Are Protestants closer to the ideal of model citizen than Catholics?
A study threw up surprising results on the accepted wisdom about Protestant aloofness
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin: faced with a new and unfamiliar political dispensation in 1922, southern Protestants had to juggle with a potentially disastrous disconnect. Photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times
The 1999-2000 European Values Study – which included a look at citizenship – came up with something surprising about Protestants in the Republic of Ireland. Analysts who studied the results concluded that while Protestants were somewhat less engaged in the political process, “… particularly in the realm of civic morality, they are closer to the ideal of the model citizen than are Catholics”. Why that might have been, of course, is a matter of conjecture – a fusion, perhaps, of high education levels, theological robustness, cultural imperatives – or indeed all that experience running parishes as mini-local government. Whatever the reason, it seemed to run counter to the accepted wisdom about Protestant aloofness from – if not active distaste for – independent Ireland.
But from an examination of the history of southern Irish Protestantism since independence from the perspective of a half-full, rather than a half-empty, glass, things look a little different. Much of the historiography and the literature has had a profoundly negative tone. That has coloured the view of this people as historically socially introverted, quiescent, hankering after a Britishness that was no longer theirs to share.