Madam, - Robin Bury asserts (Rite and Reason, May 17th) that Protestants in Ireland should "get up off \ knees" to celebrate their tradition. His contentious views on the decline of Protestant numbers in the South of Ireland lead him to conclude: "Protestants became increasingly banished to the margins".
Two Protestant presidents out of eight seems pretty mainstream to me. Taking on board also that President Robinson (married to a Church of Ireland member) was highly critical of the views and role of the Roman Catholic Church in public affairs and that the current President has taken part in Church of Ireland religious rituals, despite the public opposition of leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, it is clear that there is little if any popular interest in marginalising members of Protestant denominations in this State.
The cruelty inflicted by the Roman Catholic Church through the Ne Temere decree is a gripe with a church, not with a state (apart from the Vatican, perhaps). Mr Bury fails to take account of the extent to which Irish Roman Catholics are voting with their feet and leaving such provisions behind them (along with those on contraception and divorce). The use of individual conscience, perhaps? He appears to have a static and stereotyped view of the actions of Protestants and Roman Catholics (and atheists and others) as individual citizens in civil society. His political views appear not secular, but religious.
Mr Bury is unclear about what the Protestant "liberal, individualistic tradition" means in practice. While rejecting the notion of "one absolute truth", he assumes a singular Protestant tradition. He is in danger of associating religion and political outlook in the same manner as the Orange tradition in the North.
Mr Bury's Reform Movement championed an Orange Order parade in Dawson Street in 2001. The march did not take place, one reason being that exclusive use of the St Anne's Church of Ireland parish church on Dawson Street was refused to the Orangemen. Was this a case of Protestants denying association with Protestant "tradition", or of action within the secular and pluralist framework that has increasingly characterised Irish society over the past 40 years?
Whereas the association of religion with nationality plays little or no role in nationalist politics, it is still at the heart of unionist politics. Is this something that Mr Bury would wish to reinvigorate down south? - Yours, etc.,
NIALL MEEHAN, Offaly Road, Dublin 7.