JIMMY'S DREAM GONE SOUR

Presentation by John M. Buchanan, Pastor
Fourth Presbyterian Church

CLERIC
March 12, 1988

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago
Board Room

It is not James Buchanan, or Jimmy Carter, Or James Watt or Jimmy the
Greek - although aJl had dreams that soured. This paper is about James VI,
King of Scotland, who became James I of England, when Elizabeth I finally
died, childless. And it is about an idea that is surely a candidate for
one of the worst in all of history: a dream gone sour.

But that gets us ahead of ourselves. First, a thesis: Barbara
Tuchman, in the opening paragraph of her fine book, The March of Folly,
observes:

"A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place

or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to
their own interests... Why do holders of high office so often act
contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self interest
suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not
to function?"

Having made her observation and posed the question, Tuchman proceeds
to a not altogether cheerful analysis of several major illustrations: the
Trojans taking the wooden horse inside the walls, Britain losing America,
and America betraying herself in Vietnam. One which she did not treat, but
could have, is the subject of my paper this evening.

It was brought into the sharpest focus for me on the evening of June
12, 1981. I found myself in an unlikely situation, drinking a little gin
and ouzo of all things, with a group of married women, all Roman Catholics,
who lived in the Lower Falls section of Belfast. My wife and I, and two
other adults were with a group of Columbus young people, visiting, working,
and observing at Corrymeela, a retreat center near Ballycastle, on the
northeast Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. Corrymeela, which is also part
of what this paper is about, is a very small candle, burning in a very big
darkness. It is a kind of religious community, although it is not
parochially nor zealously religious. It is supported ecumenically, an
unusual phenomenon in Northern Ireland. But it is also supported by plenty
of people whose main or only concern in not sectarian religion of any kind
but peace in Northern Ireland, which is Corrymeela's sole purpose.

We were there for a week with seventeen youngsters from Columbus,

participating in one of Corrymeela's specialties called a "North-South
Dialogue." The idea is simple enough. Recruit a group of Dublin
Catholics, Derry Protestants, and a mixed group from Belfast, ali
teen-agers, most unemployed, and without nearly as much expectation or
structure as we Americans would prefer, let them spend a weekend together:
listening to music, dancing, talking, maybe even making friendships. A
simple idea, and a radical one because there aren't many places for that
sort of thing to happen in Ulster.

The seventeen Presbyterian Preppies from Columbus were receiving an
education they will not forget, and so were the adults. We were attached
to a group called, simply Belfast Mums. There were about a dozen, from
what can accurately be called an urban slum. They were Catholic, Lhey had
a lot of children; several of their husbands were in prison, under the
British-Direct Rule Internment policy. The rest were unemployed; several
were separated. Corrymeela invites groups of them up for the weekend:
provides child care and again, without much by way of American obsessive
programming, simply provides the exquisite luxury of forty-eight hours in
which to take walks, talk, or stay in bed if they wish. These women were
beginning their weekend with a bit of a party. Each had brought a sack of
sandwiches and some liquid refreshment. In addition to the gin and ouzo,
which they seemed to favor, there were several bottles of wine. They
offered - we accepted. After all - "When in Ballycastle..." you know how
that goes,

We talked some, awkwardly at first, then with more comfort. We had
been briefed a bit, and had decided to avoid revealing the fact that two of
us were Presbyterian clergymen as long as possible. We asked, gently and
carefully, about their feelings, and slowly they told us about a society
bitterly divided and a personal life cansumed with anger, and a future
which offered no hope, It was June 1981. Bobby Sands, an IRA Provisional,
also a member of Parliament, had died one month earlier, in the H. Block of
Maze prison in Belfast. The "blanket men" were in the news: there were
more hunger strikers and enough random violence in Northern Ireland that my
Columbus constituents wondered about our responsibility, if net our sanity.
As the evening wore on, they began to sing the songs of Ireland, the
patriotic, nationalistic music of protest. One of them said: "Let's sing
one for Bobbie." They did: it was sad, and poignant, frightening, and
enlightening. It was not about religion. It was about Ireland and British
occupation and religion was never mentioned. That ended the evening. We
saw the women in the morning. They never spoke to us. They had
discovered, I suppose that we were Protestant ministers. They had allowed
us to get closer than they or anyone else would understand.

And so, I have continued to watch that unhappy situation - even as the
American press has become bored with it. And a daughter of mine has
returned for several stints as a volunteer at Corrymeela, and we try to
raise a little money for the work of peacemaking there, and I write
regularly to several good friends.

My interest is also partially familial. Around the 1740s an ancestor
of mine was one of the thousands of Scotsmen who migrated from Glasgow and
the borders, to Belfast, and from there to Pennsylvania. He was part of an
important influx int he 18th century: the Scotch-Irish, builders of

canals, railroads, miners, hardworking, frugal people - deeply committed to
law and order and education. There are 16 million Americans of direct
Irish descent and there are far more Scotch-Irish in this country than in
the six counties of Ulster. They have produced eleven presidents.

And now a confession. My premise was that when one began to study the
"Troubles" in Northern Ireland, one would come to the conclusion that
someone, somewhere made a bad mistake. My further assumption was that the
someone was probably James I. Only an amateur historian would make two
assumptions that simple, and I am here to confess that my study has not led
me to conclude that James was any more guilty than a lot of other people.
But it was his idea and it didn't work and he is worth knowing.

In 1609 James VI of Scotland, who was the James I of England, issued a
royal proclamation which read:

"Whereas great scopes and extents of land in the several counties

of Armagh, Tyrone, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Caran are
escheated and come to our hands by the attainder of sundry

traitors and rebels, we considered how much it would advance

the welfare of that kingdom if the said land were planted with
colonies of civil men and well-affected in religion: whereupon
there was a project concerned for the division of said land into
proportions, and for the distribution of the same into undertakers."

There it is: a dream to expand and secure the kingdom, and to pacify
the troublesome Irish papists. Who was this man who so seriously
miscalculated - at the same time he was presiding over the age of
Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Johnson, and the Authorized Translation of the
Bible which still bears his name?

He was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, born on
June 19, 1566, in a small room in Edinburgh Castle where today a visitor
can see the initials of mother and son entwined in a carved crest on the
ceiling. He was baptized a Roman Catholic in the Chapel Royal at Stirling
Castle on December 17, 1566. Elizabeth I of England sent representatives -
Protestants -— who waited outside.

Mary married Bothwell soon after, was forcibly separated from her
husband by a group of nobles on June 15, 1567, incarcerated and never saw
her son again. On the tiny island of Lochleven, under house arrest, she
signed the Acts of Abdication in favor of her son. Her relative, Elizabeth
I, Queen of England, eventually had her executed ~ and that is truly
another story. James, in the meantime, at the age of 13 months, was
crowned James VI, King of Scotland, still at Stirling, but this time in the
Protestant Church.

He was educated by a brilliant but cranky old humanist, George
Buchanan. His theological preference was the Calvinism his nation had
adopted in 1560, although his ecclesiastical choice clearly was
Anglicanism.

Physically he was a man of medium height, with broad shoulders and
bent legs from childhood rickets which caused him to limp. He was somewhat

of a fanatic about exercise and spent much of his time hunting. A series
of wards saw to his childhood needs: old Buchanan drilled him in Latin and
his biographers agree that he had everything except the one thing he needed
which was a little love,

Antonia Fraser speculates that the aridness of his childhood caused
him to fall madly in love the first time affection was offered to him. It
was with a young man, an emissary from his mother's French relatives, the
Guises.

In June of 1583, James assumed the throne - at the age of 17.
Apparently his Prench cousin was a passing fancy, for he traveled to Norway
in the middle of winter to meet and wed his bride Anne, fourteen year old
daughter of the Norwegian King. He spent the winter in Oslo. James
Melville observed wryly, "Having traveled through many woods and
wilderness, in the confined frost and snow... there made good cheer and
drank stoutly till spring time."

The marriage was no charade, There were seven children, of whom three
survived,

James ruled Scotiand rather wel] after the Scottish noble settled
down. He did a lot of hunting, wrote some and, in that Elizabeth had still
not produced an heir, and James had a bit of a claim to the throne,
actually began to court the Crown. He named his eldest daughter after
Elizabeth, for instance.

Elizabeth died March 24, 1603 and that day James VI of Scotland was
proclaimed James I of England and on April 5 departed on what Dr. Johnson
cynically termed, “The noblest prospect which a Scotsman ever sees — the
high road that leads him te England."

James devised a divine right of king's doctrine that was offensive to
his Calvinist subjects, kept a court that was, by ail standards, unkempt and
vulgar, vigorously disapproved of the use of tobacco, and kept a kind of
zoo at the tower of London.

fie proposed the union with Scotland - and then suddenly found himself
with the marvelous opportunity to resolve the centuries-old dilemma the
English had with Ireland. A rebellion of Irish chiefs had been crushed,
the Earls Tyrone and Tyrconnel had fled, the Anglo-Spanish peace relieved
his concern about a Catholic invasion. Even the Irish looked to him
hopefully. But history's verdict is that Barbara Tuchman was correct. We
do not govern well. Antonia Fraser writes: "Unfortunately the policy
which James thought most likely to end Ireland's troubles, that of
plantation, turned out to be most likely to prolong them. [p. 146]

He invited British aristocrats, tradesmen, lawyers, farmers to settle
and manage estates in the counties of the North of Treland. He invited
border Scots, some of his more troublesome subjects to do the work, James
was not slow - even if he was terribly wrong. In one maneuver he pianned
to transform an alien culture into a little bit of Britain, relieve himself
of same of his more troublesome subjects, and enhance his exchequer by
appropriating the properties of the Scots who immigrated to Ulster, When I

was an exchange pastor in a village in the border county, near Runfries in
1978, I baptized the child of a Crown agent, who was managing farm land
which had come to the possession of James I. [t was a good idea. It
simply didn't work in Ulster. It still doesn't. Fraser evaluates, “King
James was merely one of along series of British sovereigns and leaders who
had not the faintest understanding of the history, hopes, and fears of the
Irish people." [p. i147]

Jonathan Swift, a little closer to the scene, came to a similar
conclusion in 1724. Wrote he: "As to Ireland, the English know little
more than they do of Mexico, further than that is a country subject to the
King of England, full of boggs, inhabited by wiid Irish papists..."

Where actually did it begin? How did the English get involved in
Ireland in the first place? At the beginning of the 13th century a Pope
of English origin simply granted Ireland to England... in hopes that
England might keep the Irish a little more attentive to Rome. English
kings in the Middle Ages were always conscious of the threat from the West.
It was Richard If who actually made the first move, as far as I can
determine. “An Trish chieftain asked his help in resolving a military
matter with a rival chief and Richard was only too happy to oblige... thus
beginning an effort of conquest that continued into the 20th century.”
[This analysis, and that which follows is devised from MacEoin, Northera
Ireland, Captive of History, p. 140ff]

In their efforts to subjugate and rule Ireland the Norman English had
superior weapons and far more organized and efficient military tradition,
But according to Arnold Toynbee the Irish had a “more powerful secret
weapon, Far Western Christian Civilization... which was stronger, more
developed, and deeper than any culture around.”

Now there is a curious and instructive twist to all of this. Irish
culture and the Irish church are tightly interwoven in the Middle Ages...
and the Irish church, in flavor, theology, style, and spirit was rather
independent of Rome. Its brand of monasticism was uniquely Celtic. Irish
monks married, for instance... the Irish church celebrated Easter on a
different day from the rest of the Roman church. And so it was in the
Roman church's interest - before the Reformation at least, for England to
succeed in conquering the obstreperous Irish ~ at least to bring them on
board ecclesiastically.

One scholar notes: “Rome blessed the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland
even before it began. From the beginning every effort was made to destroy
the Irish system of learning and way of life." (p. 118)

By the middle of the 13th century two-thirds of Ireland was controlled
by England.., but the Irish fought bitterly and in the Nerth - successfully
for another century. In an interesting vignette, Edward Bruce, brother of
Robert the Bruce, King of Scotiand, came across and led the Irish effort
very successfully... had himself actually crowned King of Treland and kept
a relatively independent state for several years. By the 15th century
English control and government had dwindled and was effective oniy in
Dublin and surrounding counties.

And then Henry VIII, whose rule so enormously changed the course of
Western history. Henry turned his ample attention to Ireland. His policy
was simple and as disastrous as James I's. Henry thought he could make the
Irish Engtish. He was, of course, having his own problems with Rome on Che
subject of marriage, church and state, generally. In 1537, Henry
instructed his bishops in Ireland to have each clergy found a school — the
purpose of which was to teach English - an alien and hated tongue. Now
Rome, which blessed the Anglo-Norman conquest in Ireland did a 180 degree
turn, realized a deeper threat, and began to dig in against now Protestant
England. Henry contributed in another way to the passionate Catholicism of
the Irish. When the English church broke with Rome, Henry made it
Anglican by, among other things, changing the language of liturgy from
Latin to English. For some reason, he did not make that change in Treland.
but despising the Irish language, he could not allow Gaelic Mass, and soa
curiously the church in Ireland, under Henry's pragmatic Protestantism,
under political and cultural siege, continued to speak the language of Rome
— almost as an act of political defiance.

Elizabeth succeeded Henry and under her long reign, during the Last
half of the 18th century, English control extended and included the whole
country ~ except Ulster in the north. And it was under Elizabeth, the
Protestant, that religion became a way of identifying the players in
Ireland, A Protestant was a loyalist. A Catholic was seen to be an enemy
of the Crown. Meanwhile the chieftains in Ulster heid out a long time, were
defeated ~ barely - by Elizabeth's armies. As usual, resistance to the
British had a galvanizing effect on the Irish. The o'Donnels in Donegal,
the MacDonnels in Antrim and the O'Neills in the middle, joined forces and
held the British at bay for nine years, until a blockade finally forced
their capitulation. The nobility fled for their lives to Europe, their
extensive estates in the Northern countries were simply appropriated by
Elizabeth and the stage was set for James' sour dream.

James' fateful decision was to complete what Henry VIII and Elizabeth
I had begun, and to do it thoroughly by replacing one cullure with another
and in the process eliminating the difficult Ulster problem in the final
solution.

Thus the disastrous royal proclamation inviting colonization.
Hundreds took the offer immediately. By 1640 there were 40,000 belligerent
Scots Presbyterians in UWister. James, no doubt, was glad to be rid of
them. In fact they didn't amount to much as Presbyterians at first. The
Church of Scotland sent Presbyterian missionaries over to Ulster, as a
matter of fact, and the Scots embraced the Kirk as a little bit of home
away from home with their customary belligerence. I[n the process they
substituted suspicion and hatred of Rome and the Irish, for their more
traditional suspicion and hatred of the Crown and the English. Besides,
one of theirs was now on the British throne.

The irish fought the British twice more in the 17th century and Jost
both times, and all the while the Roman faith was becoming more and more
identified with Trish culture and with the cause of freedom from the
British. The Catholic Irish were not allowed inside the fortress towns the
Protestant planters built in the north. They were, in addition, banished
from the land they owned and worked. In 1641, the first "Rising" resulted

in a Protestant massacre. Cromwell came through in 1650 and massacred the
Catholics of Drogheda. After Cromwell, Charles Ti, a Catholic, nodded in
the direction of his Irish subjects and his brother James II, got himself
ousted by Parliament in favor of William of Orange, fled to Treland and
opened shop. James II authorized the Dublin parliament fo restore land to
former Irish owners. The Protestants in Ulster, who now had been there for
two generations, violently resisted. Now the Catholic armies marched

north to crush a Presbyterian rebellion. Derry resisted a siege for 105
days and produced the raw material of patriotic legend. William of Orange
finally caught James in the north and won battles at Boyne and Aughrim, ail
of which became important in Ulster folk~lore, The dates of July 12, when
Orangemen celebrate the battle of Boyne till August 12, when the Apprentice
Boys of Derry reenact the defense of the city in 1689 - are the infamous
marching season in Ulster.

What happened when the smoke cleared was predictable but no less
tragic. British mistakes are understandable, but none the less disastrous
in their effect. After the Battle of Boyne and the defeat of the Trish
Catholic Army, a series of Penal Laws were enacted, by the Irish parliament
in Dublin, which was exclusively Protestant. The Penal Laws excluded
Catholics from the Armed Forces, judiciary, the legal profession, and from
Parliament. Catholics were forbidden to carry arms or own a horse worth
more than five pounds. In 1697 all Irish bishops and clergy were banished.
Catholics were forbidden to hold leases on land, or to buy land from
Protestants.

fhe effect on the Penal Laws, of course, was to solidify the deep
divide between Catholics and Protestants, and ultimately to strengthen
Irish Catholicism by giving it a cultural and political base and a cause to
die for. One of the lessons history suggests is that religion hecomes
tenacious when people start dying for it. In any event Catholic Gaelic
culture went underground and thrived.

The second half of the 18 century produced alliances between
Presbyterians - who have always had a bit of a problem squaring their
theology with any monarchy ~ and the Catholics, and the result was a series
of Penal Laws against Presbyterians. In the Wexford Rising of 1787, thirty
of our brother Presbyterian clergy were accused of collusion and three were
hanged. The Orange Orders were formed to challenge the new Presbyterian-
Catholic friendliness and to advocate the Protestant cause in the north.

In 1800, the Catholic population of Belfast was 10%, But in three
decades of furious industrial expansion, the Catholic population rose lo
30% and the Protestants started to get scared. At the same time the Irish
Presbyterian Church, normally at least a rational organization, rejected
its liberal wing which broke away, leaving the church in contro] of hard-
line, Orange Order types.

The 19th century saw the steady widening of the polarization. Because
of the continuing infusion of British capital, the Industrial Revolution
happened largely in the north ~- in Ireland. Por the same reasons the north
was insulated from the potato famines. In 1834 pressure mounted to repeal
the hated Penal Laws. Home Rule was discussed openly, even in Ulster, and
then a fateful partnership emerged in London: The Conservative Party

took up the cause of Ulster Unionism - i.e. union with Great Britain. That
partnership was characterized by Lord Randolph Churchill's famous remarks -
about Gladstone, who adopted a position favoring Home Rule: "We've got the
Old man hooked," and in a speech in Ulster, to a wildly cheering mob of
Protestants, "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." He was correct,
of course, at least about the fighting. A new Conservative Party position
emerged on the Irish question: Keeping the counties of the north as part
of Great Britain and separate from the Catholic south became a moral and
religious crusade. It was based, not only on a dying Imperialism, but on
Protestant fear which could become a belligerent bigotry - and immediately
did. Now the Orange Orders emerged to provide the noise and energy to
propel the cause of Union.

On the other side of it, the forces of Home Rule were expressed by the
Fenians - who were revolutionaries and later the Irish Republic Army. In
the late 19th century Irish Nationalism came into its own and historians
generally agree that the only thing that prevented a full civil war in
Ereland was the First World War.

The Easter Rising, 1916, began the guerrilla war in the south which
finally produced a treaty in 1921 between the British government and the
political wing of the IRA establishing a free Irish State - with the
exception of the six counties of Ulster.

The intent, again, was different from what actually resulted. There
were to be two states in Ireland, each with its own Parliament to deal with
domestic matters: each with seats at Westminster, and a Council of Ireland
was to deal with matters of common interest. It never met, Instead, old
county boundaries became international borders — and in Northern Ireland
the long and deep hostility began to erupt in violence. The Catholics in
Northern Ireland rejected what were now clearly British, and therefore
Protestant institutions. The police, for instance and the Ulster Special
Constabulary, formed to fight the TRA - were almost entirely Protestant.
The Education Act of 1930 established Protestant schools and allowed Uhe
Roman Catholics Lo sponsor their own Parochial schools, but they would huve
to raise 50% of the cost.

The depression was particularly severe in Northern Ireland. In 1933,
for the first time in a century, no ship was launched in Belfast. Between
1930-39 unemployment never fell below 25% and in the fierce competition for
jobs Protestants won more often than not.

in the meantime, relations between Ireland and Great Britain worsened.
And every time that happened, Catholic Irish in Ulster appeared to be
potentially subversive at worst, disloyal at best.

Gary MacEoin, newspaper man and author, tells how it was. He reports:

“My first experience of the collective frenzy with which the
Orangement each July 12 commemorate the Battle of the Boyne
(1690) was in 1936. That was a quiet year, in contrast with
1935 when the marches had led to three weeks of burning and
wrecking, with the loss of 12 lives, in one of Belfast's worse
outbreaks of sectarian rioting. The bowler-hatted marchers

wore elaborate sashes and collarettes over their dark suits.
Were it not for their stern, sel faces, they might pass for a
Shriner convention, The banners recalled past glories, Willian
of Orange crossing the Boyne, the breaking of the boom as the
siege of Derry was raised. From time to time, a banner saluted
the virtue of temperance, about the only salute it would receive
that day. Union Jacks streamed from windows and were waved by
onlookers. ‘To hell with the Pope' was scratched with unimaginative
monotony on every wall and billboard, the current four-letter
disposition of His Holiness not having then come into its own.
Bands playing partisan tunes whipped marchers and onlookers

into a frenzy of exaltation. The key instrument was the

Lambeg drum, struck with short sticks in such a way as to

cause the drummer's knuckles to bleed profusely, the mark of a
true professional. In such a context a spark is all that is
needed to start a pogrom.” [p 13-14]

In Dublin, the Irish Free State established a new constitution in
1937, changed the name of the nation to Eire, and dropped cut of the
Commonwealth. In 1908, the Irish Hierarch had forbidden Catholics to marry
non-Catholics and in the rare cases where exceptions were made, the
children must be raised as Catholics. In 1950 that ecclesiastical
provision became the law of the jiand. The 1937 Constitution established
the special position of the Roman Church in Irish society as the protector
and guardian of the faith. Divorce was declared illegal, as was the sale
of contraceptive devices and provision was made for strict censorship of
books and plays.

The Protestant population of the Republic, which once was 10%,
declined - under those provisions, to 5%: of which 3.7% are Church of
Ireland, which is what the Episcopal Church is called; .6% Presbyterian;
and .8% Methodist. The law requiring raising children as Catholics in Fact
appears to be working to eliminate all Protestants, a prospect that does
get the attention of those belligerent Presbyterians in Ulster.

In Northern Ireland the Second World War brought great prosperity.
And the fifties and sixties seemed to be decades of haope. The IRA mounted
an offensive in 1956 which failed to generate much support. It was
officially abandoned in 1962 and the IRA became respectable, deciding to
work for political goals within the system.

And then, in the early sixties the situation changed radically. Irish
nationalism found its voice again in Ulster. The tri-coler was flown at a4
Belfast political office in 1964, and when a crowd attempted to remove it a
riot followed. At the forefront was one of those unfortunate individuals
whose historical importance is genuine and tragic. His name was lan
Paisley, head of the tiny Free Presbyterian Church, a nasty, unhappy,
fundamentalist sect which is bitterly anti-Catholic and pro-British.
Paisley, who was elected to Parliament, has continued to symbolize Ulster'’s
agony: a leadership that is narrow, sectarian, bigoted, and simply
inadequate.

In 1967 a Civil Rights movement began within the Catholic community of
Ulster and received international press attention. There were marches,

demonstrations, and prodded by Paisley's vitriolic and vulgar anti-
Catholicism, a strong Protestant counter reaction.

On August 12, 1968, the Protestant Apprentice Boys of Derry, an
organization like the Orange Orders, held a mareh and were attacked by
Derry Catholics. Macfoin remembers, “The violence of police reactions in
Catholic Bogside produced two important results: The Prime Minister of
Ireland, Jack Lynch, made his famous 'we will not stand by! speech and
violence spread to Belfast. In August, the Catholic Lower Fails area was
invaded by a hostile mob of Protestants. Seven persons were killed, 3,000
left homeless, and the situation was utterly changed."

Great Britain sent the army into Derry on August 14, 1968 and the next
day to Belfast. This time the old wounds between Westminster, Dublin, and
Belfast were reopened in the full view of a world television andience.

The Provisional IRA was formed in January of 1970 and on October 31 of
that year the Provos killed their first British soldier. The Prolestants
in Ulster mounted pressure for an aggressive internment policy, which began
in 1971, followed by deep resentment and bloody riots. By 1972, 2,000 [RA
suspects were incarcerated, and in the process Great Britain was accused
and found guilty by the Strasbourg Court, arbiter of human rights in
Western Europe, of five violations for the policy itself and for the way
its prisoners were treated.

In 1972 Westminster suspended the Stormont, Uister's Parliament, and
began Direct Rule, which continues today. Sometime in the 70s the people
of Northern Ireland adjusted to their situation: the world press got bored
with it; the deep polarization in society became institutionalized. The
bld Unionist sentiment was expressed in the United Ulster Unionist Council
Nationalists all vote in the Social Democrat and Labor Party, and parties
of the Center claim only 10-15% of the vote. It doesn't take long in
Ulster to discover that the middie ground is a very small territory.

What is it like today? ‘There are only a million and a half people in
Ulster, on third of whom live in Beifast. Roman Catholics constitute the
largest religious denomination - 35% of the total population.
Presbyterians are next at 29%; Church of Ireland - 24%; Methodist - 5%;
others ~ 7%. The most interesting religious statistic, however, is that
there are virtually no atheists. A recent survey in Ulster could turn up
only 1,200 agnostics and 510 who called themselves atheists.

Religion, unfortunately in this instance, provides tribal identity.
Religion, on either side, is deeply conservative, closed to the outside,
exclusive and absolutely certain of the ultimate truth of its own dogma.
Irish Christianity seems not to have evolved, but to be stuck somewhere in
the 16th or 17th century. Irish Catholicism is conservative, in large
measure unaffected by the liberalizing influences of Vatican if.
Presbyterianism, as wei], is not open and liberal. Several years ago when
there was discussion of a papal visit, a motion nearly passed on the floor
of the Presbyterian General Assembly that ~ should the pope visit, and
should the Presbyterians be invited to an ecumenical event — they weren't
going to attend. Neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants are enthusiastic
about ecumenical movement, in fact they are suspicious of it.

10

In Christians in Ulster, a book on the affect of religion on the
Troubles, the authors conclude that while it is not fundamentally a
religions dispute, the bitter religious polarization has prevented the
process of assimilation and healing from taking place. The simple
discouraging of inter-marriage, for instance, has kept the distance wide.

There are two school] systems, each state supported. The public
schouls, which are Protestant; and the Parochial, Catholic schools.
Catholics may attend Protestant schools. None do. We visited both: were
warmly received: our youngsters talked with their peers on each side; in
Ballycastle, the schools are literally across the street from one another:
the Catholic High School was newer and cleaner and better equipped. It was
not possible to visit them both, however, without knowing deeply the deep
division in the culture. One can imagine how radically differently Irish
history must be taught in the two schoals.

Culturally, the bigotry continues. [It is not a particularly pleasant
topic, but it is very much a part of the problem. Protestant parliamentary
organizations thrive although they are largely ignored by the American
Press. There is something about IRA violence that receives our immediate
attention - as blowing up the Prime Minister's seaside hotel, or Lord
Mountbatten's ship, should. But in pure numbers, Protestant
pariiamentary's assassinate twice as many Catholics as the IRA assassinates
Protestant victims.

Sociologists are beginning to see a relationship between the cultural
bigotry of Ulster and the racism with which our country has had to deal.
Bernard Nossiter, correspondent for the Washington Post observes, "Upper
class Protestants have a contempt for Catholics that borders on racism"
and quotes as typical] a contractor who was a member of the Ulster Defense
Association: "IRA lazy Fenian bastards don't want to work - just want to
stay in their bloody pubs and drink. There is no such thing as a good
Catholic.”

Professor Fred Graham, Michigan State University, has done #
fascinating study of the music of Ulster and concludes that the Catholic
songs are political, telling of Ireland's struggle to be free from Engiand
while Protestant songs combine loyalty to the Crown with derogatory
references to Rome.

My daughter Susan, now a medical student at Ohio State University,
worked at Corrymeela last summer. 1 asked her to send me some material for
this speech. She sent me two popular Protestant songs. The first is "The
Sash."

"¥t is old but it is beautiful

And the colors they are fine.

ft was worn in Devy, Aughrim,
Enniskillen, and the Boyne.

My father wore it in his youth,

In the bygone days of yore.

And its on the 12th I love to wear
The sash my father wore.”

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The second is "The Boys from Derry,” a charming little ditty so
scatological about the Pope and the Virgin Mary that Susan was embarrassed
to sent it, and I to read it.

Where will it end? If history is a teacher ~ it probably won't. But
it may subside, particularly if something resembling an economic recovery
could happen in Ulster. Unfortunately, there is tittle about Ulster that
commends itself to capital investment or even tourism. When you ask an
Ulsterman how Americans can help, the answer is to stop giving money to
either Ian Paisley's bigoted Protestant organization or the IRA and fing
some way to make that money work in the Uister economy.

The degree of foreign involvement in the Troubles is a question mark.
Karl Marx was fascinated with the possibilities of revaiution. AT one time
Castro was nodding at Belfast and Colonel Kaddafi bragged about supporting
the FRA. Weapons from Eastern bloc countries have shown up in the IRA, but
so have plenty of American arms and explosives,

The best hope seems ta be some kind of Rhodesian settlement, with a
several year period in which a representative government would be formed.
Britain would withdraw and the six counties would ultimately rewnite with
the rest of Ireland. For that to happen two very difficult hurdles have to
be overcome. The Republic of Ireland must back away from some of its more
overt Catholicism, say in divorce laws and the sale of birth control
devices, and Great Britain must accept responsibility for Ulster refugees -
Protestants who would elect to leave.

Donald Fraser, 75 year old, former Information Officer of the
Presbyterian Church of Ireland and a personal friend, has told me that some
kind of reunion must come - but that British withdrawal] in the present
would result in much violence if not civil war. Fraser wrote:

"Phe violence continues but in different forms... The sounds coming
from Downing Street are not encouraging. One of the positive
elements has been the number of groups set up to give thought in
depth to problems arising from the troubles. Of course the seeds
will take time to germinate but they are sown in hope that they

will flourish and bear fruit.”

On the religious side of it - churches need to act like churches - and
become signs of a kingdom in which fear and enmity are overcome, One would
hope for less sectarianism and more ecumenism.

And so back to Corrymeela, where it all began for me: several white
buildings on a gorgeous hillside overlooking the Irish Sea, where peuple of
all faiths and none are invited to come to learn to live together. Until
the structures change and churches start acting like churches, I'll iaok
there, and places like it, for the hope that human beings can live.
together. Thus the final importance of the travail fo these few people, in
those six small counties. History has been unkind Co the peaple who must
live in Ulster today. Jimmy's dream went sour and worse. Antonia Fraser
concludes that "King James was merely ane of a long series of British
sovereigns and leaders who had not the faintest understanding of the

de

history, hopes, and fears of the Irish people.” But if the decade of the
80s is teaching us anything, it is thal we no longer have the luxury of
carrying yesterday's mistakes into tomorrow. "Spaceship Earth" is smaller
than anyone realized. And the first item on the agenda, for all of us, is
the simple task of living together in the present so Chat there will be a
future.

That happens, I trust, when people of good will try to understand one
another... and I thank you for listening as I have tried to enhance that
precess this evening.

13

Bibliography

Beckett, J. ©., The Making of Modern Ireland,

Cobain, Robert, A Protestant View of Northern Ireland, Commonwealth,
3/11/83.

Coles, Robert, Ulster's Children Waiting for the Prince of Peace, The
Atlantic Monthly, 12/80.

Darby, John, Conflict in Northern freland: The Development of a Polarized
Community.

Fraser, Antonia, King James Vi of Scotland: 1 of England.

Pe nef rca nar Ye) le eee SO = —

Gallagher, E. and Worrall, Stanley, Chrtistians in Ulster.

Graham, Fred, The wo Songs of Ireland, The Christian Century,
6/13/83.

MacEoin, Gary, Northern Ireland: Captive of History.

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