Paisley seen as key

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32776, 29 November 1971, Page 2

Paisley seen as key

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Nov. 28. A lot of people believe a change of heart in the Rev. lan Paisley could radically alter the situation in Northern Ireland, according to two New Zealand men who have just returned from the world assembly for Moral Rearmament in Caux, Switzerland.

Canon Wi Te Tau Huata, chaplain to the Bishop of Waikao, and Mr M. Lennon, of Auckland, visited Northern Ireland after the assembly, and spent 45 minutes with Mr Paisley.

“Our strategy,” Mr Huata said, “was very good. We decided to approach his heart. We issued him a Maori challenge in his own church. “We told him he could pick up what we had laid on

the floor, or get a crack across the ear with a taiahi. He picked it up. Having adopted this approach, in accordance with Maori tradition, he had to follow it through. He was not difficult to talk to.” Mr Huata said he told Mr Paisley one could not have bitterness and God at the same time.

Both Mr Lennon and Mr Huata attended services at Mr Paisley’s church. “He gave a lucid report on the Irish situation—no propaganda, just an observer’s report,” Mr Lennon said. “Then came his sermon on the purification of the nation. He spent 25 minutes screaming into the microphone. “It was obvious he was clearly against the Pope and the possibility of Ireland being governed from Rome. He is against the ecumenical movement, the World Council of Churches, and the Faulkner Government,” Mr Lennon said. Discussing the violence in

Northern Ireland, Mr Lennon said not all the people were involved in the skirmishes, and plenty were upset about what was happening. Asked if. the situation in Northern Ireland bore any resemblance to the war he had experienced as chaplain to the Maori. Battalion in the Italian campaign, Mr Huata said he had discussed this with a canon in Ireland who had remarked: “War is clean, this is murder.”

Mr Huata and Mr Lennon visited a Cistercian abbey in Northern Ireland.

“On . the way back,” Mr Huata said, “we were stopped at a barricade by the army. My collar made no difference. They made me raise my arms and felt down my sides.

Mr Lennon said all the Government buildings were under armed guard and sandbagged. “It’s easy to spark something off. If you dropped a cracker I’m sure the army would shoot.”