THE views of a Catholic priest who said that his parishioners may be better off in the UK than the Republic are reflected by the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in Ireland, one of the church’s leading commentators has said.
Michael Kelly, deputy editor of island-wide newspaper The Irish Catholic, said that Fr Eugene O’Neill’s comments were “very brave” and important to a debate which he said had been going on quietly for some time.
In an interview with the News Letter on Monday, Glengormley cleric Fr O’Neill said that any priest of his age, 45, or below found the debate about a united Ireland “literally irrelevant” and that the United Kingdom was now arguably a less repressive place for Catholics to practice their faith than the Republic.
He described the Republic as now “a cold house for Catholicism” and said that many ordinary Catholics were “reassessing” the old stereotype that nationalism and Catholicisim had to go together.
Fr O’Neill’s comments follow last year’s Northern Ireland Life and Times survey which found that support for a united Ireland is at an all-time low, with only a third of Catholics saying that they wanted to see Irish unity in the long term.
Commenting on Fr O’Neill’s remarks, Mr Kelly said: “He’s very brave in what he’s saying from the point of view that a lot of people actually don’t want to face the reality.
“A lot of northern Catholics who obviously feel drawn towards the idea of a united Ireland, at least at an emotional level, will I think find what he has to say uncomfortable reading.
“But at the same time I think that if they actually confront themselves with the reality of the situation then I think they will see that he’s coming to a very logical conclusion.”
He said that senior Catholic figures were finding that just as doors close for them in the Republic, doors were opening for them in Great Britain and in Northern Ireland.
“If you talk to very senior people in the [Catholic] hierarchy in Ireland they will be under no illusion whatsoever that the current government in the Republic is very hostile towards the Catholic church in particular, at a time when they would say the doors that have never been opened to them in the past have been opened to them at Stormont.
“So I think he’s certainly reflecting a view which would be widely held among the hierarchy... northern Catholics can now say — and I think the hierarchy would say this — they can feel part of Northern Ireland and they can feel part of building a shared future.
“I would like us to move to a very healthy situation where Catholics could disagree about the national question and you could have a lot of Catholic unionists and a lot of Catholic nationalists and it wouldn’t simply be this headcount idea.”
Mr Kelly said that it was unfortunate that in the constitutional debate about Northern Ireland both sides broke neatly along religious lines.
“I think it’s a long time since any northern Catholic will have been able to argue with any conviction that the Northern Ireland state doesn’t treat them fairly.
“I think that has been a key turning point because if you look before the peace process, the strong motif always from nationalist politicians and some church leaders would have been that the northern state cannot be trusted to recognise the parity of esteem of northern Catholics and therefore that makes a united Ireland an imperative for practical as well as emotive reasons.
“That’s no longer the case. The British Government at Westminster level have shown that they are very warmly disposed towards the Catholic church — the warm reception Pope Benedict got in 2010 from the Government was remarkable.”
He added: “I think many northern Catholics will be taking a reality check and saying: Where best is my faith valued?
“So I think that what Fr O’Neill is saying is a very important contribution to the debate and a very important moment of setting aside emotional attachment and things like that and looking realistically at where things stand.”
