It seems to me that the simplest and above all the most polite way of solving the problems of the North is for everyone to become a Protestant. Now before you start getting excited, pause to consider the advantages. Select the unionist of your choice. Close your eyes, (sorry, you'll have to open them again to read the next bit). Think of the look on his face when he finds out that everyone agrees with him.
And of course, such a big decision could not be made just in the interests of peace. There are also huge gains to be made on issues of style. Your child will not get mugged on the day of their First Holy Communion, by someone who needs to put a deposit on a house. You, on the other hand, will not have to take out a second mortgage in order to dress her in the broderie anglaise crinoline with seed pearls and antique lace trim that says "Vast sums of cash have been put into my little white handbag, please take it." You get to wear good shoes that never wear out. You get to say "Actually, a lot of Protestants are working class." Your children get to learn a musical instrument and walk up and down the street, or, if you live in Dublin, join a Glee Club.
When you think of it, vast swathes of what culchies call Dublin 4 is practically Protestant already. We are not just talking chintz curtains here, or a good recipe for chutney, but of the helpless urge to leave packets of condoms in the bathroom cabinet when the son starts saying "I'm just staying the night in Fachtna's house." Then there's divorce. But we've been through all that already.
But what are the advantages in switching from "practically a Protestant" to "actually a Protestant"? Well, if you have been running the parish for the last 20 years, from doing the accounts to waxing the floor, if you're the only one who knows where the candle-snuffer is kept, or how Mrs Murphy is doing with her arthritis, if people turn to you with the vexed issue of which altar boy is willing to forgo sneakers for a funeral, or whether Mrs Coyle can secretly baptise her grandchild by upsetting a glass of Ribena over it at a family dinner, then your priest can: either a) marry you, finally, or b) marry someone else, finally, and leave you free to become a priest yourself.
This will make everyone happy in the long run. There are huge savings in wages for priests' housekeepers. The problem of curate malnutrition in poorer parishes would be a thing of the past and there would be children - think of it, actual children - climbing up on priests' backs and saying "De de deh de, de de deh de BATmaaaaan," and no one would look twice.
But there is also what I might call "the doctrinal sigh of relief". You will no longer have to strain to believe in papal infallibility and feel guilty when you can't quite make it. You will no longer have to worry when Cardinal Ratzinger excommunicates someone, or when your own bishop says something very silly about altar girls.
If, on the other hand, you want to hang on to your worries about social decay, moral decline, and women in general, you get to use exciting phrases such as "the Spawn of the Whore of Babylon", along with large chunks of the Old Testament. Not all Protestants are the same - they are allowed not to be all the same, and this, I think, is the trick of it.
Remember that peace is at stake here. If you have lingering doubts about issues of style (incense, candles, fancy embroidery) tradition (pictures of the Sacred Heart) or emphasis (the Virgin Mary), then you can always go what they call "High Church". If you don't want to lose that feeling of sin, go "Low".
This leaves us with the question of transubstantiation. Now, if you are in the position of not caring about transubstantiation one way or the other as, perhaps, some Irish Catholics are, then I feel it is incumbent on you to make the switch without delay. If you do care, make the switch anyway: there are then two courses open to you: 1) believe in secret. This brings back that frisson of danger and dissent that any religion needs; or 2) fight for it. There is nothing like a good row to galvanise the faithful. There will already be a few scraps about women priests and who gets to run the bottle stall at the garden fete. A good theological argument will help us to define ourselves as a nation and a group, as people who really care. It makes for a lively Late Late Show and lends an urgency to Christmas dinners everywhere.
Above all, remember the Protestants of the North. Some of them are elderly and many feel under siege. The glow of that final victory may enable Ian Paisley to finally retire with a smile on his face. Or a vague sort of smile, or nearly a smile, which is always better then no smile at all.