ABSTRACT
Political structures have played a key role in stabilising Northern Ireland since 1998, and Daly used Catholic concepts of democracy and statecraft to explore alternative possible futures for Northern Ireland. This chapter shows how much of his discourse on the nature of the state centred upon the nature of political justice, and in particular the steps that the British and Irish states needed to take to create the Peaceable Kingdom. He sought to hold the British and Irish governments to account. He sometimes quite forcefully reminded them of the need to take responsibility in the search for an equitable solution to the conflict rather than relying upon the suppression of violence as a means of conflict management. Daly’s engagement in what can be broadly termed a redefinition of the Catholic Church’s relationship to the state, and therefore direct political participation in Ireland, should be viewed very much in terms of the emergent political peace process and the need for more equitable structures of governance to be established. Once more, Daly’s methods and the vision presented for such structures were grounded in the Gospel and the Magisterium, which were based upon a rational and empirically based interpretation of the Northern Irish context, and were communicated through non-violent means. Additionally, he saw the pursuit of political justice as a means of achieving the binary of personal and social salvation and conversion that was so crucial to his ministry to the people of Northern Ireland.
