It is doubtful whether there is a more remarkable institution on this island than the Church of Ireland. Within its ranks it accommodates unionists and nationalists, some of them hardline. You have, for instance, Willie Ross MP, of the Ulster Unionist Party, who is implacably opposed to the Belfast Agreement, while on the nationalist side there are TDs Ivan Yates of Fine Gael, Trevor Sargent of the Green Party, and Independent Mildred Fox.
An even greener church member was the late Johnny Fox TD. Then there is Jack Boothman, former president of the GAA.
That the church has survived Ireland's traumas at all is an achievement. That it has done so successfully, through such upheavals as the Land Wars, Home Rule, 1916, Partition, two World Wars, the last 30 years, and Drumcree 1996, is a miracle.
What allows this is its perennial emphasis on a common spiritual base that transcends all else. It allows for such situations as political opponents sitting side-by-side at Synod peacefully discussing proposed changes in the hymnal, as the Primate, Dr Eames, said recently at a pre-Synod press conference.
Next to the Catholic Church it is the largest Christian denomination on this island, but it is not dominant in either jurisdiction. In the South there are more Catholics, while in the North there are more Presbyterians. In the South, according to the Church's own figures, they numbered 92,310 in 1992, and 264,000 in the North. That gives a total of 356,310.
In each jurisdiction the church's influence far outweighs its numbers. The reasons are historical. Until disestablishment in 1869 it was the established church, to which all people of importance in Irish society belonged. They dominated the political, professional, commercial, and social life of the island, and this continued after disestablishment.
In the South that influence was greatly curbed on Independence. Many emigrated, and of those who remained inter-church marriage devastated their numbers as the Catholic Church insisted that all children of such marriages be brought up Catholic.
However, as a proportion of the population, they remained among the wealthier people. Which is not to say there were not poor members. Generally, though, even if its political and social influence was gone, Church of Ireland members were still very influential in business and farming, as well as the legal and medical professions.
Where public life was concerned they kept a very low profile, apart from some "token Protestants". Those were nominated to and accepted public office, in what was essentially a Catholic state for a Catholic people, by politicians who would have the perception be otherwise while cultivating a different reality.
Most members of the church meanwhile lived in a sort of cultural cocoon, inured by wealth and tradition from the emerging Catholic peasantry all around. Theirs was not quite a state of siege but one of separateness. Theirs was one side of that cultural apartheid which was a dominant characteristic of this state in mid-century.
In the North, meanwhile, members of the church generally eschewed the more extreme forms of bigotry while still benefiting from its consequences, institutionalised prejudice.
North and south they were polite people. Their mien was one of inherited breeding. They were "the best people", among whom moderation was the most consistent and expected behaviour.
By the 1960s in the South a newer generation of church members, born and raised in the new State, had begun to identify with that State, whatever about its dominant ethos. Education and increased affluence soon placed many Catholics at a similar social level, and this helped the growth of a cross-denominational social solidarity/identity.
That has grown in the decades since, as the Republic has become more pluralist. And the seemingly intractable nature of the conflict in the North, with its shrill voices and shocking atrocities, committed by both sides, helped Catholics and members of all other denominations in the South feel a closer sense of identity with one another than they did with co-religionists in the North.
Today in the South the situation of the Church of Ireland is quite extraordinary. Like the Catholic Church in England, it has become highly fashionable. Its schools attract Catholic children, mainly from the middle class. Its hospitals prove increasingly attractive to Catholics also, and more and more Catholics go to its services. Some Catholic priests have left their own Church to become its ministers.
All such Catholics are attracted by its essential tolerance, its democratic methods, and its genuine respect for individual conscience and equality among all. Another factor influencing such Catholics these days is the rather remarkable fact that, whereas child sex abuse has involved so many Catholic religious, the incidence of such abuse among Protestant clergy seems entirely absent.
In many mixed marriages today also, the children are being raised as members of the Church of Ireland, both as an exercise of preference by the Catholic partner and as a protest at the "duress" involved in having to promise to raise the children Catholic, as demanded by their own church.
More generally the contribution of members of the Church of Ireland to the creation of Irish nationalist identity has been enormous, and is increasingly recognised as such, even as that identity changes into something less aggressive and more at ease with itself.
You have just to reflect on a list which includes such as Lord Edward FitzGerald, Robert Emmet, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell, in the political arena, or culturally on Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey, Oscar Wilde, to get some indication of the extraordinary contribution members of the Church of Ireland have made to who and what we are.
The tragedy is that the nation they created should have turned into such an inhospitable place for them for so long. But those days are gone and all their dizzy raptures are no more.
That is why members of the Church of Ireland now take a part in the public affairs of this State which, proportionally, far outweighs their number, as the Primate, Dr Eames, has said elsewhere on this page. That can only be for the good of us all.