So far, the usual long, hot summer of sectarian tension associated with the marching season in Northern Ireland has passed without a single soldier on the streets. Gradually the old hatreds seem to be diminishing, for which some credit has to go to the Nationalist community's traditional foe, the Orange Order. The Government has proposed turning the annual Orange marches, once the focus of anti-Catholic antagonism, into communal festivals that exclude no one, and the idea seems to match the mood.

Nor is this melting of the Orange iceberg peculiar to Northern Ireland. The Scottish Orange Lodges have devised a welcome scheme to counter the widespread virus of sectarianism by introducing young people from the Protestant communities to those of the same age from elsewhere, mostly Catholics but also from other faiths. On page 12 of this edition of The Tablet the foremost Scottish composer, James MacMillan, reassesses "Scotland's shame" - sectarian hatred - seven years after he notably drew attention to it in a lecture at the Edinburgh Festival. It is, he says with relief, declining at last.

Not the least of the reasons seems to be the willingness of the Scottish Executive, led by First Minister Jack McConnell, to admit that it exists. It is clear from James MacMillan's account of what happened after his Edinburgh lecture that the country's establishment and media had been in serious denial. Many intelligent and educated people, including some leaders of the Church of Scotland, were refusing to admit that religious hatred could still exist in modern Scotland.

The problem was thus not just sectarianism, but sectarianism denied. Persistent attacks on the Scottish Catholic school system could be represented as liberal and anti-sectarian when they were in fact driven by unacknowledged anti-Catholic prejudice. As long as this continued, the full force of peer-group pressure could not be mobilised to stop it, as has happened against racism among English football supporters. Public bodies could dismiss the need to have policies against it. From south of the border naked sectarianism on the Scottish football terraces seemed to be a disgrace to the game and to the nation; north of the border it was just the way things were.

There is still denial of sectarianism in some fields - of the role it plays in local Scottish politics, for instance - but James MacMillan is right to say that the more it is opened up, the quicker it can be dealt with. The key step is to shift the cultural boundary between what is tolerable and what is intolerable. Just as racist jokes were common 30 years ago but are no longer unacceptable, so sectarian jokes are also becoming embarrassing rather than funny. As the barriers come down, there will be more intermarriage - a strong factor against sectarianism as MacMillan found in his own family history.

It is important that Protestant church leaders should accept that sectarian hatred exists, and make clear it has no basis in their religious doctrines. On the Catholic side, leaders have to avoid creating a culture of grievance and victimhood. But they also need to ask themselves whether they too have unwittingly contributed to it. As Archbishop Derek Worlock and Bishop David Sheppard showed in Liverpool, one key way of combating sectarianism is by personal example.

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