Apology is too little, too late
Further, to compare Protestants with Nazism was inexcusable.
President McAleese offered an immediate apology for the offence she has caused and I am prepared to accept it.
Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. Major damage has been done, and President McAleese has unwittingly aligned herself to the logic of IRA/SF who believe that Protestants hate Catholics, eg, the unionist government of the 1900s, and the so-called anti-Catholic police force, the RUC.
This unfortunate comment has added to the disillusionment of the pro-British people, Protestant and Roman Catholic, in Northern Ireland.
Add to this the biggest bank robbery in British history, allegedly carried out by the IRA, which has caused major upset to community relations in our country that will take decades to repair.
People now wonder who they can trust. I'm sure President McAleese realises that people from her religious community, and its leaders, have been inextricably linked with the worst expressions of sectarian terrorist violence western Europe has known in the last 100 years.
She needs to remember that in 1641, and again in 1798, the Roman Catholic Church her Church began teaching the sectarian doctrine of 'murder without sin', something Fr Denis Faul can confirm, having spoken to this effect to a meeting of students at Queens University, Belfast, in the 1970s.
Why has President McAleese chosen to overlook the refusal of her country's government to extradite the known terrorist murderers who were not only financed but protected by her state to the profound hurt of the pro-British people in Northern Ireland who suffered so much at their hands? I think it would be good if she would now apologise for this, too.
When her Church describes Protestant Churches as mere 'ecclesial communities', true Protestants are deeply insulted. Is this not also a case where the Roman Catholic Church teaches its children to hate Protestants? For a head of state to use half truths as if they were the whole truth is most hurtful.
In Northern Ireland we have tried to trust people from west Belfast only to have that trust betrayed. Sinn Féin/IRA asked for the trust of our people only to have that trust broken by them, both in their refusal to decommission totally all illegal weapons, and then in the Northern Bank robbery.
I find it difficult to express just how I feel at this moment as I try to understand why President McAleese said what she did say. And even before she made her apology last Saturday, to have such offensive language supported by Fr Denis Faul and, surprisingly, by Mark Durkan was unbelievable. What message are they sending out?
What on earth is going on in your country?
How can Protestant people be expected to have any confidence in a state whose head says such things? While I believe that her apology is sincere, it has definitely set back the peace and reconciliation progress what there has been by some distance.
In fact, like the murderous campaign of the IRA, this has set back any likelihood of a united Ireland by generations if it ever comes about at all. Protestants are still being portrayed as the 'bad guys' in the Irish Republic.
Surely President McAleese ought now to see that she cannot be a catalyst for healing and bridge-building on this island when what she believes deeply came out so clearly at this time.
There is too much at stake to have this happen again.
Dr JE Hazlett Lynch
West Tyrone Voice Victims' Organisation
Grange Court
21 Moyle Road
Newtownstewart
Co Tyrone
