Sir, - Archbishop Empey's expression of thanks to Bishop Walsh for apologising for the hurt the Ne Temere decree has caused the Protestant community here is welcome. The effects have been pretty devastating. Protestants have virtually been eliminated by assimilation since independence, their numbers declining from 10 per cent in 1911 to 3.5 per cent today. However, as Bishop Hanna says, unfortunately these hurts have not gone away as today the Catholic partner in a mixed marriage has to declare that all children of the marriage must be baptised and brought up as Catholics. The result is that over 80 per cent of children in mixed marriages in the Republic are Catholics.
As a member of the Church of Ireland who married a Roman Catholic many years ago, I had no option but to sign this decree. The fact that my father was a clergyman made matters more hurtful. We were denied a marriage at the main altar in a Catholic church here, so got married in an English Catholic church. Unlike many, however, my wife chose to bring up our children as Protestants and they went to an interdenominational school. Today they are hardly aware of their friends' religion and certainly not concerned about it. They represent the new, more tolerant, secular generation.
I know from Protestant friends in Northern Ireland that they genuinely do not want a united Ireland and part of the reason is that they have seen what happened to their Protestant counterparts in the South. The deadly virus of sectarianism, which has caused so much damage on this island, needs to be destroyed by all churches and I suggest the Catholic Church could lead the way by not interfering with the freedom of people in mixed marriages to decide what religion they want for their children. This builds barriers and leads to defensive reactions from fundamentalist Protestants in Northern Ireland. Senator George Mitchell recently said the twin vices in Northern Ireland are violence and intransigence. I suggest they are too much religion and not enough Christianity.
Yours, etc.,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.