Sir, – Fintan O'Toole ("Why the Taoiseach should not join the St Patrick's Day parade", Opinion & Analysis, March 11th) quotes from my letter to The Irish Times ("Who won't march in NY parade?", February 20th), in which I assert that the Catholic character of the New York St Patrick's Day parade as the grounds for excluding a distinctly gay group from participation. He uses the religious character of the march as grounds why the Taoiseach of a pluralist, non-sectarian, democratic Ireland, should not march.
However, in 2012 Mr O’Toole expressed no objection to the attendance at the closing Mass of the Eucharistic Congress in Croke Park by President Higgins, the Taoiseach, and the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.
Contemporary Irish liberals in their zest to overcome an unhealthy, but informal, fraternisation between the Irish State and the church, which did harm to both, seem to want to go beyond pluralism toward a confinement of religion as a purely personal matter having no place in the public square.
That is a far cry from the American principle of separation of church and state and seems more akin to the totalitarian exclusion of religion characteristic of former eastern European regimes.
I must acknowledge Mr O’Toole makes a valid note, often unappreciated in Ireland, about the substantial portion of the Irish American population, including many of the presidents, who were Protestant. – Yours, etc,
JOHN P McCARTHY,
Professor Emeritus
of History,
Fordham University,
New York.