"Too many generations have passed since we faced religious division on that scale. If an engaged couple of different denominations here faced a Catholic priest who insisted their children be brought up Catholic, they'd laugh in his face and go find a priest with a brain."

Not that many generations, especially when it comes to "mixed marriages". My mother-in-law's family were years getting over it when she married a Catholic. And thta was in England.

But the division in Northern Ireland can be seen as analogous to the black/white division in America - it's an essentially superficial and irrelevant difference, pigmentation or religious affiliation, dividing people who are remarkably similar in what really matters, but it's been made a marker for where any individual fits into a society divided by history and injustice.