The main problem with ecumenism is too often the implicit failure to recognise and respect core dividing principles. If Ian Paisley's brand of Christianity has nothing else going for it, at least we know where he stands: against any reconciliation with Catholicism. Indeed, the most popular heresy of modern times, which has become an abiding dogma at the heart of the peace process, is that there is always a common ground between two opposing positions, and that merely blind bigotry and failure of imagination keeps opposing poles apart, writes Kevin Myers
But poles are apart because if they are not, there is nothing in between: a world without poles means no world at all. Poles are the vital structures which give ideas dimensions. Poles are good things, because it is often wise to disagree. This is why the Ulster unionists are right when they say that one cannot conflate commemorations of the Battle of the Somme with any celebrations of the Easter Rising.
We know this even by the words that are used. No sane person would dream of "celebrating" the Battle of the Somme; but a celebration of the Easter Rising is precisely what the Government plans next month. Morally, this is not matching like with like. A car showroom is not a cathedral, a loaf is not a loufah, and something which is to be celebrated cannot be linked with something that is to be mourned. As I have often said, I loathe the battles which I have written about so much in this newspaper. I don't stand in a cemetery in France or Belgium or Turkey, surrounded by our Irish dead, and feel any pride whatsoever. All I feel is grief at the history which took them from their homes in Ireland and despatched them to their graves, and - until recently - to historical oblivion, and how much I wished I could undo it.
This ambition is, of course, stupid and counter-historical, not least because despotic Prussian militarism had to be confronted sooner or later. It had been the source of every major war in Europe in the previous 50 years, precipitating in France and Belgium the very cowardice, inhumanity and rapine which the authors of the Proclamation were to disavow two years later. Given how ignorant everyone was of the nature of modern war, I can see no alternative to the United Kingdom declaring war in 1914. And to have harnessed the Rising to this barbarous militarism, especially with Home Rule on the statue books, was opportunism at its most blinkered, idiotic and depraved.
No-one in Fianna Fáil will agree with me here, which is fine. All I have ever sought was an acknowledgement from our Government that tens of thousands of Irishmen laid down their lives doing what they believed to be their duty. I do not expect Fianna Fáil to say that it was right to join the British army. You cannot with any degree of intellectual or moral coherence say that (a) it was right to join the British army in 1914, and (b) it was right to shoot British soldiers in Dublin in 1916.
The issue is not just moral and intellectual, but also emotional. In my heart, I am on the side of the Irish soldiers and policeman in 1916. I can't help it. That's the way I am. I'm on the side of Brig-Gen John Aloysius Byrne, Insp Gen of the RIC, a Derry Catholic and former British army officer (so much for the President's "glass ceiling for Catholics"). I'm on the side of Louisa Nolan, who won the Military Medal for minding the wounded at Mount Street Bridge. I'm on the side of C. Hyland Hachette, a dentist from Northumberland Road, who also tended the injured there, and was killed by a stray bullet in his surgery. I'm on the side of F.H. Browning, shot down by Volunteers as he innocently led the unarmed ex-soldiers of the Georgius Rex on their route march from Ticknock on Easter Monday. I'm on the side of Richard Watters, an unarmed bank official similarly shot by insurgents at Mount Street. I'm on the side of Lt Alan Ramsay of the Royal Irish Regiment, a St Andrew's boy, killed by rebels at the South Dublin Union. I'm on the side of Const John McGrath, shot-gunned through the stomach at point-blank range by an insurgent in College Street. I'm on the side of Robert Mackenzie who, having survived the sinking of the Lusitania, was shot dead in his shop in Rutland Square.
I can't help it. That's the way I am. I feel absolutely no sympathy with the people who started the mayhem and butchery of Easter 1916. That they might have been brave and honourable, by their own lights, is something I freely concede, as I also might for a Prussian guardsman in 1914 or a Waffen-SS Obergruppenführer in Normandy 1944. Would I stand in a minute's silence for the insurgents killed in 1916? Absolutely, if only out of respect for the passionately held feelings of my fellow countrymen. But do I sympathise with their cause or their methods? Absolutely not. I oppose them both.
Now, we can pretend such differences are not real, but we are telling ourselves lies if we do. I am not a unionist, but I totally understand why unionists have declined the Government's invitation to the 1916 celebratory parade. I would do the same. To pretend to celebrate what you actually deplore is ecumenism at its most unprincipled, the refuge of a true moral coward.