Presbyterian author says there is base anti-Catholicism at work in the North

Bishop Thomas Flynn of Achonry was reflecting on changes in Irish society. Writing last July in Bealach an Doirin, a local magazine, he remembered how "as a young priest I was refused service in a Protestant shop in Sligo town . . . and read notices on the windows of two others looking for workers but with the addendum `Catholics need not apply'. "

His preaching in the Church of Ireland cathedral in Achonry, "the first Catholic bishop to do so since the Reformation", had been a big step forward from those days, he said.

It would be fair to say that in the south sectarianism on the part of Protestants is a thing of the past. The same cannot be said about the attitudes and behaviour of many Protestants in the North.

A new book, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ire- land, 1600-1998, sub-titled The Mote and the Beam, by Dr John Brewer, professor of sociology at Queen's University Belfast, with research assistant Gareth Higgins, does not put a tooth in it. Prof Brewer believes it to be "probably the first book to name the beast for what it is . . . outright, base anti-Catholicism."

The truth about the phenomenon in the North has, he said, been obscured by "sanitised words such as `sectarianism' and `discrimination' " in a context where things said about Catholics, were religion covered by the Race Relations Act, would be as illegal as they are when said about black people, Jews, or Muslims.

"It is as important to decommission this particular Protestant mind-set as it is to decommission weapons," he said. "It has killed people such as the Quinn brothers and (RUC) Constable Riley." Constable Frank Riley, a Catholic, who died recently after being attacked during Orange Order protests in Portadown, was described as a papist spy by those unapologetic for his death, he said. The three Quinn children died when their home in Ballymoney, Co Antrim, was firebombed on the morning of July 12th because their mother was a Catholic.

There are many in the North "who loosely use the contemporary anti-Catholic vocabulary and who loosely subscribe to anti-Catholic ideas. I want to show them the implications of that," he said. He also believes unionists opposed to the Belfast Agreement were becoming more and more anti-Catholic. "Since the agreement they appear as if more desperate."

He strongly disputed any suggestion that this was a temporary reaction to a particular situation. "What the book tries to show is that this anti-Catholicism is not an act of desperation. It is a tradition, with long historical roots and part of a long political agenda . . . We are dealing with people who are convinced they are the holy remnant, the last vestiges of the chosen people of God. That's how they see themselves."

It is a mind-set which, in the book's conclusion, he said is so self-contained it is going to take the power of God rather than that of a sociologist to penetrate it. It "tended to focus on theology as much as politics" and had a strong sociological and political manifestation, whereas anti-Protestantism in the North "tends to be political . . . against unionism."

Those who are anti-Protestant "don't ridicule, denounce Protestant doctrine. It [their opposition] tends to be political."

Prof Brewer is Presbyterian. Others would see him as Protestant, but he dislikes labels and would prefer to be known as a Christian. He was prompted to write the book by the Rev Ken Newell, a friend and a minister of whose Belfast congregation he was a member. In undertaking it he wanted to try to understand how people who shared a belief in the same Jesus as he does could say and do things which are such a travesty of Christian love.

He wanted to see things from their perspective, "to show Protestants what it is like for Catholics [subject to such hatred] and to let Catholics understand from a Protestant perspective."

Current attempts to reform the Orange Order reflected the downright embarrassment of members, he felt. A strong moderate feeling was coming to the fore in the Order, which had been appalled by the lunatic fringe. The deaths of the Quinn children had been a turning point, just as Omagh had been for republicanism.

But he questioned the current revisionism of the Order's history. Many of the Order's reformers really believed it was not anti-Catholic, he felt. "They are trying to strip it of its anti-Catholic past and traditions, and present it as being about civil liberties and rights. Some almost want to rewrite the origins of the Order to suggest it was not anti-Catholic."

But they would have to face the truth about the Order's bigotry and what was done in its name if they were to truly exorcise its anti-Catholicism. He hoped the book might help members further distance themselves from the past. The Order's insistence on marching through Catholic areas was more an expression of Protestant domination/triumphalism than of Protestant identity, he believed.

He understood Orangemen's sentimental attachment to the Order, the camaraderie, the association with church, family, celebration, and Protestant identity in Ireland. But he believed its negative image was justified and thought it should interrogate itself in much the same way as the Presbyterian Church had done when it reassessed its anti-Catholic doctrinal position.

He did not believe the Catholic Church was anti-Protestant, particularly not since the second Vatican Council. Previously, under Cardinal Paul Cullen's ultra-montane influence in the last century, this may have been so. Not any longer.

And Catholic attachment to denominational education and apparent opposition to mixed marriage he saw as a manifestation of fears for the diminution of Catholic values rather than as being anti-Protestant.

In Ireland, "anti-Protestantism has not shaped a whole society, its structures and institutions. And anti-Protestantism did not shape the south. Protestants there were in a position of economic privilege. They didn't confront social structures that excluded them. The notion of Protestant annihilation in the south . . . Paisley claims of a Hitler-like holocaust . . . is libellous. Protestants there who left did so voluntarily, and those who entered mixed marriages did so voluntarily," he said.

At the level of ideas, however, the Catholic Church needed to look at its anti-Protestantism, while at the level of behaviour it was not entirely immune to anti-Protestantism either, he felt. In the south, however, Protestants had never been marginalised. Nor had such classified advertisements appeared there of the sort which did in 1920s Northern Ireland for instance. He recalled two such. "Protestant puppies for sale", and Cowgirl wanted. Must be Protestant".

Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600- 1998, is published by Macmillan Press Ltd. Price £18.70.