So another St. Patrick’s Day, another riot in the Holy Lands. The Holy Lands are those streets around my Church in South Belfast named Palestine Street, Jerusalem Street etc. You get the point? In the last twenty years, and more, these streets have become over run by the Belfast student community studying at Queens University and University of Ulster.
This density of students has led to anti social behaviour that has caused great anxiety to local residents, many of them quite elderly, who feel fearful and threatened by the nightly drunkenness outside their door. This is heightened on St Patrick’s Day when in what has become a social diary phenomenon hundreds of young people pile into the area, to hang out in their friends rented houses, and drinking goes on for days. The abuse of alcohol added to the enthusiasm of youth causes the tensions at times to tip over as it did this year into confrontations with the Police.
Having been a Chaplain at Queen’s University and now the minister of Fitzroy I have listened to the stories of residents who lock themselves in for days. Today we ran an alternative St. Patrick’s Fun Day on Rugby Road and at least for a few hours local residents got their mind off what happened the night before or what might happen later on. However, some would not dare leave their houses unattended to join us. When there is not a riot many outside the area see it as a success but to try and live with thousands of drunk students singing outside your house, and doing it into the wee hours of the morning, can be torturous even if it doesn’t end up in violence!
So, What causes this blight on a wonderful new Belfast? What can be done? Who should do it?
The most obvious answer is that St Patrick is not to blame. He has nothing to do with this. This is far from the Gospel of Jesus that he brought. Something has happened to this Saints’ day that allows this to go off in his name. That is something to be considered. How did St Patrick’s Day, about a missionary who’d been a slave returning to those who captured him to share the good news of Christ, become St. Paddy’s Day about green beer and as much of that green beer as can be consumed? The liturgy on the street that I heard this morning was, “What is the queue like at that Off License?” The images on social media, the advertising campaigns for entertainment, the boxes of alcohol in student's arms today is as far from St. Patrick’s original spirit as we could ever have dreaded to be.
I have listened to interviews on television and some are blaming the University authorities. Others are saying politicians need to do something. I have no doubt that everybody needs to make contribution but it needs to be clearly understood that this is now a deeply engrained problem, almost a rite of passage. This is what a section of our youth do on March 17th. Some cannot wait for next year already. Some sixteen year olds can’t wait for their turn.
The truth is that the events in the Holy Lands is part of a wider social problem. These students who many believe should be declared criminals, and with good justification, are also the victims of a society where alcohol has become much too important to our leisure and social activities. In middle class schools in the leafier areas of South Belfast parents’ nights are built around bars and drink. Perhaps to paraphrase Jesus, a society that lives by drink will die by that drink.
Of course that alcohol abuse funds business. If we put the residents in the Holy Lands, who are locked in by fear, to the top of our priority list would we not close all the Off Licenses in the near vicinity? Why don’t we? Money? Or why don’t we do what Americans do to stop such student crisis, put the drinking age up to 21. In a few weeks I will be on University campuses in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan and the student years are all the better for not being able to drink. Why not? Or do we not want to take this that seriously?
This is going to take a changing of a current culture. It will take imagination. It will take big efforts. This year we did our wee bit to try and show an alternative. It will take time and patience to turn it around but it also needs big brave and radical decisions.
I also believe that the Church needs to play its part. We need to use the day to steal St. Patrick back from St. Paddy. Perhaps Protestant Churches have in recent decades given up their St. Patrick heritage. Well, it is time to claim it back. It is time to confess our complicity in St Paddy’s rise to drunken power and make our shared Saints day a time for spiritual celebration and the pumping of positive values of love for neighbour back into our community. It is a real opportunity to reconcile with our Catholic brothers and sisters to be make the kind of impact that the first Christian in Ireland made. Let’s get our heads and souls together.
Amen! (from Ohio)
Posted by: Patricia Johnston | 19/03/2016 at 11:33 AM