Sir, – Andy Pollak observed, as though it were something new, that a number of prominent individuals in sport, entertainment and politics in southern Ireland are from Protestant backgrounds ("The Republic is now a warm place for Protestants", Rite & Reason, October 13th).
It was ever thus, even when Roman Catholic atmospherics whistled through almost every nook and cranny in southern Irish society.
Pollak’s mistake, a typical one, is to see our socially separated populations as homogenous entities, one liberal, the other illiberal. In fact, during the 1960s young people within both population groups revolted against excessive social controls. The rules and regulations were in fact tighter among Protestants. Paranoia about young Protestants meeting and marrying Catholics, thus losing children to Rome, gave impetus to an elaborate machinery of separation. Young Protestants found this “stifling atmosphere” (as FSL Lyons put it) as stultifying during the 1960s as did many Catholics resentfully occupying their confessional domain.
The point is, why don’t we hear abut it? The reason is because it challenges a prevalent stereotype that Pollak perpetuates. Some Protestants liked things the way they were. For instance, Maurice Dockrell TD was criticised as lord mayor in 1960 for kissing the ring of a visiting Roman Catholic prelate. Dockrell responded, “I thought it was about time an Irish Protestant paid tribute to the wonderful Catholicism of the Irish people. [...] Let’s not fool ourselves – if the majority of the Irish weren’t Catholics they wouldn’t be good little Protestants, they’d be rip-roaring anti-clerical communists.”
For many Protestants economic inequality cancelled out social inequity. Protestants in general were more affluent than their Roman Catholic neighbours and some, like Dockrell, thought the Catholicism he celebrated helped to keep it that way.
Socioeconomic equilibrium was enabled with the aid of a phalanx of mainly Roman Catholic clerics in plain view and substantial numbers of Protestant employers in the background. Chill winds were avoided in this manner.
Victims of the flawed analysis outlined here are the many “illegitimate” children hidden away in Protestant institutions after their mothers were forced to give birth in secret. The media by and large (with some exceptions) kept its head down about them.
Pollak is right to note that many former Roman Catholics find Protestant denominations more congenial and “modern”.
But if they have left their former church because they think child abuse a specifically Catholic problem, the actual (as distinct from generally reported) facts might make them think again. – Yours, etc,
NIALL MEEHAN,
Dublin 8.