The Irish Liberal is a vicious creature.

When the Catholics had the run of the place the liberal’s only plea was for tolerance. Now that the liberal is in charge, no opportunity is spared in sticking the boot into the Catholics.

The method is usually some perversion of mathematics.

Take the Angelus campaign. The liberal is scandalised that modern Ireland still has the Angelus on TV and radio. It is a complete embarrassment.

What would happen, for example, if you were in a pub after a match at Lansdowne Road drinking with some foreigner and the next thing the Angelus came on? Wouldn’t you be mortified? What would they think of us? It’d be like not having clean underwear on in the event of an accident.

So the Irish Liberal is determined to rid us of the Angelus.

The problem is that there is no rational reason to do it. The Angelus delays the news for a minute. So what? The public display of religious belief bothers no one bar the Irish liberal.

This is where the maths comes in. Each part of the Irish population is reduced to a religious group. Groups, let’s say, like: Catholics, C of I, Muslims, Presbyterians, Jews, Methodists, Buddhists, Hindus, Lutherans, Atheists.

There you are – ten groups. And sure the Catholics only make up ten per cent of them, so if there is anything going it has to be shared out equally among them all. How do you like that for logic?

Any recognition that Catholics make up 90 per cent of the population of this jurisdiction amounts, of course, to a confessional state.

We’re not talking about the Catholics burning down Protestant churches, mosques and temples here. We’re not talking about pogroms. We’re not talking about Catholics taking control of the national broadcaster.

We’re talking about two minutes of airtime that might, just might, convenience a few hundred thousand Catholics who still say the Angelus. My observation would be that this is the older section of the population.

The Irish Liberal would rather rob that section of the community of its two minutes rather than have any partisan religious display. We have to have an arid equality rather than find some other way to enfranchise minorities.

The truth is that the Irish Liberal is anything but liberal. In fact, the Irish Liberal is an intolerant zealot who despises anyone who falls outside the right-on, middle-European, café-culture, secular environment that he/she inhabits.

As Well As That. . .

Protestants beware!

The Protestant community have been slow to embrace the anti-Angelus campaign. Aren’t they an ungrateful lot?

Of course, the Protestants smell a rat. The secular warriors who want to liberate Protestants from the yoke of the Angelus despise all established religions equally.

You have to be some form of Zen Buddhist. They’re cool.

The Irish Liberal is now a friend of the Protestant. If I was a Protestant I wouldn’t turn my back.

The Dunboyne School disaster

There is a dispute going on in a Gaelscoil in Dunboyne that could have a profound effect on the future of Ireland and especially on sectarianism in Northern Ireland.

The school is inter-denominational. Five per cent of the pupils are protestant. The school principal doesn’t want religious education during the day because it means separating catholic and protestant children. He believes that the religious education should take place after hours.

He is completely wrong.

It is absolutely essential in Ireland, especially in Northern Ireland, that we end the system of denominational schools. The separate education of Catholics and Protestants is a disgrace given the history of conflict on this island.

The separation of young Irish people in their formative years when life-long friendships and social networks are established is, and has been, disastrous for Ireland.

The Catholic Church is opposed to ending the current system as it sees inter-denominational schools as a means of eroding its religious ethos and heritage. The suspicion is that inter-denominational schools will be a first step to eliminating religion from schools altogether.

If the principal and parents of the Dunboyne school get their way that suspicion will have been confirmed. It could well set back the chances of integrating education in the North for years.

There is no problem separating children for an hour or two at school. Kids must learn that people are different and that difference must be tolerated, rather than pretending that there are no differences at all.

I have a bad feeling about this dispute.