Ulster Protestants, especially those of previous generations, feared a united Ireland! Their fears were well based and succinctly expressed in the slogan of our forefathers in the early years of the last century when they mustered together to resist by every legitimate means the imposition of a Dublin-led 32-county Irish state, with Protestant Ulster being thus forced out of the United Kingdom and deprived of their British citizenship.
That slogan was ‘FOR GOD AND ULSTER’.
The place given to the Roman Catholic Church in the 1937 Constitution’ of the 26-county ‘Irish Free State’, which became the Republic of Ireland in 1937, illustrates that the prominence given to Popery was exactly that which our forefathers recognised would be so.
For them, the issue was essentially a religious one. Again they adopted a slogan to give expression to opposition. ‘HOME RULE IS ROME RULE’. What they feared became a central feature of the Dublin-ruled 26 counties.
At the partition of Ireland in 1922, 92.6% of the south’s population were Roman Catholic while 7.4% were Protestant. By the 1960s, the Protestant population had fallen by half, mostly due to the enforced emigration of those Protestants terrorised out of their homes and properties by the IRA in the early years of Irish independence. Most, if not all, moved into Northern Ireland.
Roman Catholicism was given an undefined “special position” on the basis of being the church of the majority. As an act of ‘window dressing’ in the 1970s, that “special position” provision was removed from the Constitution. The decision was ratified by a referendum which had a %50 turn out with 721,033 saying YES and 133,430 saying NO.
During the 1950s the Catholic Integrist group Maria Duce, led by Irish Catholic priest Denis Fahey, launched a campaign to amend the original “special position”of the Constitution of Ireland.
Fahey argued that the status given to the Roman Catholic Church was insufficient and that the Constitution should recognise the Catholic Church as being divinely ordained and separate from ‘man-made’ religions. The campaign succeeded in securing some support but made little progress. It did show the position that Rome thought should be hers.
The decision to amend the Constitution and remove the “special position” of Rome, was mere window dressing promoted by the ’spirit’ of Ecumenism then rampant in the mainline churches. That ‘spirit’ being pro-Romanism, was very much pro-united Ireland!
It is still very much so!! (more…)