THE STATE visit of Queen Elizabeth to the Republic last week was a recognition that the Northern “conflict was never primarily a religious or confessional conflict but one caused by the tensions between Britishness and Irishness”, the Catholic auxiliary bishop of Down and Connor Dr Donal McKeown has said.
It was “part of the ‘long, complex and . . . often . . . turbulent relationships’ between two nations, most painfully incarnated in Northern Ireland”.
“For decades the narrative about Northern Ireland has been that it was an incomprehensible medieval conflict between the two warring groups – the Catholic tribe and the Protestant tribe.
“Foreign media reports were laced with references to religious fanatics attacking each other. The North, and especially Belfast, was portrayed as one more example of the pernicious role of religion, dividing people and even motivating them to kill one another,” he said in a personal reflection on the Queen’s recent visit.
What had happened “was not two states trying to circumvent the results of religious fanaticism. It was two peoples accepting how their enmity and coldness had cost so much blood . . . Religion was used as a weapon in the ebb and flow of that brutal tide of violence.
“But it was good to see civic authorities publicly acknowledging where the core problem lay,” he added. “The events of last week were led by two heads of state, both women of faith. Without talking about either religion or their own personal beliefs, they had the imagination and the courage ‘to bow to the past, but not be bound by it’, a chance to acknowledge ‘that while we cannot change the past, we have chosen to change the future’.”
Mrs McAleese and Queen Elizabeth “had the conviction and humility to be leaders”, he said.