A chara, – Julie Parsons gave an interesting account of the "lost Protestants of 'Kingstown'" (Weekend Review, June 3rd).
I can well understand the apprehensions of those who “felt unable to live in an independent Ireland dominated by the Catholic Church”. Their confidence had been shaken by Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and further by the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1870, but they still had the security of living in a kingdom where the monarch was head of the Protestant church, and who could never be Catholic. Breaking that link must have seemed the last straw.
Is it politically correct to point to the other side of the coin which Julie Parsons describes? Catholics in Ireland had experienced life in a non-independent Ireland dominated by England and by the state-established Church of Ireland for some centuries. Between 1691 and 1759, 60 penal statutes were enacted for the suppression of “Popery”; a system of “charter schools” was set up (by royal charter) to take children from Catholic families and educate them as Protestants; and Catholics were forced to give financial support to a church to which they did not subscribe.
One can appreciate the misgivings of the Protestants of Kingstown and elsewhere as their dominant status lost its foundation.
Perhaps fears would have been assuaged had they known that the first president of the Republic, elected unopposed, would be Douglas Hyde, son of a Church of Ireland rector.
I have worked and prayed for the day when the Anglican communion and Catholics will be reunited.
Perhaps I may see this in my lifetime.
On January 17th, 2017, the Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a statement on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation: “Those turbulent years saw Christian people pitted against each other, such that many suffered persecution and even death at the hands of others claiming to know the same Lord.”
I cannot recall an acknowledgment by a reform church in Ireland of the serious discrimination against the majority Catholic population in the past.
Would such acknowledgment help smooth the way to reconciliation? – Is mise,
PÁDRAIG McCARTHY,
Sandyford,
Dublin 16.