In my search to find a newspaper article of interest to fulfill today’s blog requirement, I discovered several amusing stories. There was, for example, an anchor stolen from a boat one county over from Armagh which was valued around one hundred pounds.  Also, an interesting 1989 write-up in The Armagh-Down Observer explained the pros and cons of selecting cow embryos to produce animals of specific gender and build (a little too Brave New World, if you ask me). However, the article that really struck me was a short news report on the funeral of a man who was killed in the street for his religious beliefs.

The man was 34 years old and a father of three. He had a wife and many siblings, including a twin.  He’d just finished building a new house, and was excited to move in and make it a home.  And he died because he was a Catholic, and someone else was a Protestant.

This isn’t a shocking article to be found in an Irish newspaper.  I imagine if I’d taken more time to leaf through the massive collection held at the Irish Studies Library, I would’ve found dozens of like articles where Protestants killed Catholics or Catholics killed Protestants.  The families would always be sad, the funerals would be highly attended, and the leaders of the holy communities would be outraged and preach for peace, though there would always be another tragedy lurking around the corner.  It’s no different in American newspapers, either.  There is always someone being killed because of their beliefs, or the color of their skin, or the gang with whom they associate.  But why?

Why spread violence?  One man kills another man’s father, so the son of the second man kills the first, and the first man’s son kills the second son, and so on and so forth until everyone finds themselves buried in the ground with no explanation other than hate.

I can’t cure the human condition or redeem thousands of years of violence—better people than me have tried and failed—but I can tell this story:  There was a 34 year old man, with three children and a wife and a twin brother.  He didn’t have to die, but he did, because of hate.

Next time, perhaps, love will win out instead.