A METHODIST minister's proposals for the creation of a special day of acknowledgement to reflect on the Troubles has been given a guarded welcome by clergymen.
Rev Harold Good, over oversaw the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA's arms, put forward the idea last week.
Rev Good, who described himself and Martin McGuinness as 'soulmates' following the death of the former Sinn Féin Assembly member and deputy first minister, criticised the stance of all churches saying they were "silent" when "we should have spoken".
"There was injustice, there was discrimination, there was sectarianism from both sides. Where there was injustice, where there was sectarianism, we were silent," he told the BBC.
"Together across our community we might come together each of us and all of us, from all sectors including the churches and acknowledge our part in the hurt the grief and the pain of the past 48 plus years".
Reacting to the proposal, Presbyterian Moderator Dr Noble McNeely said he would "need to have more detail" about what the day would entail.
"If that detail is provided as a church, we would discuss that and respond to it," he said.
Ballyclare Parish Priest Fr Martin Magill said he had contacted Rev Good to "explore the comments further".
"I know he would be very keen to see that it wouldn't be set entirely in a church context but in a much wider context to give all of us an opportunity to reflect and to think and to acknowledge our faults and failings."
Methodist Minister, Rev David Clements also expressed reservations that such a day could be seen as suggesting a kind of "equivalence" between perpetrators and victims.
Rev Clements, whose policeman father was murdered by the IRA in 1985 at the gates of Ballygawley police station, said the issue was "thorny and difficult".
"Sometimes people say, 'We've all suffered from the Troubles'. On a superficial level that's true but on a more profound level it's not," he told the BBC's Sunday Sequence programme.
