So the season for taunting the Catholics is here again.
What a pity the Protestant church leaders insist on this annual ritual. All the years of effort people put into creating better relationships between us all, and in the end the Protestant religious orders decide that enough is enough and this is Taunting Time again.
You might think that a Protestant Lord could get together with his Catholic colleagues in the British House of Lords and, for instance, come over before the Twelfth of July and stand together in the street to demand that these people behave in a civilised way during our summers. But no, not a single Catholic Lord would think of such a thing, even if a Protestant Lord suggested it, which he won't.
Any fear our Protestant friends may have that if Catholics get into positions of influence they will gang up on them is proved wrong by the crowd of Catholic Lords, Catholic Sirs, Catholic MPs, Catholic MEPs, Catholic publicists, Catholic business people, Catholic multi-millionaires, Catholic heads of Catholic universities, Catholic heads of states, who have stood by and watched The Month Of The Great Taunting come and go with disastrous consequences every weary year.
There is as much chance of those Catholics standing together for human rights as there is of the moon turning into green cheese.
One understands the position of all of these people who could have influence and do not use it. Even a Secretary of State, with all his powers of permission and refusal and the veto, has to shed whatever liberal views he had once he crosses the sea to Ireland. Protestant church leaders helped to elevate Paisley to be their religious and political leader, now they are content to enjoy the consequences.
Catholic church leaders have cowered in fear as long as any of us can remember – the fact of their belonging to the oldest and richest and theoretically most powerful religious body in the world notwithstanding. And whether our homes and our people will be raped or not will depend on people who helicopter in with plenty of weapons and not a single vote, two days a week, muttering.
It is impossible to understand the hold those religious orders like the Orange have on governments. Dublin cowers, London cowers, Washington watches slyly and turns away, but how do they get such power? Paisley has taken people away from church congregations, the religious-led Orange Order has taken away political respectability, unionist fundamentalists have taken away our industrial potential. So why have these people the power to command governments, churches, police, military, newspapers, broadcasters to bow before them? Nobody has yet answered that question.
But the power is there. The great historic holy houses of Armagh and Canterbury and York and the Vatican are discreetly silent before the power that emanates from the bottom of the Ravenhill Road and the meanest of the secret lodges. One word from the holy houses combined – and even a few words from any of them with enough guts – and much of the Taunting Season problems would be solved. Unfortunately, however, government leaders only condemn those whom they see as threats to their own power and Protestant church leaders refuse to condemn the religious Orders because they think they need them. Where would they be without them? And yet there must be few Orangemen and women who actually open the doors of a church from one year's end to the other. Most who go to church don't march. And most who march don't go to church.
The Taunting Season is based upon lies which the religious leaders must know are lies. The Presbyterians did not get their religious liberty after the Boyne, they were persecuted for nearly a hundred years after it, by the Anglicans and their government. So much so that the poor things created a revolution in Ireland against the London government and helped create a revolution in America against it as well. Presbyterians – or Catholics for that matter – did not create revolution against London because London gave them their religious and civil liberty, far from it. They rebelled for the same reason that other people rebelled, they were treated as third class people in their own country – or in the case of America, in somebody else's country.
And year after year you can tell them – outside The Taunting Season if you are wise – that King William used both help and money from the Pope and hosts of Catholics for his exploits at the Boyne, and that the same King – because of his Catholic connections – would not be accepted as a member of the Orange Order, but you might as well be idle.
There is a carefully cultivated ignorance among them which has done more to secure the British stranglehold on Ireland than any amount of wars. The wars are over some time, the ignorance goes on for ever.
Any solution for The Taunting Season? Persuasion? No. Agreements? No, they will break them, they always do. Intervention of respectable church leaders? You are joking, of course. Strong laws with decent and efficient police, judges and courts to enforce them? Well, yes, you have something there.
Impossible of course.
Why? Well, just listen to the words. "Decent and efficient police, judges and courts..."
You see the problem, don't you?
Must go out and taunt somebody.
It gets you places. They might make me an archbishop or something. Or a lord or something.
