c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.agreeley.com. Or contact him via e-mail at agreel(AT)aol.com.)

(UNDATED) There was a pogrom last week in Northern Ireland. As pogroms go, it was a rather mild event _ only one person killed (a Catholic, of course). A dozen or so families were driven out of their homes. Fire bombs were thrown in the street.

It was not like the pogrom that first brought the British army to Ireland a quarter-century ago, in which scores of Catholic homes were burned to the ground. It was nothing at all like the ones in the early 1920s, in which hundreds of Catholics were killed and thousands lost their jobs. But it was a pogrom just the same, the persecution of a religious minority by a religious majority.

There is no region in the civilized world like Northern Ireland, a place where a religious majority is permitted annually to march through the neighborhood of a religious minority and lord over them their superiority.

But this is what is known among the Irish as”marching season,”a time when Protestants celebrate the 1690 victory of William of Orange over the Catholic supporters of James II at the Battle of the Boyne. These marches, held every summer, help keep enmity alive between these two ancient foes.

Can you imagine what would happen if an Irish parade swarmed into a Jewish neighborhood shouting anti-Semitic curses on Christmas? The courts would have forbidden the parade on the grounds that it was a deliberately provocative act of religious bigotry. The police, the national guard and the army would be on hand to prevent it. The rest of the nation would denounce the bigots who engaged in such idiocy.

But in Ireland, it happens every year. Once again, militant Protestants _ known as Orangemen _ rioted, burned cars and shops, drove Catholics out of their homes.

Watching this spectacle from across the cultural divide, American media generally misread the situation. They either blame Catholics or say both sides are equally responsible for the violence. Catholic and Protestant alike, they say, are responsible for the presumed burial of the fragile peace process that had provided a glimmer of hope to the people of Northern Ireland, who have endured decades of urban guerilla warfare.

They are only partially right.

Let it be written on the sky: There will never be peace in Northern Ireland until the British government makes it clear to the Protestant majority that their days of lording it over the Catholics, who comprise 40 percent of the population, are finished. England must take a stand to end the injustice in this troubled land.

The real battle in the North of Ireland finally will be between the Protestants and the British government that”planted”Protestant settlers here 300 years ago and has supported their oppression of Catholics ever since. It is clear from the disastrous failures of the past two lost years that, yes, the English want peace. But no, they do not want to pay its price.

Another battle is among Catholics themselves. Though the IRA insists that its goal is to unify Ireland, surveys show that the Catholics of the North reject that option.

The Catholics of Northern Ireland want the same thing every other minority group in the civilized world desires: Freedom and equality, nothing more but nothing less. As long as they do not have that basic equality there will be a tiny minority of the minority which will support the violence of the IRA.

And as long as hatred smolders in the hearts of Catholic and Protestant _ and as long as the British government refuses to stand for peace _ the violence will continue in this troubled land, season after season, year after year.

MJP END GREELEY