I do not think I had a very clear understanding of the doctrine of transubstantiation when I made my First Communion. I do remember, vividly, the day itself. Not just the long white dress and floaty veil, but the exaltation of feeling especially virtuous, the smiling pride of my parents, the security of knowing that - if I continued to be good - I would go to heaven. At that age I already knew this was a privilege to which children of other faiths were not automatically entitled, writes Mary Holland.
It is a very long time ago and the whole climate has changed. I had no intention of writing about the experience until I read reports about the continuing dispute surrounding the teaching of religion at the interdenominational gaelscoil in Dunboyne, Co Meath. This whole episode has provoked a strange sense of deja vu for other reasons.
One of my main concerns in making decisions about my own children's education was to try to avoid the mistakes which my parents, through no fault of their own, had made about me. When the time arrived for my children to go to primary school I was no longer a believer, and was determined that they should not be taught any form of denominational religion.
Accordingly, when their father and I went to enrol them at a Church of Ireland school in Dublin (this was the late seventies and as close as we could get to an integrated school) we asked what the story was about religious teaching.
The principal told us that, because there were children of many denominations in the school, the Church of Ireland authorities had decided that instruction should be of a general kind, the stories of the world's great religions, the place of the Christian tradition and so on.
It came as a bit of a shock some time later when my daughter came home and told me that some of the other children in her class were having special lessons to get them ready for their First Communion. What was Communion? Why wasn't she getting it?
I went to see the principal. He told me that a group of Catholic parents had requested that instruction for First Communion should be given to their children in school hours. He had pointed out that this was a Church of Ireland school. When they insisted, he sought advice from his superiors and was told "to keep his head down". I was particularily struck by the phrase.
In what now seems a rather self important way, I wrote an article about it for The Irish Times, reporting that at this Protestant school in Dublin the only denominational religious instruction being given to pupils was about Roman Catholic doctrine. Later I learnt that the article was a source of great embarrassment to the then Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Henry McAdoo, although he did not comment then or later.
A quarter of a century later we have virtually the same situation occurring in a school which is inter-denominational, where the principal and a majority of the parents have agreed on the best way to protect the interests of all the children, Catholic and Protestant - viz, that denominational religious instruction should be given outside school hours.
Have we learnt nothing from the past 30 years in the North? Just two weeks ago a report published by the University of Ulster showed that Northern children of primary school age already identify with one community and express sectarian views about the other. Even more shocking, these attitudes are reinforced by what they learn in their first two years in segregated schools. Those who campaign for integrated education believe that bringing children together from primary school on is the only way to stop this happening.
There is a fearful complacency down here that we have provided a fine, warm house for Protestants. Whenever anyone suggests otherwise, there are always a few celebrity Prods ready to write to this newspaper about how positive their experience of living in this State has been.
We only hear about the downside in private conversations. There are the relatively small hurts of being made to feel different - the Protestant father in a mixed marriage who is not able to take the sacrament when his children make their First Communion.
There are political implications. In the Border counties of Cavan and Monaghan, many members of the Protestant minority feel almost wholly excluded from the political and social institutions of the State. I have been told of deep resentment about the lack of Protestant representation on the boards of vocational schools, the way their community's historical experience hardly figures in school curriculum or in our national museums.
The whole point of multidenominational and integrated schools is to give all our children an equal sense of belonging. An Foras Patrúnachta, the governing body of schools where children are taught in the Irish language, must (surely?) see this as a particular and precious responsibility. The decision it makes about the principal of its gaelscoil in Dunboyne will send out a powerful message to all minorities living on this island.