A former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has said that "the suspicions and disquiet in my heart about Roman Catholicism run deep".
Writing in the current and first anniversary issue of Ceide magazine, Dr John Dunlop explains that he was born outside Newry and educated there.
Roman Catholicism manifested itself everywhere in the town. "The whole organisation seemed hostile to me and to the church of which I was and am a part and to the political option of unionism within which I was raised. I was not part of you [the mainly Catholic readers of Ceide], or you of me."
He has come some way since, "but believe me the journey has been decades long and has not always been easy".
One visual expression of profound "otherness" for him in Newry was the Dominican chapel on Dominic Street "on the other part of the town from that part which I normally frequented". Last January he was invited to preach at the chapel and was warmly welcomed by the Dominican community there. The experience led him to feeling "a deep sense that `otherness' had been overcome. This was not an `away' match but a `home' match in my hometown . . ."
Dr Dunlop felt it would be difficult to overestimate the seminal significance of such occasions. They run counter to much that presses people in the North in the opposite direction towards division, he says. "One needs to understand that this alternative experience is unknown and alien to most Presbyterians for whom Roman Catholicism remains profoundly `other'."
Newry is a town where Protestants no longer build or buy houses, he says. "Many have felt the chill factor so deeply that they have moved away." It is in such places that the politics of peace has to be made to work.
There are others. Less than 100,000 people, out of Northern Ireland's 1.5 million population, live in integrated communities where the mix is between 10 to 50 per cent, he says. "We are describing a demographic disaster, which spans social classes."
Belfast is becoming a city "with a Roman Catholic/nationalist/ republican majority". Protestants were choosing not to live in many areas of the city, including upper and middle-class areas. On top of this there were the tensions and divisions within the Protestant/ unionist community following the Belfast Agreement. "In that situation it is inappropriate to encourage strategies of humiliation."
But, consequent on the agreement, he believes "we have the opportunity to become the subjects of our history and not the objects of the policies, duplicity or violence of some other people". The constructive challenge to political parties in the Assembly who have gained enough seats to warrant ministerial posts was whether their politicians are up to the challenge of giving constructive leadership to the whole community and not sectarian leadership to a part of it. It is in this sphere of life "that the alternative modelling across division becomes a priority for the churches and that at local and not just national levels", he says.
