Clergys’ Work on Front Lines Help Bring Peace to N. Ireland : Conflict: Protestants and Catholics have worked behind the scenes to bring about the cease-fire. But both sides agree that difficulties remain in maintaining the fragile peace.

For the first time in more than a generation, peace is breaking out in Northern Ireland.

It is a hard peace, brokered not solely by diplomats, but by hardened men dedicated to insurrection, who packed the bombs and pulled the triggers in an urban guerrilla war that has long been Europe’s shame.

The cease-fire declared in August, 1994, by the Irish Republican Army and six weeks later by Protestant paramilitary organizations in Ulster is holding. British Prime Minister John Major this week ordered the withdrawal of 400 of the estimated 30,000 British troops that have maintained uneasy order in Northern Ireland for more than two decades. And Gerry Adams, leader of the outlawed IRA’s legal political arm, Sinn Fein, was welcomed to the White House on St. Patrick’s Day, a signal that President Clinton is prepared to push the peace process along.

Once shunned as a terrorist, Adams uttered words earlier in the week that a year ago would have seemed nothing short of miraculous: “I want to see all the guns removed permanently from Irish politics,” Adams said at the opening of Sinn Fein’s Washington offices, from which the group will pitch its cause to Congress and the American people. “The IRA should disarm, the British Army should disarm, as should the loyalists.”

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In Belfast these days, Adams’ words add to the giddy but almost eerie feeling that in a city long accustomed to violence and chaos, things are indescribably different.

“One man complained to me about feeling ill at ease because he only heard two explosions one night and he was accustomed to hearing three,” said the Rev. Roy McGee, a Presbyterian minister who has worked in the front lines of conflict resolution since “the Troubles” began in Northern Ireland in 1969.

As minister of Seaman’s Presbyterian Church near the Belfast docks in 1969, McGee found himself patrolling the streets as IRA bombs and assassination squads became commonplace. As Protestant militias were formed to retaliate, McGee established relationships with the units. When an atrocity was committed by a Protestant group, McGee was on their doorstep.

“I think of myself as a spiritual policeman--someone who doesn’t make the laws but who goes to people who are violating God’s law and persuades them to come into line,” McGee, 64, said in an interview.

“The (Protestant) paramilitary saw themselves as defenders against the IRA,” McGee said. “They had a strong, strong motive for what they were doing, retaliating for violence and evil perpetrated against them. They are God-fearing people--not church-going, but they have a respect for what we call the Gospel, the things of God. It really was a religious or holy war. They were defending the Protestant ethos.”

But as more Protestant lives were lost to guns and bombs or to long jail sentences, McGee saw conversions taking place. Some had changes of heart while in prison; others saw the effect on a whole generation of children who grew up ignorant of civility.

“This, I believe, was instrumental to bringing change,” he said. “I’d ask, ‘Do you want your children, your grandchildren to be doing this?’ These were, at base, family men. They did not want their children to be suffering.”

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McGee’s brand of low-key, front-line conflict resolution has been one of organized religion’s most successful tactics in a conflict that on its face is religious, but in reality is rooted in economic disparity, cultural bias, civil rights violations and the many grudges of history that exist between Britain and Ireland.

The IRA’s embrace of terrorist tactics placed the organization far beyond the moral reach of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Vatican emissaries and other officials have worked quietly behind the scene to defuse tensions in an atmosphere charged with religious and political paranoia, the official church in Ireland has been perceived by some as ineffectual in seeking an end to the conflict.

“Over the years, the Catholic Church in Ireland has not done enough to condemn the British for their actions or speak out against human rights violations on all sides,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who helped persuade Clinton to welcome Adams to Washington.

But the Catholic Church did play a dramatic role in the peace process, in the figure of Father Alex Reid. A Redemptorist priest widely regarded as Adams’ confessor, Reid was identified as the intermediary who helped clear the way for secret talks between the IRA and the British and Irish governments.

Reid declined to be interviewed for this story, citing the confidential nature of his work. But one Catholic official, who requested anonymity, noted that the church was not necessarily inactive in Northern Ireland. “Reid was operating with the permission of his superiors,” the official said. “He was not acting as a lone ranger on this.”

But the two sides are still a long way from peaceful accord, and lying ahead is the difficult task of recovering and atoning for a guerrilla war that claimed more than 3,200 lives--2,000 of them civilians and children.

“Over the years, I have buried 13 members of my party; seven of them were children, one was someone’s wife. My wife and my son have been shot at,” said Adams, who always carries in his pocket the three bullets doctors removed from his body after an ambush attack.

“We have a tortured history of death, killing, incarcerations, riots. And while we have no monopoly on suffering, I have to acknowledge it; the British government must acknowledge its role; the paramilitaries must acknowledge it as well.”

Such statements do not satisfy Protestant minister Roy McGee. More than just acknowledging their roles, each side must seek and give forgiveness before they can achieve peace, he said.

“When the paramilitary groups announced the cease-fire, they expressed deep remorse and regret,” McGee said. “But we haven’t heard that from the IRA and Sinn Fein. You cannot forgive people who do not want to be forgiven. I am willing to forgive, but I can’t declare forgiveness to people who do not ask for it.”