Dublin: The Good Friday Agreement, which marked the official end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, was signed in 1998, and it's been more than 20 years since then.

However, the Heritage and Reconciliation Bill, the British government's most recent attempt to "deal with the past", is stirring up conflict in its own right.

The independent Commission for Conciliation and Information Retrieval will be set up as part of the bill, which is currently making its way through the House of Lords and aims to "promote reconciliation".

Also Read: UN vote on Israel's occupation is hailed by Palestinians as a "victory"

Limits will be imposed on criminal investigations, court cases, inquiries and police complaints. The prisoner release program will also be expanded, and provisions will be made to record and preserve experiences as well as study and memorialize events.

Victims' organizations, political parties in Northern Ireland, the Irish government, and Americans and Europeans involved in the peace process are all opposed to the current form of the bill, particularly the provision that effectively grants amnesty for unsolved Trouble killings.

However, it is still common knowledge that the bill will become a law in early 2019. If this happens, what will the Catholic Church do?

The Deadly Troubles in Northern Ireland lasted for nearly three decades, and many people outside the country believed that religion was to blame.

The British government frequently met with religious leaders during the conflict to obtain their views on proposed policies and to learn more about the general mood of the public.

In Britain both Catholics and Protestants wrote letters to Catholic bishops demanding that the violence stop. However, when his efforts fell short, it was believed that the lack of effort was to blame, rather than the bishop's lack of influence. However, even the Pope's sporadic appearances in public were insufficient.

During his widely publicized three-day visit to the Republic of Ireland in September 1979, John Paul II gave a speech to a crowd of 250,000 in Drogheda, located 30 miles from the border.

In 1981 meetings with the Queen and then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in an attempt to end a hunger strike at the Maze Prison were unsuccessful. Attempts by a papal legate to meet with hunger strike organizer Bobby Sands and representatives of the British government also failed.

Also Read:  Benedict XVI a former pope passes away at 95

British journalists frequently questioned the Catholic bishops as to why IRA members were not excommunicated. In the modern era, it is unusual practice to formally exclude someone from participating in the sacraments and services of the Christian Church.

There were those in the British press who supported the notion that republicanism and Catholicism were ready bedfellows, as the blatantly sectarian cartoon on the cover of my book, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles 1968–98, demonstrates.

However, the Church was aware that Catholics could be alienated except for IRA members, who believed that the paramilitary forces offered protection from allegedly corrupt police and British Army forces.

Those who linked religion to the conflict saw the church's failure to excommunicate the republican paramilitaries as an endorsement of violence and compliance. This reluctance to address the issue of exclusion resulted in missed opportunities for unity.

Other issues, such as the Church's insistence that Catholics receive separate education and the 1970 Vatican Apostolic Letter Matrimonia Mixta, which insists that children born of "mixed" Catholic and Protestant marriages must be raised Catholic , also dashed hopes of inter-faith cooperation.

Funerals for IRA paramilitaries presented the Catholic Church with another problem. Irish priests who participated in and led these rituals were accused of aiding, if not actively encouraging, the violence.

Intercommunity tensions were made worse by differing Catholic and Protestant church practices and theologies regarding death, funerals, and the afterlife.

Catholics believed that the dead would not be judged by those on earth, but when they approach their Creator. It was therefore difficult for the Irish Catholic Church to forbid a funeral and the expected mass for IRA members.

The Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, tried in the late 1980s to forbid the bodies of paramilitary members from being present at his funeral, but was allowed to enter when republican mourners brought the coffins to the cathedral. I was forced to change my mind.

The Catholic clergy adopted a "carrot and stick" strategy. The British government and the Provisional IRA were able to negotiate a ceasefire in 1974–1975 thanks to mediation efforts by some clergy. Priests were historically used to mediate disputes between various Irish ethnic groups and were meant to represent fairness.

Priests like Father Alec Reid and Father Gerry Reynolds gave Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and the SDLP's John Hume private meeting spaces in the Clonard Monastery in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Priests like Father Denis Faul publicly condemned the violence of the IRA at the same time. However, the Catholic Church's moral standing was severely damaged by the 1990s revelations of clerical child abuse, which also significantly reduced institutional church involvement in the peace process.

Will the Catholic Church support the oral history projects depending on how the Reconciliation and Information Recovery bill ultimately turns out? 

Will it aid scholars producing thematic reports? Is it going to be motivated to start its own archives? Or will it oppose the bill in support of victim advocacy groups?

The queen and Archbishop Eamon Martin, the primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, participated in a service of reflection and hope in Armagh in 2021 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the partition of Ireland and the founding of Northern Ireland. However, Ireland's president, Michael D. Higgins, turned down the invitation because he was "not in a position to attend."

Also Read:  Palestinian forces are urged to cooperate against the Netanyahu government

While this might suggest that the Catholic Church is open to participating in the legacy process, Archbishop Martin and John McDowell of the Church of Ireland warned that the bill would "deepen divisions" in the north.

If the bill is passed as written, Church leadership will have to decide whether to support or oppose the British government, which is undoubtedly a difficult choice for an institution with declining influence.