Catholic Priest clears his chest

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 08:18 AM

Fair play Fr. Reid for telling it how it is. Can someone please tell me why unionists are so bewildered by this lesson in history. No jobs, no vote, gerry-mandering, state murder(on both sides), blatent secterianism and bigotry, a protestant one party state for a protestant people, "Catholic women are no more than incubators for Rome" and who could forget the classic "the pope is the anti-christ" (wise words from our would be 1st minister). And people wonder what all the fuss is about and indeed where the "evil" provos came from? Cause and effect my dear friends!

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: ard mhacha
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 05:19 AM

Some remarks made by various Unionists politicians, Bertie Mitchell former MP for North Armagh stated during the Civil Rights marches 1968-69, " Rather than use Water Cannons these people should be taken out with flame throwers"

Former Unionist Cabinet Minister Bill Craig, urged his supporters at a paramilitary rally to compile dossiers concerning their political enemies, "because ultimately they would have to liquidated".

Paisley has on many occasions referred to Rome as running a"harlots church" RIP has built his career on over the top anti-Catholic rehtoric. After all those remarks attributed to Jews instead of Catholics would leave him open to arrest in any other country.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 05:17 AM

Can vouch for above.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 04:28 AM

No I really did not say or mean that.

I was just having a joke with Sweeney who always gives me a hard time when I get things wrong.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 04:14 AM

How about a little bit of current reality? ..... Yesterday's BBC - Northern Ireland Headline: ….. LOYALIST CARRY OUT MOST ATTACKS ..... Loyalists were responsible for almost all of the paramilitary-style shootings and assaults in Northern Ireland so far this year. ..... The new police figures show that loyalists were responsible for 57 shootings compared to three by republicans. ..... Loyalists also carried out more than 50 assaults, three times as many as republicans. ..... In 2004, loyalists carried out 95 such shootings and 64 assaults; republicans 12 shootings and 14 assaults. ..... ….. This site is hilarious. Loyalist Nazis being called to account for being what they pure and simply are ... Nazis. Its very entertaining watching the Nazis on the run while spinning an whining their total denials. I am a Catholic but not a Republican, but when I see the abuse Republicans have to take here it annoys me.Those guys were heading home to their families and to attend a funeral of a guy two went to school with and spent the best years of their life in an English jail for crimes they had nothing to do with. And the person above has more or less said they got what they deserved because they were arrested leaving England for an IRA funeral.Just reading some of your other comments in the last half hour,you really don't like the Irish, why so much hate ?

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 03:52 AM

I did not say guilty.
You did say they were not Republicans.
That is all I said or meant.
What did you mean about PMs?

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 03:44 AM

So they were guilty Keith in your eyes and deserved the years spent in prison. That has just about summed you up to me and I hope others to. Yes they were coming home to Jim McDades funeral. Jim was well known them as a friend. So good enough for those paddies, bang them up they knew a Provo.And as for getting my facts right, Keith If only you saw my pm's regarding you on this subject you would steer well clear of making that remark.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Oct 05 - 01:54 AM

Epopna isa right guest.
Its like in a pub. Make a twenty minute speech and people will not pay attenetion.

Make one point at a time, and be as brief as possible.

If Divis Sweeney can only bring up Birmingham 6 again, you know you have made a good one.

(Not republicans Sweeney? Were they not arrested leaving England for an IRA funeral? Do try and get your facts right)

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 07:20 PM

Still waiting on you to come back to me, maybe you have just started writing your next post. In that case it will take until next Friday before your finished. PM me, that's one to one. Just click on the blue pm beside my name,if you can't face the rest of them.We will take it from there.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Jimmy C
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 06:56 PM

Where in the world did this load of garbage come from ?. I have never heard anybody, especially protestant deny that catholics were discriminated against. I was discriminated against on numerous occasions and I will give you the details of a few of them.


1 - 7 kids went for a job, 6 catholic and 1 protestant. All 6 catholics possesed a senior education certificate., the protestant kid had quit scholl at 14 years of age (I know him), yet the position for a telephone linesman was given to him, the fact that he is colour blind should have eliminated him on it's own. He was the least qualified of all 7.


2 - I sold life insurance for one year (that was enough). I was given a district that was equally mixed, catholic on one side of the road and protestant on the other side of the road. After 2 weeks on the job when my name and address had been printed on the back of the insurance books, a number of protestant families cancelled their policies, not because they could no longer afford the premiums but because they "DID NOT DEAL WITH CATHOLICS", this was told to me to my face, and that my friend was in 1965/. One family told me to stay outside on the pavement as they did not want any catholic ever setting foot in their house. Not all cancelled, but enough did to make it not worth my while to continue as I was on commission.


3 - A relative of mine wanted to buy an old unused and abandoned church, with a view of turning it into an antique store. The owner was protestant, he had no trouble selling it to a catholic until he was visited by the local orange order and the local minister, who told him that if he sold to a papist he would no longer be welcome in the community / - and that was in 1986.


Please, please do not deny that catholics were discriminated against, because thay were. Did you ever wonder why so many catholics became highly educated and now are lawyers, doctors etc. The fact was that they had to stay at school because they would not get jobs in any of the main employment places such as shipyards, aircraft factories etc. The reverse is that the normal protestant was told that he did not really need an education because as part of the orange order he would be taken care off. What happened is the bottom fell out of the ship building and aircraft building businesses, leaving multitudes of protestants out of a job and abandoned by the same orange order that promised them so much. The reason why many catholics perservered at school is a direct result of discrimination, otherwise many would have left school to join the work force is they had any chance of getting gainful employment.


I am not comparing it to the jewish problem with nazism, but do not tell me that discrimination did not exist. It did and it still does.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 05:43 PM

I honestly don't think I have ever read a greater load of cock in my life. I could pull you to task on so many points here. Just for example please answer these few.
1. What top posts did Catholics hold here pre 1969. NAME THEM.
2. Protestants were held out of Queens University. NAME THEM.
3. The UVF just defended Protestants ! Justify this with further evidence, before I get tore into you.
4. What other priests were involved with Fr, Reid.
5. Protestant farmers were murdered in their fields. NAME ONE.
6. Regarding the Northern Bank robbery or McCartney murder state your proof NOW.
Awaiting your reply so I can get going. Your match awaits you friend. Christ, did you sit all day typing that load of cock.
Divis is waiting.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Peace
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 05:27 PM

"British Nationalist Party . . . this is the equivalent of the KKK."

I disagree, ard. They are the equivalent of the Nazis. The KKK are just kids in comparison.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Epona
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 05:23 PM

Guest above, please learn from Ard and stick to concise and clear posts.

Ard, as always you provide us with valuable (and readable) information. Thanks!

E

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 04:56 PM

Long winded reply dosen`t alter the fact that the British Nationalist Party were welcomed by the UDA when they came to Belfast, this is the equivalent of the KKK.
The facts are that from 1922 when Craigavon was given "A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people", [direct quotation by Craigavon the first Prime Minister of N Ireland,] the Unionists were given free rein by the British to govern in whatever manner they choose, and they made sure that the Nationalist people were held down.

The City of Derry with a 75% Nationalist population were never in control until the Unionist were stood down in 1972, this was the case in all Nationalist areas, the biggest surprise is how the Nationalist people suffered in silence so long, until the Civil Rights Movement in 1968 gave these long suffering people a voice.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST,Well said Keith, In Ulster.
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 04:20 PM

keith, Protestant silence in South feeds Fr Reid's Nazi fantasy LAST Thursday, I went on The Last Word to talk to Matt Cooper about the remarks made by the Redemptorist priest Fr Alec Reid at the Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast. Up until that time, I was depending on press reports which had played up Fr Reid's comparison of the unionist community to the Nazis. But Today FM played the actual tape which allowed me to put the affair in context - and to spread the blame more widely.Looks like there is more than one priest involved in this. The tape showed that Fr Reid did not deliver a carefully prepared polemic. He started by saying that unionists had persecuted Catholics for 60 years.That does not hold water, no proof anywhere of that. After some reaction from the audience, he said they had treated nationalists "almost like animals". He then backtracked a bit under pressure from human a rights activist and said that the Protestant community had not treated nationalists like human beings. But as the argument escalated, Fr Reid's responses became more extreme. He said that the unionists had treated nationalists the same way as the Nazis had treated the Jews, and that the Protestant community should be ashamed of its record. The performance did nothing to enhance his credibility as an impartial witness to decommissioning. Fr Reid has apologised for his remarks. That still leaves us with some lethal questions. * * * First, is there even a tiny grain of truth in what Fr Reid had to say? None whatsoever, even leaving the Holocaust out of the historical record. In September 1935, the Nazi state brought in the Nuremberg Laws, one of which, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour, not Catholic, prevented marriage between Jews and non-Jews. There was no such ban in Northern Ireland: mixed marriages took place all the time, without any problems, Likewise, the Northern state did not pass a "Reich Citizenship Law" removing Roman Catholics' right to vote. This is myth.Otherwise people like Gerry Fitt could not have been elected to Westminster. In Germany in 1936, Jews were removed from the professions like law, education, medicine. By contrast the Northern nationalist community is top heavy with solicitors, teachers and doctors, Catholics always held top posts. In 1938, Aryan doctors were banned from treating Jews. No Northern Protestant doctor was banned from treating Roman Catholics - the notion would never have occurred to even the most obdurate unionist. In August 1938, every German Jewish male had to call himself Israel and every Jewish woman had to call herself Sarah. Northern Ireland passed no law forcing Sean and Brigid to call themselves William or Daphne. Northern Catholics were not forbidden to sit in public parks and use public lavatories - nor were 20,000 sent to a Dachau-style concentration camp from which few emerged alive. Their businesses were not forcibly sold to Northern Protestants. Finally, Northern Roman Catholics were not subjected to a Final Solution, and sent to extermination camps as part of a systematic plan to eliminate them from the entire island of Ireland. Fr Reid was talking rubbish. Far from being treated like either animals or German Jews, Northern nationalists enjoyed enviable access to the British welfare state, including free health and higher education. Indeed, it was the entry of people like Bernadette McAliskey into QUB, and the growing strength of the Roman Catholic middle class (solicitors, doctors and poet laureates like Seamus Heaney) which fuelled the civil rights movement. Protestants were held out of Queens.By 1973 it had won almost all its demands. The Provo campaign was not about removing restrictions on Roman Catholics. It was a fascist campaign to force Northern Protestants into a united Ireland. The nearest thing Northern Ireland ever had to Nazis was the Provisional IRA.The Ulster Volunteer Force was there to defend Protestants. Against that general background, Matt Cooper's first question to me went to the heart of the matter. Did Fr Reid's remarks reveal the deep division between the two communities in Northern Ireland? My answer was that it was much more revealing of the attitude of Southern Irish nationalists. Fr Alec Reid is not from South Armagh. He is a Southerner. Now of course it is possible he simply went native and picked up his prejudices from Northern nationalists. But fair is fair. Not only have I never heard Northern nationalists sound off like Fr Reid in recent years, but I must admit I have seldom heard a Sinn Fein spokesperson speak in such tribal terms. In sum, I believe Fr Reid, like those Southerners who texted the programme supporting him, suffers from the deepest delusion in modern Irish history - that the South was a nice cosy house for Southern Protestants. And as I told Matt Cooper, the main purveyors of this myth are Southern Protestant spokespersons. Any attempt to highlight what happened to Protestants in the South between 1911 and 1980 - a period taking in the Ne Temere ban on "mixed marriages", the ethnic cleansing of 50,000 farmers, shopkeepers and artisans in 1921, the boycott of Fethard on Sea in the Fifties, and the sectarian contraception and divorce laws only recently reformed - will be instantly followed by Southern Protestants popping up in print, radio or television to profess themselves completely happy in the Irish Republic. * * * But professing happiness with the present Republic is to miss the point. We are not speaking about current discrimination - I don't know any Protestant in the Irish Republic who is suffering from discrimination at the present time, so there is no point in them telling me how happy they are. We are speaking about the historical memory of marginalisation in modern Irish history - because I don't know any Southern Protestant whose father or mother could have felt they were fully integrated into an Irish state run on Catholic lines. So why are so few Southern Protestants willing to stand up and say publicly what many of them still say privately: that the Irish state until recently was a pretty cold house for Protestants - just as Northern Ireland was a cold house for Roman Catholics? Why don't Southern Protestants put their family and historical memories on the public record so that Southern Roman Catholics can see that both communities, North and South, share some of the blame? In reply, my Protestant friends say either that it is easier to keep the head down, or, less honestly, tell me they are doing it for the "peace process". The first reason is honest, the second is hypocrisy. Far from promoting peace, it is precisely this policy of self-imposed silence on the part of Southern Protestants which allows Southern Roman Catholics to suffer from delusions of do-goodery, and to send righteous texts to The Last Word in support of Fr Reid. Southern Protestants who subscribe to silence may find it lubricates their social life. But they should stop pretending it serves peace. Facing the fact that 50,000 Protestants farmers and artisans were forced out of the South in 1921-22 is a vital part of the peace process.Many were murdered in their fields. Because it means that both societies have to shoulder blame. Silence feeds the kind of false history that lay behind Fr Reid's outburst. Southern Protestants should speak out and shame the devil. As the Bible says: the truth sets you free. Eoghan Harris Sunday Independant Just how can this be compared to Ulster? By Lindy McDowell [e-mail] 15 October 2005 TO wildly paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for one spokesperson of nationalism to lose the plot and call unionists Nazis may be regarded as a misfortune; for two spokespersons of nationalism to lose it and call unionists Nazis looks like a bit of a pattern emerging . . . What the hell is going on in people's minds when they say these things? Never mind what it tells us about what they think of their unionist neighbours, comments like those of Fr Alec Reid this week and Irish President Mary McAleese last January are a truly shocking insight into where they rate the crimes of the Nazis. And a truly disturbing reflection of the contempt they apparently feel for the suffering of Nazi victims. Six million men, women and children coldly, systematically butchered in the most horrific act of genocide in the history of mankind. . . . And that's regarded as being on a par with gerrymandering in Londonderry? It's not primarily Protestants that Fr Reid needs to be apologising to for his crass remarks. It's Jews. And if he needs any reminder why, he should read the powerful words of Alex Benjamin on pages 24 and 25 in this paper today. In his article Alex, who comes from a Jewish background, reveals that it's estimated that world-wide the number of people who bore the Benjamin name was decimated by almost half during the savage, bloody years of Nazi power. It sort of puts a housing dispute in Strabane into perspective. One of the arguments used in defence of Fr Reid this week was the line about how he had been provoked and that he came out with the Nazi jibe as a sort of unthinking knee-jerk. This is fair enough up to a point - the point is, though, that when most of us knee-jerk in an unthinking sort of way, what we come out with tends to be what we really think. And what has shocked so very many unionist people this week is not just the realisation that this is how Fr Reid thinks - but the suspicion that this might be how a much wider number of nationalists also think. Fr Alec's strange follow-up comments when he said that he was sorry and that he believed unionists acted the way they did because of Partition, only compounds this belief. His initial accusation was: "The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews." The reality is that the "unionist community" (I assume he means people like me) did nothing of the sort. The Sinn Fein spin on history seeks to align the experience of nationalists in Northern Ireland with just about every grievance, oppression, pogrom or, in the case of the Jews, wholesale genocide in history. The fact is that, not only was the experience of nationalists in Northern Ireland light years away from the horror inflicted on the victims of the Nazis, it was also light years away from the terrible injustice of the Apartheid system in South Africa and even (it might interest a few American readers to note) light years away from the blatant discrimination practised against African Americans by the American government in the 1960s. Yet all of these instances are routinely evoked by Sinn Fein as comparable. Sectarian discrimination did not exist in Northern Ireland. Or indeed to one side of the border. There were inequalities. But as I've pointed out in this column many, many times in the past, if a more accurate comparison with the experience of the nationalist working class in Northern Ireland is to be made, it's with the experience of the unionist working class. Hundreds of thousands of us grew up in similar circumstances. Nobody ever came to my father's council house door to assure him there was a job for him anytime just because he was Protestant. Nobody ever told my mother not to worry about her children's education because there would automatically be jobs for us all once we finished school. At no time was my family ever aware of any special privileges, advantages or state largesse that might come our way simply because we were Protestant. We did not treat anyone "almost like animals", Fr Reid. Like our neighbours, both Catholic and Protestant, we got on with our own lives. PERHAPS Fr Reid can explain this simple point. How is it that if the "unionist community" were treating their nationalist neighbours "almost like animals", we were all living in the same conditions? Surely if one section of the community had its jackboot on the throat of the other there would be what Tony might call "transparent and verifiable" evidence of advantage. In Northern Ireland the great swathes of the Protestant working class are proof that somewhere along the line that spin about the unionist community being privileged oppressors doesn't really wash. Along with hundreds of thousands in that community I was stunned and hurt by what Fr Reid, a man who has been built up as a paragon of peace, has had to say about us this week. I accept, though, that this does not necessarily make him a bad person. I even feel a bit sorry for him. His comments about unionists being like Nazis and about IRA bank raiders, which I know you agree with, being "whiter than white" are verging on that pecularily local syndrome - Troubles Tourette's. In fact he's put his foot in his mouth so much this week, he could even be in the running as a new Orange Order spokesman. And there may be a positive aspect to the row about his remarks. We have in Northern Ireland two sides of a working class community which have been often cynically manipulated and set at each other's throat. One side thinks they were badly kept down. The other side thinks they were equally kept down - and then demonised as the first side's oppressors. Isn't it time we opened a debate about this so that the reality of both sides' experience could be expressed? Wouldn't it be possible to do this in a way that involves plain speaking but avoids hyperbole, name calling and the trivialising of genocide? Above all, one that avoids demonising an entire side of the community? For where's the equality Fr Alec, when, to wildly misquote old Oscar again, all of us have been in the gutters - but only some are allowed to show the scars? Belfast Telegraph Fr Reid unveils true colours in surly knee-jerk reaction BEARING WITNESS: Fr Alec Reid, left, and Rev Harold Good at the news conference in Belfast when decommissioning was announced last month IT WOULD be tempting to dismiss the angry comments last week by Belfast priest Fr Alec Reid, in which he compared unionists to Nazis, as nothing more than the latest outbreak of Mope (Most Oppressed People Ever) syndrome - along the lines, say, of President McAleese's ill-judged and ill-timed remarks on World Holocaust Day, when she spoke of Protestants teaching their children to hate Catholics the way the Nazis taught theirs to hate Jews. Tempting, but wrong. Not least because Fr Reid was the Catholic priest chosen, alongside the Rev Harold Good, to witness the IRA's recent act of decommissioning. P O'Neill's statement at the time even spoke of how "we have invited two independent witnesses" to oversee decommissioning, a sweet little form of words which almost made it sound like an invitation to a tea party at Buckingham Palace. What these two witnesses say, as a consequence, is bound to come under much more intense scrutiny - a fact which the Rev Harold Good, the Protestant minister who observed decommissioning alongside Fr Reid, appears to have grasped with instinctive seriousness. The words also matter because of the context in which they were spoken. The Redemptorist priest and close friend of Gerry Adams chose to compare unionist behaviour towards nationalists to that of "the Nazi treatment of the Jews" at a public meeting organised to reassure ordinary Protestants about the extent and purpose of IRA decommissioning. Short of using a meeting of the National Women's Council to complain at women for getting a bit uppity these days and never having the dinner ready on time, it is hard to think of a worse example of someone saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was supposed to be helping the peace process "move forward", as that cuddly language we're all required to speak now would no doubt put it, and instead he plunged it right back into another bitter playground argument about who did what to when decades ago. Further fuel was added to the fire by an interview given by Fr Reid to the BBC's Hearts And Minds programme, in which he stated that he accepted the IRA's denial of the Northern Bank robbery; and refused to accept that the IRA was a criminal organisation. By the time the week was over, Fr Reid's hard-won reputation had plunged from that of a so-called "independent witness" to something more akin to a useful idiot. It's a fate which often befalls those who accept the IRA's word. More than all that, Fr Alec Reid's remarks cannot be easily dismissed or excused because they sum up perfectly a certain mindset deeply entrenched in Northern nationalism. He may have been provoked, as he claimed afterwards, by a hostile crowd in Belfast - and he may, like President McAleese, seem genuinely mortified at making such a spectacle of himself - but it is hardly a coincidence that what came out when he was provoked were these particular words and this particular sentiment. Just as wine loosens the brain and the tongue sufficiently to say what you are really thinking, so does anger. That was the problem. Fr Reid's surly knee-jerk reaction to criticism was not an outburst of political Tourette's syndrome over which he has no control. Rather it was the inner self of Ulster Catholic political culture unwittingly manifesting itself to those who were not supposed to see it. And what it revealed was the almost unplumbed depths of Northern self-pity and self-importance. It was not just some grubby, squalid little province in which backstreet thugs have been killing each other for no good reason other than their own moral degeneracy and sectarian resentment for the best part of three decades. Oh no, it was Nazi Germany revisited. Schindler's List with added fiddles. The Sorrow And The Pity dubbed into blarney. The Nazi metaphor has become a commonplace of republican discourse in the past 30 years, and why wouldn't it? Those who desperately crave legitimacy to justify their brutal terrorist campaign would inevitably try to root their actions in some spuriously-constructed narrative which painted them as the eternal victims, even when they were doing the killing, and their victims, even as they were dying, as eternal aggressors who were asking for it. Piece by poisonous piece, the lie slips into the general consciousness of an entire population and becomes unthinkingly accepted as orthodoxy. But to see a man of the church explicitly approving of the descent into paranoid delusions of victimhood, encouraging a persecution complex that was used tojustify murder, remainssingularly shocking. Of course, Fr Reid is not the first to grab hold of the metaphor like a life jacket when his argument starts sinking, and he won't be the last. And it not only nationalists who are guilty of making such over-the-top comparisons. The Taoiseach and Minister for Justice have both compared the IRA to the Nazis in their time. Rhetoricians on the left also habitually use the same fatuous analogy against their enemies, among them Harold Pinter, who last week won the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Pilger adopted the same line when he declared that "the current American elite is the Third Reich of our time", whilst that well-known human rights champion, Fidel Castro, has spoken in speeches of "Bush's Hitler-like government". The misuse of the Nazis as a general metaphor for anything of which the speaker disapproves is part of the dumbing down of discourse where everything has to be reduced to a sound bite, a cheap slogan, and to hell with the historical record. Only someone who was criminally ignorant of 20th-Century history could treat such a comparison with anything but contempt. Trying to hitch a ride to legitimacy on the back of the worst mass crime in history, when men, woman and children were butchered in their millions, and denied every right and dignity to which they were entitled, is the intellectual equivalent of presenting yourself at a refugee camp and pretending to be a victim of some natural disaster in order to con other people out of aid and compensation. Just because those who use the Nazi comparison are trying to con those listening out of sympathy and political backing does not make it any more admirable. It devalues 'To see a man of the church explicitly approving of the descent into paranoid delusions of victimhood is singularly shocking' the moral currency of the Holocaust. It turns the 'final solution' into an advertising jingle. The ultimate irony of last week's row was that Fr Reid was reported to have shouted at his detractors: "You don't want the truth!" If he seriously thinks there is any comparison between Nazi Germany and post-partition Ulster, then Fr Reid is open to an equally serious charge: "You don't even know the truth." Which trait is more unedifying is a moot point. Eilis O'Hanlon Sunday Independant Priest in 'Nazi' row briefed on IRA criminality ADVERTISEMENT JIM CUSACK BELFAST priest Fr Alec Reid, who has described the views of Justice Minister Michael McDowell on the IRA as "immoral", recently received two top-level briefings on the IRA's involvement in criminality, including one from the Minister himself. Fr Reid, who is a close confidante and spiritual adviser of Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, had "demanded" the meetings, which took place earlier this year, when the Minister attacked Sinn Fein/IRA after the Northern Bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney. Despite being briefed by the Minister and the Department of Justice Secretary General Sean Aylward, Fr Reid came away unconvinced and instead accused the British and Irish Governments of "black propaganda" against the Sinn Fein/IRA. The priest was chosen by the IRA as one of the two witnesses to its recent decommissioning. But his views, expressed publicly twice last week, has seriously undermined Unionist confidence in the IRA's "historic" act. Yesterday, DUP leader Ian Paisley shelved plans to have another meeting with the priest. A senior DUP source said "There was serious consideration given to meeting Fr Reid again to discuss the decommissioning exercise but there is little prospect of us pursuing that now. "His remarks likening Unionists to Nazis were appalling and hugely damaging to our perception of his overall outlook on society and our community in particular." Interviewed by the BBC in Dublin last Wednesday, Fr Reid said he believed the IRA when it said it was not behind the Northern Bank robbery, or any act of criminality. Asked about Minister McDowell's view that the IRA's criminality was perverting the democratic process, Fr Reid replied: "I totally disagree with him. He's misreading the whole situation." Further questioned about Michael McDowell's view that the IRA has turned from a heavily-armed private army into a lightly-armed enforcement wing of a revolutionary political movement, the Redemptorist priest replied: "They're not a lightly (armed) wing. I mean that's, that kind of thing really is, in my view, quite immoral, that kind of talk because it simply isn't true." When interviewer Noel Thompson asked Fr Reid if he did not accept the IRA was behind the Northern Bank and other major robberies, the priest replied: "No, well, I don't accept that you see. I mean, this is according to the Ministry for Justice down here. But, I don't agree with that." Fr Reid's comments about the "ministry" for justice caused disquiet in the Government here. Government sources have revealed that the Department of Justice responded to two requests from Fr Reid for briefings earlier this year. At both briefings, including one from Minster McDowell in person, Fr Reid was assured that it was the Garda's view that the IRA was heavily involved in criminality and, specifically, was behind the Northern Bank robbery. Fr Reid's rejection of the Government's view on IRA criminality has not, however, come as a surprise. According to senior sources, Fr Reid also rejected the same charges during his briefings in the Department. "It was like talking to a barn door. He just didn't get it," said one source. Yesterday, Mr McDowell did not wish to be drawn into an argument with Fr Reid. However, sources close to the Minister said: "In so far as he has cast doubts on the recent statement by the Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy that Northern Bank money has turned up in Cork, he should be very careful when heimpugns the integrity of people loyally serving Irish democracy." Fr Reid caused serious consternation in the North last Thursday after an outburst in which he said unionists had treated nationalists as "animals" and "like the Nazis treated the Jews". The outburst followed an exchange with Willy Frazer, a campaigner on behalf of the families of Protestants killed by the IRA in the Border area. Mr Frazer, who walked out of the meeting after the exchange, said yesterday: "Thankfully, the first two calls I got about this were from Roman Catholics. They both apologised." Unionist confidence in Fr Reid's standing as an independent observer of decommissioning took two major blows last week from his outburst at the public meeting on Wednesday night and on the interview on the BBC Northern Ireland politics programme, Hearts and Minds. Fr Reid adamantly refused to believe the IRA could be involved in criminality, saying some members could be "feathering their own nests". Sunday Independent When the naked hate is publicly exposed ADVERTISEMENT 'THE most generous thing I can say about Alec Reid," said Ian Paisley Junior on the BBC's Hearts and Minds on Thursday night, "is that I think he's lost it." Baby Doc then proceeded to lose it himself - refusing even to tut-tut when asked to comment on his colleague Sammy Wilson's statement at election time that those who voted for Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey were "sub-human animals". The offending words - uttered in a Belfast Presbyterian church where Father Reid was seeking to convince Protestants that they could trust his word on decommissioning - were: "The nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews." His face was hard: his anger full of righteousness, it was pouring out of his face. "He must be senile," said a charitable unionist friend on Friday morning. Like most of the population of Northern Ireland, she was staggered not just by this outburst, but by Reid's (pre-recorded) performance on the same Hearts and Minds where he explained that he knew the IRA had nothing to do with the Northern Bank robbery,yes right youand I know to the differ, because they said they hadn't and they never lied. Asked if they were "whiter than white when it came to criminality", he assented. Criticism was reserved for Michael McDowell, whose contention that the IRA is morphing into a lightly-armed revolutionary group was "quite immoral". My unionist friend wanted to find an excuse for Father Reid, for, like me, she has never forgotten the solace he gave us in 1988. Like millions of others, we had watched with sick hearts the footage of the long-drawn-out murder of two young Royal Corps of Signals corporals. Having driven into a republican cortege at a time of hysteria and paranoia that had followed an earlier loyalist attack on an IRA funeral, they were beaten, stripped and shot. Then - as a website for a military memorial garden in Northern Ireland puts it - Reid "arrived on the scene. One of the most enduring pictures of the Troubles shows him kneeling beside the almost-naked bodies of the soldiers, his face distraught as he administered the last rites. That act of humanity has never been forgotten." At that time, Reid was already a considerable player in the early secret days of the peace process - Tim Pat Coogan's "unsung hero" and the cerebral Martin Mansergh's "alpha and omega". From early in the Troubles, he had tried to save lives, whether by mediating in republican feuds, trying to resolve hunger strikes, or, in 1982, trying unsuccessfully to stop the IRA killing a kidnapped factory worker who was a part-timer in the Ulster Defence Regiment. So why is this paragon among peacemakers making such a comprehensive and destructive idiot of himself? Well, when this Tipperaryman decided in 1950 to become a priest, he chose to joined the Redemptorists. Notoriously harsh 'fire and brimstone' preachers, they were seriously nationalist. In the mid-Sixties he moved north to Clonard Monastery, which lives on an interface separating militant republicans and loyalists: it's hardly surprising that he became closely identified with his flock and acquired a jaundiced view of Protestants. Latterly, praised and feted, Reid has come into the public arena. A friend and trusted confidant of Gerry Adams for more than 20 years, he has become his ambassador to Spain, where he tries to persuade constitutional and militant Basque nationalists to unite.Then in the mid seventies there he was with those terrorists in Germany too. Davy Adams (no relation), commented that Reid's statement in June that Irish political parties (by being critical of Sinn Fein) were a greater threat to peace than the IRA was "one of the most ludicrous pronouncements ever". Yet Reid is physically and mentally vulnerable under pressure. Coogan records that among the "multiple stress-induced ailments that afflicted him" in the early Eighties, was complete blindness. So it was not kind of Adams to expose his friend (whom he calls the "Sagart") to long days watching weapons disposal and to intense pressure in front of cameras and interviewers. Reid's exposure of both his prejudice and his gullibility has desperately embarrassed the republican high command. Of course many republicans of the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever) persuasion equate unionists with Nazis. Were they not educated to shout "SS/RUC?" But it's not PC to say such things these days, and Reid has boobed. "His apology is irrelevant", many unionists have pointed out. "It's what he believes." Yet we should not forget Reid's 1988 shining act of humanity. And maybe his insult to Jews and to unionists (whose community - unlike the IRA - was anti-Nazi) will act as a catalyst in forcing into honest dialogue those two tribes in Northern Ireland who detest each other. Ruth Dudley Edwards Sunday Independent Local Jews angered by Nazi analogy By Claire McNeilly [e-mail] 15 October 2005 NORTHERN Ireland's Jewish community last night entered the volatile debate sparked by Fr Alec Reid likening unionists to Nazis, saying that Holocaust analogies are becoming all too commonly made. As the fall-out from the decommissioning priest's comments continued, Jews here urged both sides of the Christian community in Ulster to consider the enormity of the Nazi wartime atrocities before drawing comparisions with descrimination here. In an interview in today's Belfast Telegraph, Alex Benjamin explains how ignorance of the Jewish religion can spawn such atrocious comparisions. And Dr Katy Radford, of the Belfast Jewish Community, highlights the ignorance surrounding one of history's worst episodes of genocide. Belfast Telegraph. Keep it up Keith.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 01:00 PM

Today I went through all of William Frazer's press releases from the last five years, he is the clown that started on the priest at the open meeting, his sole purpose for being there. Not once does he condemn the murders of innocent Catholics by Loyalist Terrorists. One can only conclude that Mr Frazer does not view a Catholic life as being of any value. Much in the same way that the Nazi's viewed Jewish lives as having no value.Strange coming from a man that spent his early years playing Gaelic football and there is a photograph of him standing in Croke Park Dublin Holding the end of a Tricolour. Ah why oh why do kids have to grow up !

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 12:13 PM

A page of pain about a G_d forsaken land where the occupants are so busy hating one another that they can't see the blasphemy they use to justify their hate.

What a cosmic joke!

Hey Mersey, if you think the 'pool' is so good, do yourself a favor and buggar off over there instead of wallowing in pigshit Ulster.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 12:00 PM

I understand Keith if an Irish says he is innocent you have trouble understanding it. I somehow imagine you still have trouble accepting the Guilford four and Birmingham six were innocent ? If you read their statements all admitted they were members of the PIRA, none were even Republicans !

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 10:19 AM

Never faced charges.
How often you have cited lack of charges as evidence of innocence.
But you have TOLD us that you were an IRA man!

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 10:13 AM

Dear Keith. Sorry never faced membership charges of a prescribed organisation. Still live with a spotless police record. Yes had many dealings with the police, but then again so do many Catholics. You didn't need to be a member of the PIRA Your address was usually enough.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 09:21 AM

Many dealings with the police?
Well you were an IRA man.
You would have treated them worse.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 09:17 AM

Not sectarian in the sense that you would cheerfully murder any policeman or woman, in their home if possible.

But a protestant joining the police at least had a sporting chance of not being hunted down. A Catholic would be sure to be found out by you and killed.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 09:12 AM

Sorry Keith I did not state that figure you mention.I will leave it to the poster.I myself looked on a policeman as a policeman. It meant little to me if he was Catholic, Protestant or Jew.When did I complain about too few joining the police ? That is for another poster also. Had many dealings with he police, and memories still very fresh, never cared much about which church they attended !

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 09:01 AM

Keith the PIRA were not a sectarian force. No one was singled out for their faith, unlike loyalists. If you get a chance read the Green Book. These were the strict rules volunteers lived by.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 09:00 AM

Then you can not complain that there were too few Catholics in the Police.
If any had joined you would have killed them.

Now, is it true that there are only 5 protestants in the Irish police?
That would be less than 0.1%?

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 08:45 AM

Yes Keith members of the police and army were targets, we did not target because of someones faith ! Yes your right if someone joined the British army and came home on leave, be he Catholic or Protestant he was still a target. No I don't get cross with you Keith, it wastes my time having to correct your facts all the time.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 08:41 AM

woops

...read that intimidation by PIRA forced them to quit. (...

...Catholic lad who chose...

sorry,
Keith.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 08:38 AM

So Catholic RUC men were not targetted by IRA?

I am surprised. I would have thought that they would have been and have read that intimidation (Sweeney gets cross when my memory lets me down)

I do remember a 17year old Catholic lad you chose to follow family tradition and join the army.
On his first home leave the poor kid was executed by PIRA.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 08:34 AM

Dear Keith
I grew up in a street with TWO POLICEMEN living in it and never had a cross word with them. One Catholic the other Protestant. I grew up in mixed area. Until the Loyalists burnt out every Catholic family. Including the policeman !Funny how times change Keith, now protestant policemen are getting burned out of theiir homes in Protestant areas as reported after the loyalist riots last August, come on you must have something to say about that ? And ard I really love to hear that word COLLUSION mentioned no one on this seems to pick up on it when it comes up. Least of all the poster above you!

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 08:15 AM

We never were confronted with that problem all of those CathoLIC RUC men were posted to area were they were not known, I do remember an RUC man setting up one of his Catholic colleagues this was in Cushendall Co Antrim in the early 1970s.

That RUC man was in a loyalist organisation , Catholic RUC men had to have very thick skins, as a regular ex-RUC man keeps relating in numerous letters to the Irish News,they wouldn`t trust their Catholic mates with any information, regarding raids etc, seeing that the raids were generally carried out on Nationalist districts.

The IRA need not have bothered with intimidating those Catholic RUC men there was plenty of UDA,UVF etc in the RUC, the many cases of collusion with the loyalists murder squads and the various branches of the security forces bear this out.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 07:08 AM

Pre 69 I am sure all those things you cite were true.
Yet still, according to above post, one on twenty came from the minority community.

That number later went down because Catholic policemen were not safe in their own community. What would you have done to a Catholic policeman in your street Sweeney?

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 07:02 AM

Sorry but your wrong Keith. No they were not forced out by the IRA. Many of us know that the R.U.C. had their own Orange Lodges and many Catholics were subjected to so much verbal abuse regarding their faith that they left. This was pre 1969. Once the troubles kicked off those within the force were getting abuse in every station about the Catholic up starts, this being the Civil Rights movement.The hate of Catholics within the force is well known. I know many older policeman who gave me first hand accounts of this. So sorry that attack on the PIRA falls short yet again.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 06:29 AM

Don,
I meant in the context of the time.
Pre 69 we can all agree that the Catholic minority was being denied basic rights and legitimate aspirations by a sectarian and biggoted Stourmont government, yet the RUC had one in twenty of its strength from the Catholic community.
Not enough to be truly representative, but a good starting point to build on when the injustices began to be swept away.

Sadly, those Catholic RUC men were forced to quit, not by the government, the Unionists or the Loyalists, but by the IRA.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 06:19 AM

Thanks ard, just realised it after I had posted. too late by then. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 06:09 AM

Sorry to correct you Sweeney, but it was Lord Londonderry the owner of Mount Stewart a large estate on Strangford Lough who entertained Von Ribbentropp the German Foreign Minister in the Hitler Cabinet.

Von Ribbentropp along with Goering were friends of Lord Londonderry, the good Lord always had a Nazi flag flying from his yacht which was moored on off the County Down coast, he also had a swastika flying on the grounds of Mount Stewart, a statue of a Nazi stormtrooper which was presented to his lordship by the Von man is still in Mount Stewart.

The headlines in one of the local papers at the time was, "Nazi flags flown in N Ireland".

Retract Fr Reid all is forgiven.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 05:53 AM

Why do you think Fr, Reid is wrong in his remarks ? After all is it not true that Lord Craigavon Prime Minister of Northern Ireland flew the Nazi flag on his home ? And is it not true that he entertained Joachim Von Ribbontrop and other German officers such as Goering and senior S.S. in his home at Portstewart ? He also flew the Nazi flag from his yacht. This was the Northern Ireland Prime Minister well known for his hate of Catholics.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 05:21 AM

Good point Don. Well said

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 04:46 AM

Keith A,

If you could bring yourself to look at both sides of a statistic, you might find that "not unreasonable" is the wrong response to 5% catholics in a force upholding law in a country with a lot more than 5% catholic population.

It seems that your view of the situation is about as even handed as the RUC's performance of their role at that time.

Continued defence of the indefensible is destroying the credibility of the loyalist POV.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 04:14 AM

Merseybeat, put your next point across, I'm ready and more than willing.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Oct 05 - 03:21 AM

Merseybeat,
I would not take sides with you, but it is interesting to see something of the majority community's viewpoint here.
We have had the Nationalist agenda put before us over and over again by the very familiar names, so please do not allow yourself to be shouted down by them all. Most here would welcome seeing both sides of the issue.

(5% Catholics in RUC pre 69? Not that unreasonable)
(Perhaps protestants do not apply to be police in Eire? Unreasonable)

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Jimmy C
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 11:48 PM

The last line of the first paragraph should read " I know that none worked in the bakery, because up until 1960 they had a banner at the front gates that said "NO CATHOLICS NEED APPLY".

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Jimmy C
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 11:44 PM

Merseybeat,

Maybe there were only 12 protestants in the Gardai because only 12 applied for the job, it may be as simple as that.
IN addition to what Don asked I ask how many catholics worked in the shipyards, how many in the aircraft factory, how many in the Ormeau bakery. I know the shipyards did employ catholics, so also did the aircraft factory but not in numbers that reflect the demographics of the region. I know that none worked in the that said "NO CATHOLICS NEED APPLY".
I do feel that the nazi part of the statement by Father Reid was unnecessary and ill timed, but to be fair he also said that the unionists had no choice and that the catholics would probably have done the same if the situation was reversed. Please read the entire statement before selecting portions of it just to make a point.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 09:34 PM

Loyalists/Unionists say "We will not share power with Sinn Fein till the IRA give up the guns"

IRA announce that the shooting war is over, and order their men to cease fire.

IRA de-commission arms, as verified among others by a British general.

Loyalists/Unionists keep their guns, and say they don't trust the IRA, they don't trust the men who verified de-commissioning, and they don't believe that the guns have gone.

Who is acting in good faith, and who is blocking the peace process?

From here it looks like the loyalists/unionists, but I'm sure they'll blame the republicans.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST,Joe Mc Crory
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 02:27 PM

I see new figures out yesterday from N.I. office. regarding punishment shootings and beatings. 98% by Loyalist groups. 1% Republican. 1% by others.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 01:44 PM

Thank you Soldier boy, that is about what I had expected.

It would seem that some self examination by loyalists might be a good thing, wouldn't you say.

Nobody deserves to be blown up, and there is no possible justification for bombings. By the same token, nobody should be treated as a second class citizen in his own country, nor should anyone have see his children terrorised by rabid religious, political, or racial bigots.

Oppression of minorities always leads to a reckoning, and peace will be an impossible dream as long as the oppressors try to put total blame on the shoulders of the oppressed.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST,Soldier boy
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 12:32 PM

If I may reply to the 5 questions above, No 1 is 5%, No 2 is 1%, No 3, none, No 4 none, and as you can see the 4 answers above also gives the answer to question No 5.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 11:40 AM

Above, arsehole.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Oct 05 - 01:45 AM

lets hope facts are all that he's got at his fingertips. I don't think he's in much of a mood for dialogue Don T. Would you be - if those were the key beliefs of your life. Mind you its only as daft as thinking that shooting at folks from the top of a block of flats is a bit of a hoot.

think fluffy toy Don, but watch out - even Harry Corbett got hit with a hammer now and then. that Sooty was a mean bastard when the mood took him.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Oct 05 - 08:37 PM

Merseybeat,

Not mischief making, I would really like to know the answers to a few questions.

1. How many catholics/republicans were in the Ulster police force pre 1969?

2. How many catholics/republicans held top positions in government, the judiciary, and business pre 1969?

3. How many protestants/loyalists had to put up with provocative displays from catholic/republican marchers taking over the streets where they lived?

4. How many protestant/loyalist children had to run a gauntlet of grown men spewing hate and vitriol, because they had to pass through catholic areas to get to school?

5. Why was it necessary for catholics in Ulster to live together in small tight communities surrounded on all sides by protestant areas which they entered at considerable risk?

You seem to have all the facts at your fingertips, so perhaps you wouldn't mind satisfying my curiosity.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Catholic Priest clears his chest
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 14 Oct 05 - 05:34 PM

Harry might have put his hand up someones ass, but I'm not ! Fluffy or no flutty.