slavs – was formed at the end of the first World War, itself triggered by the independence aspirations of the south Slavs of the Balkans, with Serbia leading a unification movement.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo triggered the first World War. At the time, the only independent south Slav states were Serbia – then incorporating Macedonia – and Montenegro. Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina were under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which crumbled at the end of the first World War. In 1915 Serbia and Montenegro were overrun by the Central Powers and Serbian troops retreated to the Greek island of Corfu.
In July 1917 representatives of the south Slavs proclaimed a kingdom under Peter I of Serbia, and Montenegro adhered in 1918. In December 1918, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed, and it was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.
Yugoslavia joined the Axis pact in 1941, and Germany soon invaded. After the second World War, Tito came to power, but Yugoslavia was expelled from the Moscow-led Cominform in 1948.
Yugoslavia later became a leading light in the international non-aligned movement. After Tito's death in 1980, a collective presidency was introduced. In 1991 the Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared independence. With the rapid departure of four of Yugoslavia's original six constituent republics, the remaining two - Serbia and Montenegro - formed a new federation in 1992. Now the name “Yugoslavia” is being consigned to history, replaced by the new Federation of Serbia and Montenegro.
• This news report was published in The Irish Times on Saturday 1 June 2002.
Foreign Desk Editor
The Yugoslav parliament voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favour of a plan to abolish the Balkan federation and replace it with a looser union between its last remaining members, Serbia and Montenegro.
The move clears the way to work out the details of a new constitution from the blueprint, negotiated by the EU in March. The west is keen to head off a drive by Montenegro for independence that it fears would destabilise the region.
The parliaments of Serbia and Montenegro already had approved the plan, which would consign Yugoslavia to history after more than seven decades of existence in various forms. But analysts and diplomats still expect protracted negotiations over the details. The upper house passed the plan by 23 votes to six against and the lower house approved it by 74 to 23.
“Many people will see this day as the day when Yugoslavia died, because the name is no longer mentioned in the agreement - the new state is called Serbia and Montenegro,” the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Yugoslav deputy, Mr Zarko Korac, said.
The two republics would have broad autonomy within one internationally recognised state with its own president, parliament, cabinet and army to replace the federal institutions.
The original plan, signed on March 14th in Belgrade, envisaged a new constitution would be ready for approval by the three parliaments by the end of June. However, many analysts, diplomats and politicians say interpretations of the blueprint and ambitions for the new union already differ so widely that the prospect of agreement by then is remote.
The Speaker of the Lower House, Mr Dragoljub Micunovic, said he expected the new draft constitution to be finished by the autumn. Yugoslavia would cease to exist when it is adopted.
Pro-independence Montenegrin parties, for whom the scheme is at best a necessary evil to retain Western favour, set great store by a clause that allows them to revive independence plans in three years. But pro-Yugoslav parties there want close links to Serbia, and a directly elected parliament with a strong mandate.
For now, at least, the EU and NATO Secretary-General Mr Javier Solana have headed off Montenegrin independence. They feared that a planned breakaway referendum would encourage further violent redrawing of borders in the Balkans.
Yugoslavia – meaning southern Slavs – was formed at the end of the first World War, itself triggered by the independence aspirations of the south Slavs of the Balkans, with Serbia leading a unification movement.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo triggered the first World War. At the time, the only independent south Slav states were Serbia – then incorporating Macedonia – and Montenegro. Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina were under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which crumbled at the end of the first World War. In 1915 Serbia and Montenegro were overrun by the Central Powers and Serbian troops retreated to the Greek island of Corfu.
In July 1917 representatives of the south Slavs proclaimed a kingdom under Peter I of Serbia, and Montenegro adhered in 1918. In December 1918, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed, and it was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.
Yugoslavia joined the Axis pact in 1941, and Germany soon invaded. After the second World War, Tito came to power, but Yugoslavia was expelled from the Moscow-led Cominform in 1948.
Yugoslavia later became a leading light in the international non-aligned movement. After Tito's death in 1980, a collective presidency was introduced. In 1991 the Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared independence. With the rapid departure of four of Yugoslavia's original six constituent republics, the remaining two - Serbia and Montenegro - formed a new federation in 1992. Now the name “Yugoslavia” is being consigned to history, replaced by the new Federation of Serbia and Montenegro.
• This news report was published in The Irish Times on Saturday 1 June 2002.
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