Stephen McCann

Insurance Entrapreneur, Rugby & GAA, United Irelander. Consider highly opinionated tweets from anonymous accounts with caution.

[Ireland's Future - Todhchaí na hÉireann @IrelandsFuture]

🚨Respected data analyst Peter Donaghy believes that on an exceptionally brilliant day for pro united Ireland parties the make up of the new assembly could be

🟩 45 pro UI
🟦 31 pro UK
🟨 14 no position

🗳️ Make sure to vote pro UI parties in the next election

@RhonddaBryant

[Darran Marshall @DarranMarshall]

Republic must acknowledge forgetting northern nationalists, Leo Varadkar says

https://t.co/6JHwsGcTbJ

[Leo Varadkar @LeoVaradkar]

Really enjoyed visiting Dungannon (the fortress of the O'Neill Prince) to attend the closing workshop in Mid-Ulster Council's consultation on constitutional change (pros and cons). Really hope other local authorities across the island will think about doing something similar embracing the spirit of participative democracy

[X Global @X_Global_tv]

🚨 BREAKING:

Former Irish President Mary Robinson, 81, and former New Zealand PM Helen Clark, 75, are at the Rafah border crossing protesting against Israel.

[Rev Karen Sethuraman @KarenSethuraman]

I love us as a people.

We stand together for peace, determined not to return to our painful past.

We want to build and pass on a better future for our children and grandchildren.

This is the best of us! 💚

@RhonddaBryant @HMcEntee

[Rev Karen Sethuraman @KarenSethuraman]

Friends, we have reached over 1,000 signatures - we are absolutely blown away!

A huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to sign the letter.

We will be closing the link tomorrow evening, so if you haven’t signed yet, there’s still time.

Blessings,
Rev Karen

[Paul Gosling @PaulGosling1]

I'm a signatory of this. The Garvaghy Road situation is unacceptable.

[Ben Collins @bjacollins]

🚨 Open letter from people of Protestant backgrounds concerning the Garvaghy Road

🚨 We feel compelled to speak publicly about what is happening in Portadown. 

🚨Over the past few hours we have collected over 140 signatures

Add your support https://t.co/qT9S1NiGYf

[Rev Karen Sethuraman @KarenSethuraman]

**UPDATE… WE NOW HAVE OVER 400 SIGNATURES -
Keep signing friends!

https://t.co/Bb7NvsOd0U

[Rev Karen Sethuraman @KarenSethuraman]

🚨 Open letter from people of Protestant backgrounds concerning the Garvaghy Road

🚨 We feel compelled to speak publicly about what is happening in Portadown. 

🚨Over the past few hours we have collected over 140 signatures.

@RhonddaBryant @HMcEntee

[Stephen McCann @stephenmccann24]

@FeileBelfast Traveling from dublin, what location would I put into my maps to get there?

[Ireland's Future - Todhchaí na hÉireann @IrelandsFuture]

✍️ Letters sent to both Taoiseach and Tánaiste today

🚨“We urge you not to abandon vulnerable & traumatised Irish citizens who need your assistance”

🚨“We implore you to use your direct influence with the British Government, to protect our Agreement and our peace process”

[Ireland's Future - Todhchaí na hÉireann @IrelandsFuture]

✍️ A letter from Ireland’s Future to the British Secretary of State

🚨“Immense anger is developing throughout the nationalist community, and other strands of democratic opinion in the north”

🚨“There is a duty to avoid the abyss we are currently staring into”

@RhonddaBryant

[Ireland's Future - Todhchaí na hÉireann @IrelandsFuture]

🚨We’ve a wonderful opportunity to build something new on the entire island

[Robert Thompson (he/him) @Rgt71Robert]

Drumcree brings up so many mixed emotions for me. Portadown is my home town. We worshipped at Seagoe Church of Ireland parish, across the Bann. Some of my relatives belong to the Orange Order, though they were never involved in the Drumcree march. I know the decency, family ties and sense of belonging that membership can hold. Sure, I held the strings on the Orange banners with my grandad and uncles for many years in my childhood.

As a sixth former, and later a theology student, I also knew the Jesuit community on the Garvaghy estate and their grassroots work for justice and peace. Jesuit voices have continued to shape me: from Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Tyrrell to their contributions to liberation theology and Catholic social teaching. One of the Jesuit houses in a London is in the parish I now serve, in the road just behind the Vicarage.

My family background and my developing theology met and still meet in those relationships with real human beings. People complicated the boundaries I inherited. Stereotyping simply could not do justice to the people I knew.

That is why watching these pictures today touches something so deep. Affection, gratitude and belonging sit alongside profound unease about the historic churches’ entanglement with sectarianism in the north of Ireland.

The Church of Ireland has wrestled with this before. In 1999, General Synod asked for the customary invitation to the Drumcree service to be withdrawn if the Orange lodges refused assurances about lawful conduct, respect for worship and keeping church property free from subsequent civil protest.

In 2000, amid violence, Robin Eames said: “I see nothing of Jesus Christ in the nightly actions on Drumcree hill”. He also recognised the disgust felt by decent Orangemen. Both belong in the telling.

Claire Hanna’s statement makes a crucial point: what is being asked of each side is not equal. For residents, this is home, the place where they raise their families and live with the consequences. The parade has other routes.

My mixed emotions do not make that distinction disappear. Knowing and loving people within a tradition does not oblige us to defend everything done in its name. It gives us a responsibility to speak honestly.

Sometimes faithfulness means choosing another road. Here, taking the road less travelled might mean giving up the familiar route for the sake of our neighbours. That could make all the difference.

Belonging and identity are important. So is what our belonging does to other people.

We cannot proclaim Christ’s peace inside a church and treat our neighbours’ fear as irrelevant outside it. The right to walk a road does not settle the Christian question of whether we should. Love of neighbour must shape the route we choose as well as the prayers we say.

The Gospel must be free to challenge everything we cherish. Our traditions. Our churches. Ourselves.

[Wallace Thompson @wallyt53]

@Saraita101 The tactics have been quite deliberate and quite clear. Stir up an old issue - in a very clever away in this case - and sit with arms folded and exuding an image of absolute reasonableness- while waiting for the desired reaction.

[Colin Harvey @cjhumanrights]

Proud to stand in solidarity with the residents of Garvaghy Road in Belfast today.

[YBIG @YouBoysInGreen]

Stand behind him.
This is your time.
#StopTheGame

[The Irish Times @IrishTimes]

Gavin Bazunu tells Irish squad he does not want to participate in games against Israel https://t.co/rKSE0JTnkc