Sir, - In your editorial of December 6th, you state that the events in Harryville, Ballymena, have been roundly condemned by the leaders of the Protestant churches. The siege of the Catholic church has been going on for the past 12 weeks. During that time, the silence of Protestant church leaders, at local and national level, has been quite deafening.
On December 2nd your Religious Affairs Correspondent, Andy Pollak, wrote: "But after an initial statement of condemnation when the protests began, no local Protestant minister has made any significant gesture of solidarity, by, for example, publicly visiting the besieged church or its priests."
Since then, the Mayor of Ballymena and a number of local Protestant ministers have condemned the increasingly violent attacks on Catholics attending Mass, and in their homes. The Mayor seemed to be mainly concerned about the bad image Ballymena has gained. A spokesman for the local Library and Education Board, speaking on UTV News, deplored the fact that all schools in the area would suffer financially as a result of what he called these silly incidents" (the petrol bombing of four Catholic schools).
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has a number of missionaries working in the Republic. In its Points for Prayer for 1996 booklet, under the heading Evangelism - Irish Mission", the editor describes the work of one of these evangelists in rural Leinster. "Some of these small villages have never had any exposure to the Gospel". Apart from the offensiveness of this statement, I think that these evangelists would be far better employed preaching the Gospel to their own people in Ballymena. - Yours, etc.,
Torquay Road,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.