Fr. Joseph McCullough, in his letter (24 January) rebutting the charge that Roman Catholic schools are breeding grounds for sectarianism, could have cited the killing of Catholics by Sinn Fein's armed faction, the IRA (Catholic educated), as evidence that the problem in Northern Ireland is less sectarian and more ideological.
The attempted killing of a member of the Northern Ireland judiciary, Tom Toner, and the killing of his daughter, Mary, by the IRA in 1984, as they left Mass at St. Brigid's Church, Belfast, would be one instance in support of this view. Another would be the killing the year before, again by the IRA, of Judge William Doyle, after leaving Mass at the same St Brigid's. More generally, more Catholics are said to have been killed by the IRA during the "troubles" than by "loyalist" gunmen.
But, as for schools, although I never attended a Roman Catholic school, I have a copy of a book - Canon Sheehan's Apologetics, stamped (1939) with the imprimatur and nihil obstat - used in one such Grammar School in Belfast. It was given to me in the early 1950s by a Catholic schoolboy whose schooldays were ending (yes, people in Belfast did mix in those days).
Amongst the teaching that then formed the minds of schoolboys was that the "Church and every lover of truth must necessarily be intolerant of error. The so-called tolerance of the present age is not tolerance in the strict sense. It is due either to the incapacity to persecute, or to utter indifferentism in religious matters"
The book was withdrawn from Irish schools following the Second Vatican Council. It has since, I understand, been re-issued, updated to accord with present teaching. The remembrance of this puts narratives of the past into context.
William Miller, Belfast
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