Fundamentalism thrives in North

AT the world atheist convention in Dublin last weekend, Labour Party Senator Ivana Bacik warned of “a creeping fundamentalism in Irish life”.

It is difficult to avert one’s eyes from the growing evidence that the most fundamentalist religious-political force in the western world, outside of the American far-right, is alive and well on this island. Though one of the apparently growing number of non-believers in Ireland, I do not, unlike Senator Bacik, believe this to be the Roman Catholic church.

Iris Robinson was a prominent member, and often spokesperson, of the DUP when she made her infamous remarks about the gay community.

The reaction of party leader and First Minister Peter Robinson, to the effect that her views were also “those of the Almighty” was far more outrageous and dangerous.

Though reported on in southern papers, I did not detect a sense of outrage from any of our establishment figures or newspaper columnists. This is not surprising. Leading unionist luminary for many years, Ian Paisley Sr received his honorary doctorate from the American Bob Jones University, a creationist and, at the time of Paisley’s conferral, an avowedly racist institution. Nelson McCausland, the last Assembly shadow minister for education was (and remains, in a different ministerial capacity) an ardent “creationist” too, committed to providing creationist “science” on a par with what he describes as “old science”, in the school curriculum and in the state’s museums. That the Republic should provide comprehensive subvention to religious schools, and yet not control them, is morally unsustainable and should, as Senator Bacik says, be ended. Yet maintaining a sense of proportion is important in this instance, if only for the sake of those who have suffered from not “creeping” but rampant fundamentalism for several generations north of the border.

Billy Fitzpatrick

Terenure

Dublin 6W