COMMENTARY: Getting it right on Northern Ireland

c. 1999 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. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) UNDATED _ American news coverage of Northern Ireland continues to range from inadequate to […]

c. 1999 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. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ American news coverage of Northern Ireland continues to range from inadequate to downright false.


The lead, for example, is always the same: Protestants and Catholics arguing with one another. Thus the lead in a story by The New York Times last week was that Catholics and Protestants were still saying”no”to one another. One only learned halfway through the article that, in fact, the Sinn Fein _ the party linked to the IRA _ had said”yes”to the latest peace proposal of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

When the Good Friday Agreement was signed over a year ago, the question of disarming was postponed till the year 2000. However, David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionists, reneged on the deal.

Sinn Fein, he said, could not sit in the new cabinet unless the IRA disarmed immediately. He perverted his Nobel Peace Prize speech to turn it into an attack on the IRA and demanded at least a schedule for disarming. His demands escalated as the months dragged on.

The most recent initiative of the British and Irish governments seemed to give the Unionists everything they wanted: On July 15, the new coalition government in Northern Ireland would formally begin. If disarming did not begin in two weeks, the coalition would be suspended.

What did Trimble have to lose? If the IRA did start to turn in its arms, then the Unionists would have won their point. If the IRA didn’t begin to turn in its weapons, then it would be clear to all the world that they were to blame for the failure of the peace process. It was a win-win situation.

Instead, at this writing, Trimble and his hard-line allies are willing to abort the whole peace process for a difference of two weeks _ and be exposed to all the world as spoilers.

The Sinn Fein negotiators, apparently confident the men with the guns had agreed to disarm, supported it.


How can everything be lost because of two weeks?

The harsh truth is that many of Trimble’s team want to abort the Good Friday agreement. The IRA could dump all its weapons in Loch Erne and they’d still complain. The American media, ignorant of the history of Northern Ireland, does not grasp how strong is the possession of the Unionist mind by anti-Catholicism.

They could read with profit an article in the current issue of Sociology by John D. Brewer, a professor of sociology at Queen’s University in Belfast, entitled”Understanding Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland.”Brewer, whose own personal background is Unionist, argues that anti-Catholicism has been used in a two-fold manner in Northern Ireland: as a mobilization resource to defend the socio-economic and political position of Protestants against an opposition that threatens it; and as a rationalization to justify and legitimize both that privileged position and any conflict with those who challenge or weaken it. This explains its continued resonance.”Anti-Catholicism survives in Northern Ireland when it has declined elsewhere … because it helps to define group boundaries and plays a major sociological role in producing and rationalizing political and economic inequality.”Historically, theological differences in Ireland obtained their saliency because they corresponded to all the major patterns of structural differentiation in plantation society, such as ethnic and cultural status, social class, ownership of property and land, economic wealth, employment, education and political power. Colonization proceeded on the basis of neutering the remnants of Gaelic and Catholic wealth and power by the ascendancy of Protestantism, linking this form of theology forever after with political loyalty, economic privilege and cultural superiority. … The vanquished were Catholic, Gaelic-Irish, seen as savage and uncivilized, and were now economically dispossessed if not already poor; the planters were Protestant, Scots-English, saw themselves as culturally civilized, and were now economically privileged.” Trust Irish-Catholics to keep their word in a peace agreement? Of course not, they are uncivilized and dishonest. They will take away our Protestant supremacy. Even if David Trimble never says that, it is hard to believe that anti-Catholic prejudice does not permeate his soul.

Brewer dares to say what American journalists couldn’t possibly think, much less write: anti-Catholic rhetoric has intensified among opponents of the peace process in Northern Ireland _ hard men who have the power to block the will of three quarters of the people in Northern Ireland _ because they do not trust Blair, whose wife is Catholic.

For American journalists such suspicion is unthinkable. Yet to those who, like Brewer, know Northern Ireland well, it is almost self-evident.

DEA END GREELEY

END GREELEY

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!