In Fitzroy Presbyterian church on Wednesday night we were granted a grim and unwanted insight into the troubled soul of Northern Ireland, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
The public question-and-answer session with the independent witnesses to decommissioning, Fr Alec Reid and the Rev Harold Good, was designed as a healing, confidence-building exercise. It was organised by good, well-intentioned people. But all it accomplished was hurt and anger that can't but upset the structures shakily holding politics and community relations together.
The after-shocks of President Mary McAleese's "Nazi" reference to how Protestants reared their children are still being felt in Northern Ireland at a subterranean community level. The last thing Northern Ireland needed was another such moment but it got one of seismic proportions in the church.
Reasonable people should not doubt that Fr Reid is a decent man. His role as go-between in helping achieve the IRA ceasefire of 1994 can't be gainsaid. Prior to decommissioning he did his work quietly and behind the scenes, shunning the press and the public spotlight.
That was wise, because it was evident on Wednesday night that he lacks the diplomatic savvy other people in the public eye have developed over years of hard experience. Fr Reid was indeed baited by Willie Frazer of the Protestant victims' group, Fair - Families Acting for Innocent Relatives - and by others in the audience, but his reaction was disastrous.
Observing the angry exchanges between Fr Reid and Mr Frazer was to witness in microcosm the irreconcilable dynamics that drive and twist Northern Ireland.
Mr Frazer turns up regularly at such events. On a one-to-one level he is a personable, amenable man, but he is a deeply troubled individual, and for good reason.
His father, two uncles and two cousins were murdered by the IRA in south Armagh and Willie Frazer will never be able to let that go. Could anybody?
The answer to that is that many people in Northern Ireland, with great difficulty, have put some of the tragedy of the conflict that afflicted them personally behind them.
But it gnaws away at Mr Frazer and at many others like him from both sections of the community in the North. How could it not?
When Mr Frazer opened up on Wednesday night, he did so in a reasonable manner, but he quickly became angry, as he invariably does on such occasions. How could he possibly believe the word of a priest from Clonard Redemptorist Monastery in west Belfast where "weapons were fired and where a priest at funerals had spoken about IRA heroes", he asked.
Other people in the audience joined in, questioning the reliability of the clerics and the decommissioning body's conviction that the IRA had fully disarmed. Another speaker said there could be no hope of progress until Orangemen were free to march along the Garvaghy Road, the Ormeau Road and in Dunloy.
It was too much for Fr Reid who, as he has admitted, lost his temper. Just as Mr Frazer is an old-style unionist, Fr Reid is an old-style nationalist.
His deeply felt views are like the comments you might have heard from your father or grandfather in Kerry or Dublin or Offaly that the unionists are the sole authors of the Troubles, that there isn't an IRA member with a sectarian bone in his or her body, that the IRA was merely fighting to achieve a united Ireland in order to end unionist oppression against nationalists.
That's a difficult analysis for many to take because it suggests that most or all of the 1,800 or so people killed by the IRA were killed solely because of unionist oppression. It also seems contrary to the Christian philosophical or theological notion of individuals taking individual responsibility for their actions.
It also seems contrary to the contention that while unionist discrimination in terms of jobs, votes and housing may have helped create the IRA why did the IRA not stop in, say, 1974 when the discrimination and oppression argument was largely won?
Anyway, Fr Reid under pressure lost the run of himself on Wednesday night. Some unionists in the audience were afraid to hear the truth, he said. There would have been no IRA but for the way unionists treated nationalists. "They were treated almost like animals by the unionist community," he accused. "They were not treated as human beings. . . they were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews."
It was downhill after that and so it will continue for a while. The row rumbled on yesterday, on radio, on TV, in homes, in bars. "Well, wasn't he right?" was the comment of some nationalists. "Well, we didn't invade Poland," was the reaction of some unionists with a finely honed charitable sense of humour.
But generally the understandable unionist reaction was reflected in the quiet comments of a former woman RUC officer in the audience on Wednesday night, whom the IRA had tried to kill. "I am not a Nazi, and you should be ashamed of yourself," she said to Fr Reid.
And so it will continue at the social level. As I said, Wednesday night was about trying to get beyond the tribal stuff.
Instead, words said by a well-intentioned man made people angry, agitated and miserable. His words fuelled the sectarian fire.
It also caused political damage. It has undermined the credibility of Fr Reid and also of Mr Good. It was like manna from heaven to the DUP. "An own goal," said Ian Paisley jnr, almost gleefully.
How could any sceptical unionist place any faith now in the words of Fr Reid when he thinks unionists are at the same level as the Nazis who murdered six million Jews, was the potent line from anti-agreement unionists.
We're not talking terminal social or political damage here, but the row could not have come at a worse time for the peace process. We are at a critical point. Unionists have been asked to trust that IRA decommissioning has taken place and were presented with Fr Reid as one of two independent witnesses to that event.
The views he expressed on Wednesday will simply give ammunition to those reluctant to accept decommissioning as a fait accompli.
Fr Reid has apologised, but common sense tells you that likening unionists to the way the Nazis treated the Jews can't be brushed off by an apology. What's said here can't be unsaid, unfortunately.
Words matter in Northern Ireland. They can cause terrible hurt.