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I used to describe the late, great Congressman Ben Gilman (Republican, NY) as ‘My Irish hero is a Jewish Congressman from New York’. Ben loved it, telling me it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about him.
In my work of getting the US Congress to stand up for Irish national self-determination, justice, peace and solidarity, I have been powerfully touched and inspired by how nearly all the Jewish delegation in the House and Senate showed great sympathy for suffering and oppressed Catholics in Northern Ireland – Congressman Gilman being the most prophetic of all, in words and deeds, God rest him.
To me it was a religious experience of God’s grace, when big-name Irish Catholics in Congress, and in other powerful positions, remained virtually silent (and, therefore, fully complicit and in collusion with England’s reign of terror, racism and anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland).
And now I have another hero: not Irish, not Catholic, but Muslim, and like Congressman Gilman, a man with a prophetic voice – Mayor of New York City, Zorhan Mamdani.
His brilliant and courageous St Patrick Day’s statements give proof of the power and strength of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in America. His prophetic voice shames the silent voices of others.
Congressman Gilman, as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, made it possible for me after a long struggle to get our MacBride Principles passed into federal law – while previously Irish Catholic speakers Tip O’Neill and Tom Foley had banned human rights hearings on Northern Ireland.
Irish-Americans, and the Irish in Ireland, must, therefore, never forget the prophetic voices of those outside Catholicism, like Congressman Gilman and Mayor Mandani.
Here’s the test. The Catholic Church teaches: “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.” (World Synod of Bishops. #6. Rome. November 30 1971.)
God bless the Jews and the Muslims and God save Ireland.
Fr Sean McManus. President, Irish National Caucus, Washington DC
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