The hypocritical way that a divided society lives together
Published on April 26, 2004 By O G San In International
I've just moved to South Korea.

As with every other time that I've left Ireland, I'm struck by how frequently people ask me my religion when they find out where I'm from. "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?" is often one of the first things which a new acquaintance says to me. No matter how often I'm asked this question, the enquiry always jars. In Northern Ireland (NI) such a direct question is considered rude, not to mention dangerous. No-one in NI ever asks someone they've just met "what foot do you dig with" it's simply verboten.

But knowing a new acquaintances' religion, or rather their religious background, is a crucial piece of information for many people in NI. Many feel uncomfortable around someone new until they are able to establish if they are "one of us" or "one of them". Given this attitude, the question "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?" ought to be the first thing that we ask, if we're being honest about what we want to know.

Instead we don't ask at all. Why? Because to bring up religion with someone you've just met could immediately open a can of worms, it could precipitate an argument, or even worse. So, over the years NI people have developed a way of establishing a strangers' religion without having to ask them directly. Once you know someone's name, where they live and where they went to school, you can establish their religion with, I would guess about 90% probability, maybe even more.

Most NI people size up new acquaintances in this way, almost by instinct. Even if you didn't want to know someone's religon, you'd probably find out anyway. After all, you can't very well not tell someone you've just met what your first name is. Of course people outside of Ireland can't be expected to know all this so, when they about religion they're only being curious, not rude. But still the enquiry sounds discordant to my ear, it's as if a person I had just met had asked me how much money I earn.

This convention about not asking someone their religion is at once entirely understandable and horribly hypocritical. It's hypocritical becaus we want to know, like it or not it matters, but we don't want to ask. It's understandable becuse it allows the two communities to get along without raising contentious issues.

Even after you've gotten to knwo a new person, the twin beasts of religion and politics are often eschewed by mutual consent. In "mixed company" it's always better "not to mention the war." As Seamus Heaney famously said "whatever you say, say nothing." So talk about yourself, or what was on TV last night, or the weather, but, for God's sake, don't ever bring up the fact that we live in a divided society.

And so, in many part of the North, people from the two communities get along fine as long as certain things are left unsaid. Individual Protestants and Catholics can know each other for years, become the best of riends, without ever broaching the subjects of religion and politics, in the same way that two Christian friends might never discuss sex.

Even those who others would class as bigots will often have friends from the other side. Some Protestnts for example, can live with a sharp dichotomy in their minds between individual Catholics whom they know and like, and Catholicism as a religion which they despise and fear. And vice versa.Such people often vigorously defend themselves on the grounds that "there's a difference between being anti-Catholic and anti-Catholicism" or that hardy perennial "some of my best friends are Protestants".

So our little hypocritical ways of trying to exist together serve a function. But they are also, I believe deeply damaging psychologically. As a society NI represses a lot of emotions. Partly this is the inevitable consequence of decades of violence which hardened the hearts and deadened the emotions. Those who lived through the worst of the Troubles in the early seventies needed to be tough just to keep getting up in the morning. In many ways, they deserve our respect for their stoicism in, only just, keeping society intact, under the kind of pressure which would have broken "weaker" peoples.

But partly too, we repress emotions becaus we learn, from a very young age, that discussing our emotions is dangerous and should only be done in certain "safe" settings. And that's what politics and religion in NI are, they're emotional, visceral things which many of us experience at a deep level. But we are socilaised not to give vent to these emotions for fear of causing offence, of disturbing the delicate verbal truce which is being observed.

I'm no psychologist but it seems to me that all this is deeply unhelathy. Repressing emotions is a necessary part of living through war but, we are thankfully, no longer at war. The mentality of the 1970s may have served a purpose but it has outlived its usefulness.

And here's where the hope comes. This autumn sees the tenth anniversary of the first paramilitary ceasefires. There is still a residue of violence, not to mention a massive amount of segregation, but things have indisputably improved. Slowly, very slowly, the relative absence of violence is encouraging a greater willingness to discuss religion and politics with those who don't share our views.

In a few years, eighteen year olds from NI will be heading to university having no memory of a time when bombings and shootings were a daily occurremce. Maybe in a few years time, one of these young people might approach another in the Bunatee Bar of Queen's University Belfast, Students' Union and ask the fateful question: "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?"

That, in some ways, would be progress.


Comments
on Apr 26, 2004
That would be a fine day. I love Ireland and when I visited northern Ireland in 1999, you could feel the tension. It was a year after the Good Friday accords. We went Easter weekend. We never asked about religion, but we were always told in various ways. In Cryprus on the other hand our taxi driver told us all about the conflict between the Turks and the Greeks. He even drove us up to the dividing wall. We talked about politics to him but not to our northern Irish hosts.
on May 28, 2004
OG San:

Ever read Tony Parker's May God in His Mercy Be Kind to Belfast? The introductory chapter relates to this same issue. Parker was looking for an assistant to help him with his interviewing process. Instead of finding out if the candidates were reliable, smart, and fit for the position, he was told things like "She's got a Catholic given name and a Protestant second name which means she'll be able to fit in anywhere." All the information that he was given was based on how well the assistant would be able to mask her identity to the community that she didn't belong to. Parker commented on the almost innate sense that the Northern Irish had for placing people into their particular ethnic groups. He said that the condition was contagious and there were times that he found himself wondering if the person he was speaking to was Catholic or Protestant based on their name, their primary school and the way they pronounced their Hs/Haitches.