The Catholic clergy, particularly the hierarchy, has in general maintained that the final resolution to the "troubles" lies in the "peaceful" reunification of Ireland. Given each side's distrust of the other, this is not a serious approach to peace. It is not reasonable to call for peace one moment and in the next propose a solution that is unacceptable to Protestants. Thus the clergy tends to suggest to the Catholics that the only final solution can be unification and, in doing so, unfortunately echoes the IRA.
The parallel is not overlooked by Protestant extremists, who use it to justify their claims of Catholic disloyalty and subversion. Catholic demands for civil rights and economic parity are therefore easily dismissed by Protestants, not so much out of disbelief, as out of an unyielding conviction that any concession moves Ulster closer to Irish unification. The great fear of the Protestants is "Rome Rule," the religious tyranny and destruction of democracy they consider synonymous with Catholic rule. In its insistence on controlling many aspects of Catholic life, including its positions on divorce and birth control, and in the special relation to the state it maintains in the south, the Catholic Church has done little to dispell these notions.
As a result, the Protestants suffer a basic insecurity, which creates a "siege mentality." They see themselves as a the potential victims in a political vice, caught between a Catholic majority they fear and a British government whose committment to Northern Ireland they mistrust.
The UDA and the UVF consequently have more direct sympathy among Protestants than the IRA does among Catholics, because they are seen as the final guarantors of Protestant ascendance. They have managed to legitimize themselves in the eyes of many by claiming to protect the same "order" the police and army uphold. But, in fact, neither group will tolerate a government that concedes any power to Catholics. If the British government should compromise the Unionist cause, the UDA and UVF can be counted on to react with violence, their professions of "loyalty" and "order" notwithstanding.
Like its Catholic counterparts, the Protestant clergy has reneged on its duty. They have failed to rid their pulpit exhortations of blatant political intolerance. Extreme evangelical ministers--one example is the notorious Ian Paisley--have refused to lay aside the 17th century, and continue to thunder against the abominations of Catholic theology. The more moderate preachers are guilty of too often offering a blanket condemnation of the terrorists (i.e. Catholics), without looking critically at Protestant extremism, the chauvinism of the Orange Lodges, or the conduct of the security forces. Again, the effect is to reinforce indirectly the violent premises of the paramilitaries.
The main Protestant mistake has been to confuse democracy with loyalty, and so make the latter a precondition to the former. The main Catholic mistake has been to confuse unification with Catholicism, fueling the fears of the Protestants. This has led to a political violence little understood outside Ulster: an intense, brutal fratricidal violence. The divided religious sympathies of a single working class are at its root. These have been distorted in a tragic process of political misapprehension.
In conversations I had with people throughout Northern Ireland, I asked repeatedly whether they desired peace, and the answer was inevitable "yes." But what they said they would sacrifice for that peace, how much of their own political philosophy they would passively set aside to end the violence--that was an entirely different question.
Part II: The British Dilemma.
Christopher Agee worked last summer in the Ardoyne, a Catholic area in Belfast.