Monday, June 04, 2007
On Ireland’s own human rights failings?
Interesting response from El Nuevo Pantano to Newton Emerson’s satire on the unconscious way people in the Republic lecture other countries on human rights, apparently blissfully unaware of how the state came to be 97% (nominally) Catholic.
Mick Fealty @ 08:56 AM
I would also like to point out that mary lou of sf is yes herself a proud graduate of Trinity, it is the best university in ireland, stronghold of irish unionism, what a joke! there isnt a protestant in the rep that believes in unionism, as ive yet to meet one, being protestant myself we were the original republicans!
while there is some truth in it,This is old info as well he talks about waiting for the 2001 census results! Protestants are much on the increase recently
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 12:50 PM“The Ne Temere argument seems a good one to me. Blame the mean spirited control freak priests.”
Ne Temere is almost without question responsible for most of the drop post independence. Kids changing religion will shred your population percentage astonishingly quickly.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 12:56 PMThe debate is beset with denial on both sides:
1. Protestant decline began in the 1860s with disestablishment.
2. Protestants were “cleansed” in the early 20s. That is not to say there were no other factors but this basic fact cannot be gainsaid. Church leaders were told by Collins himself that although the govt had no wish to lose them, they could not protect them either.
3. Ne Temere was not simply a Church matter. The Courts in the Tilson case decided to make the written undertakings formerly required legally enforceable.
4. The well known episodes of anti-protestantism, such as the Mayo librarian (oddly transplanted to Clare by this author) or Fethard are well known precisely because they were aberrational. The attempt to compare this to the sort of systematic sectarian discrimination that took place in the North is thoroughly disingenuous.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 01:48 PMThis article is a joke. Simplistically using and abusing numbers like that would be like saying that those Protestants that migrated to the North were doing so to move towards the discrimination, not away from discrimination.
For all its faults, the South was nowhere near as bad as the North, and was probably better than the average European state.
But then again, if you think the South was bad, then the obvious solution is/was to abolish North and South and create a 32 county republic with the necessary protections in the constitution. It should have been done then, and can still be done.
PS: Does anybody think Paisley wouldn’t object to his kids being brought up Catholic?
Apologies for feeding the troll, I just couldn’t help myself!
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 02:20 PMGeorge,
You might as well ask ‘why take the views of anyone you don’t actually know seriously’?
Interesting? Well yes, partly because it has a clarity that was often missing from the 100+ commenting thread here on Slugger. But also he is pointing out that the homogeneity that the Republic has enjoyed was generated by a set of dynamics that most of the population there have generally ignored.
Indeed FS’s argument about statistical presentation only seems to underscore the propensity for individuals to minimise the significance of the ‘problem’ and betrays a certain carelessness for the life of minorities within the state.
Let me re-contextualise it slightly in case this be misinterpreted as just a case of pointless ‘south bashing’. It makes absolute sense for Unionists who are genuinely interested in popularising the Union to take the idea that NI was a cold house for Catholics deadly seriously, and allow it to inform their future political actions. It is surely no less patriotic to raise questions about the past conditions for the Republic’s marginalisation of what was once its only significant minority, and similarly allow it inform their actions?
To be sure, the conditions that led to such a decline were complex, as others have argued, and like NI jobs discrimination, not all of it was down to the conduct of the state. It was the GAA for instance that removed Douglas Hyde as its patron, and whilst he was actually president of Ireland, for attending an international soccer match towards the end of the thirties.
It’s true too, that it has hardly given rise to the political turmoil that plunged NI into 30 years of darkness. And given the fact that that past dynamic appears to be in reverse, it is hardly a contemporary problem.
But at the very least, Irish society south of the border could do worse than attend to the past shortcomings of its own homogeneous character, if only with a mind to the better handling of an emerging diversity in its population.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 03:58 PM“Are we only talking recent times ? Sorry I thought we were talking since partition.” - Maggot
Hardly, since I gave the late Charles J. Haughey as an example of a Catholic who was educated at Trinity College - and famously burnt the Union Jack outside it during his student days in 1945. ;)
Yes, things have improved. Catholics no longer have to convert to Protestant religion before being allowed to enrol at Trinity, as they were required to do for the first two hundred years of the college’s inception. And despite the college now being close to 80% catholic, as the author is incorrect to cite his alleged (and unsupported) claim of anti-Trinity bias as being anti-Protestant bias since the college hasn’t been 100% protestant since 1878.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:06 PMIn his comment above Mick says pretty much what I think. I take the points about the presentation of the stats but I don´t think it lessens the force of what what I was trying to say. And I sure wasn´t trying to make make any sweeping comparison with things in the North.
I was just trying to draw attention to something I think isn´t thought enough about in the south.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:13 PM“Catholics no longer have to convert to Protestant religion before being allowed to enrol at Trinity, as they were required to do for the first two hundred years of the college’s inception.”
I don’t think that is true - as TCD was founded by Elizabeth to educate Catholics in Ireland .
Jimmy Sands - the Dispensary Doctor Scandal ?
The Hubert Butler Scandal ?Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:20 PM“It was founded by Elizabeth I in 1592 in an attempt to stop students going to the continent and getting revolutionary ideas or being influenced by the Pope in Rome. For centuries the college was the centre of Protestant religion and Catholics couldn’t join unless they accepted the Protestant faith.”
“It was founded by Elizabeth I in 1592 in an attempt to stop students going to the continent and getting revolutionary ideas or being influenced by the Pope in Rome. For centuries the college was the centre of Protestant religion and Catholics couldn’t join unless they accepted the Protestant faith.”
It is true. Google it. It only offered education to Catholics on condition that they stopped being catholic and converted to the Queen’s faith.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:29 PMPrinted twice so that it may sink in on second reading. ;)
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:31 PMAnd that brings up the old story of the Catholic who died and was being quizzed by St Peter at the Gates..."Hmmm...there’s a note on your record that says you went to Trinity College without your Bishop’s permission. I’ll have to check Higher Up before I can let you in.”
And the answer came down from Jesus Himself,"Let him in! I’m a Trinity man myself!”
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:37 PMI know it’s widely claimed online The Dubliner, but I don’t think it is true :)
As the whole point of it was to stop Irish Catholic Students being indoctrinated abroad, there wouldn’t have been any point in banning ... Catholic students - would there ?
If I’m remembering correctly it was closed to Catholics in the 17th century - for it’s first few years it was open to Catholics - but the rebellion and battle with the Spanish etc changed
everything?For all the talk of discrimination by the early 20th century Roman Catholics outnumbered Anglicans in the fields of law and medicine.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:53 PMAislingeach, don’t worry so much about oddball bishops. Oddly enough, the businessmen didn’t when they knew that condoms would sell here despite the bishops being agin ‘em. They’re richer; and the folks who said “they won’t sell because the church says...” are considerably the poorer.
Mick, unless you’re arguing that the GAA removed Douglas Hyde as its patron because he was a protestant who attended an international soccer match but would not have removed a catholic president for the same reason, you don’t have anything at all supporting your assertion that the south was a “cold house” for religious minorities. A cold house for non-GAA supporters, but let’s not confuse the idiosyncratic policies of private sporting organisations with the missing evidence of alleged protestant discrimination in the south that is the focus of this thread.
Vague platitudes such as “learn from past mistakes so that we may do better” are all grand sounding but remain vacuous rhetoric without concrete examples of what exactly it is we are supposed to learn from – and if, indeed, we didn’t do best first time around.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:56 PMMaggot, I’m not arguing with someone who won’t accept facts. I get enough of that from my local tax inspector… oh wait, I said facts.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:58 PMDr Moynihan has a lot to answer for aisling ;)
http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article-brendan-kennelly.htm
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 04:58 PMMaggot,
I’m not sure what you mean by dispensary dotcor “scandal” unless you’re referring to Dev’s remarks about the Mayo case. As for the Butler “scandal”, if this is really represents the depth of southern sectarianism then I think you make my point.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 05:09 PMThe Dubliner - the dispensary doctor scandal?
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 05:10 PM“As the whole point of it was to stop Irish Catholic Students being indoctrinated abroad,”
I think you have your stories mixed up. I suspect you’re thinking of Maynooth, founded essentially for that reason (albeit a little later).
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 05:12 PM“Maggot, I’m not arguing with someone who won’t accept facts.”
This isn’t an argument The Dubliner - it’s a discussion. “Facts” are thin on the ground - there was a time when it was a “Fact” that the earth was flat and the sun whizzed round it :)
S J Connolly’s take on the history of TCD does not agree with your “facts”. He is Professor of Irish history at QUB, editor of The Oxford companion to Irish History.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 05:21 PMThe Dub,
It’s just an example of a marginalisation that was conducted routinely outside the aegis of the state, to extent of excluding the President of the State in the conduct of his duties. It’s a feature that is rarely discounted in the discussion of government in Northern Ireland 1920-72. Indeed Ulster’s unionist government is routinely held solely responsible for all discrimination that occurred on its watch: almost as though it were a dastardly invention maliciously and contemporaneously inflicted upon the northern minority alongside partition. That is, of course, is as ludicrous as holding the southern state completely responsible for the drastic fall in its Protestant population.
That’s why I couched my question in terms of southern society, rather than the southern state.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2007 @ 07:06 PMIf it weren’t for its Protestant population how would Leitrim field a team?
Posted by on Jun 05, 2007 @ 07:59 AMThere was definitely ethnic cleansing of Protestants around the time of the troubles, particularly in the Cork area, but this is to be expected in any time of conflict when one group is perceived to hold the wealth.
There was no systematic discrimination of Protestants in the Republic since then. If anybody can provide an example of a Protestant’s rights being denied by the ROI State system please do.
Animosity between Catholics and Protestants down south was based along class lines, not strictly sectarian ones.
Posted by on Jun 05, 2007 @ 11:45 AMMichael,
I must repeat an oft-stated criticism:
Your decision to hop in on one side of the debate sits uneasily with your definitive role as neutral forum moderator.Posted by on Jun 05, 2007 @ 05:17 PMUnlike lily-livered states such as Israel, in Ireland we didn’t content ourselves just with ethnically cleansing our pesky national minority during our War of Independence, we made damn sure to keep encouraging them to leave afterwards too. As a result we now have an ethnically and religiously homogenous population and feel able to pontificate to other states about their human rights records.,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
-Joseph GoebbelsPosted by on Jun 05, 2007 @ 05:25 PMNiall: so it was all to be expected, part of the game as it were. We don´t let others, Serbia, Israel etc, get away with that kind of discourse. Why should it be OK for us?
Objectivist: I only said it once!
Posted by on Jun 05, 2007 @ 06:51 PM
