The Bishops and the North

WHO?" ASKED THE PROTEST ANT SCHOOLchildren blankly as we asked directions to Bishop Cathal Daly's house on Somerton Road in Bellfast. "Oh, you mean the priest." The Catholic crozier still doesn't rate much in North Belfast. In Derry the stones in the street could have directed us to where Bishop Ned Daly, or Fr Daly as he's still known since his curate days, lives overlooking the Bogside and the Foyle. By Olivia O'Leary

The contrast in their dioceses, as much as their personaalities, dictates the somewhat different approach adopted by the two men to their public role. One, living in a Protestant city, is understandably cautious, politic, perhaps a little defensive. Derry Catholics, on the other hand, have tradiitionally been the besiegers, rather than the besieged. In mainly Catholic Derry, a bishop feels more freedom to wear his emotional heart on his episcopal sleeve.

In a state where religion has become a political badge, however, both feel called-upon to enter public debate to an extent unknown in the present day Republic.

As direct rule from Britain enters its eleventh consecuutive year, and the total burden of representing the North's nationalists in any major elected Forum, falls on one man, John Hume, the bishops have been handling a constituency as much as a diocese.

They wouldn't put it that way. For Cathal Daly to warn Britain of the political dangers of ignoring the Forum, for Edward Daly to protest about the emergence of a shoot to kill policy by the security forces, for both to point out Britain's moral obligation to create political and instituutional structures which accommodate the minority - all these matters they see as a logical part of their pastoral duty.

But what about Protestant perception of them as being Republicans with collars on, what about Ian Paisley's claim last month that the Bishop of Down and Conor was "The Black Pope", or Harold McCuskar's accusation that Bishop Daly was "the vicar-general of the SDLP"?

Dr Cathal Daly gives little quarter to criticism from the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. "Dr Paisley is working on the religious and political level and that becomes confused. To identify the church with a political party is wrong." .

Dr Edward Daly says that sort of name-calling doesn't worry him. "I would be more worried if people said about me 'I knocked and he didn't answer; I came to him and he didn't care; I told him my story and he wasn't interested'."

"HOW ARE YOU FEELING?" "I'M feeling wild alienated." Dr Edward Daly told the latest Derry joke with a touch of asperity. Northern Catholics are bemused that at the stroke of a Forum draftsman's pen, they have become a new sociological phenomenon. They've always been made feel like strangers in their own country, he says, and that hasn't improved. He feels it when he has to meet Ministers at Storrmont, even though nowadays it is British, rather than Ulster Unionist Ministers, that he meets.

"I can't say that I have ever felt at home in Stormont Castle. You meet the Minister and he says: 'I've just come over from the mainland this morning!' You feel as though you are in the Gulag Archipelago, and you feel that he feels that as well."

He finds a similar problem of identification with the security forces. "I cannot identify with the RUC, with the UDR. The British army are fine, but they continually send me invitations to their cocktail parties, addressed to Bishop and Mrs Daly. I don't know ... " He smiles wearily.

For Edward Daly, who ran through British army fire to tend the dead and wounded on Bloody Sunday, twelve years as curate and ten as bishop of Derry has led him to share and to voice the frustration of his people at the continuing insensitivities of the Northern administration.

The change over to direct rule, he says, hasn't meant any increased understanding of the minority. He has taken an increasing interest in the welfare of prisoners and their famiilies. He has been in constant contact with the Northern Ireland Office to plead for a more compassionate approach to those held in custody and in some cases to ask for a reeview of some cases in which he believes prisoners were wrongfully convicted.

But as soon as he has engaged the interest of the NIO minister, he says, the man is moved on and he has to go through the same process with the next incumbent.

Lord Gowrie, then minister for prisons, was just beginnning to accept his argument that a release date should be set for prisoners held indefinitely on the Secretary of State's pleasure (under-age prisoners convicted of terrorist crimes), when Mrs Thatcher moved him in a reshuffle. "That's one of the big frustrations. Just when you have briefed someone, and persuaded him, he's moved. Then the civil servants say that the new man has to be briefed all over again - as though there were no such thing as files!"

He has found a tougher attitude on the part ofthe Norrthern Ireland Office recently. "There's now a higher proporrtion of Northern Ireland civil servants as opposed to Whiteehall civil servants. I've noticed a somewhat different attitude. When we met Douglas Hurd recently about strip searching in Armagh women's prison, it was a very tough meeting."

Over the years he's had reason to wonder if the NIO are listening to him. "The biggest occasion was the H-Blocks hunger strike. At that time we were led up the garden path. We'd gone to them, we'd talked to them, and afterwards we felt angry and deceived about it. We felt the situation was very serious and could have been avoided."

He went on: "There's a lack of sensitivity by British Ministers because one cannot exercise executive responsiibility without electoral responsibility. Someone from Surrey, with a constituency in Surrey, can't understand what's going on here." In any case, he says, he doubts that any minister, any Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, has much say in a cabinet headed by Margaret Thatcher.

'But if he finds them insensitive, do they in their turn suspect him of being an enemy of the state?

"Many of them feel that no matter how much We prootest we would have a certain amount of sympathy for Reepublican paramilitaries; that because we plead for compasssion for prisoners and their families, for example, that we would have a certain amount of support for paramilitaries.

"They treat you as suspect, and they betray a great missunderstanding of the Catholic position. When I was talking to Douglas Hurd, he rejected the fact of alienation among the Catholic community. We asked him whether he did any soundings. Were their soundings taken within six miles of Stormont Castle among middle-class Catholics unaffected by the troubles? It certainly seemed so."

Douglas Hurd didn't understand the deep anger Catholics felt after the rejection of the Forum options, after the Anglo-Irish Summit, he said. But at least after their meeting, claimed Dr Edward Daly, the Secretary of State adopted a much more conciliatory attitude towards the nationalist case when addressing the Northern Ireland Assembly the next day.

Does that prove that the British ministers need to be exposed more often to the nationalist case, prised out of the atmosphere of Stormont Castle and brought into nationaalist areas?

"The problem," said the bishop glumly, gazing out over the Bogside and the river, "is that when he comes in here he comes surrounded by armed cars. Ministers used to come in here, but when they came in they went up on the walls and looked triumphalist, looking down at the Bogside. The Archbishop of Canterbury did that recently. I took excepption to it."

Perhaps Ministers are too obtrusive to be good gatherers of information. But don't the NIO have civil servant scouts on the ground, keeping in touch with minority opinion?

"They used to have. There were very able people back in the seventies who did soundings, but they've been scaled down in recent times. You have the odd person who calls around, but they are not of the same calibre nor do they have the same clout as people like Frank Cooper" (then Permanent Under-Secretary at the NIO).

What the Northern Ireland Office refuses to understand is the extent of Catholic "alienation". He uses the word gingerly, but he goes on to explain it. "Alienation is living in a state and not feeling part of that state, being excluded from ever having any effective say in the running of that state," That's how it's been for Catholics in the North, he says, since the beginning.

"Right from day one, legislation was passed to keep the minority down. The B Specials, the gerrymandering, the fact of twenty-four people living in a four-roomed house as was the case when I came to Derry as a curate. What happpened in the late sixties was that as a result of the 1947 Education Act, the young could articulate their case against the inj ustices." But have things not im proved since then? Since direct rule, has not money been poured into housing, community centres, amenities in Derry? "Money is not the answer. People must have dignity. And you have to rememmber how the border affected the city here. Donegal, its natural hinterland, was cut off. Derry, Strabane suffered. Industry was not directed here deliberately, to force people to emigrate."

But are there not borders all over Europe which cause inconvenience to the people who live near them? "No, this border was drawn on the basis of sectarian bias. It is not sustainable. You cannot argue for its justification.

"I believe that the only long term solution is the unity of the Irish people. I believe the Forum analysis, but I cannnot accept that it must be achieved by force."

But is that the business of a Catholic bishop? Cannot one live under British rule in Northern Ireland and still live . a full life as a Catholic?

"You have to live here, to be meeting UDR patrols, to know what I'm talking about."

But what has being a Roman Catholic to do with uniting Ireland?

"The aspiration to unity is a legitimate aspiration, though many people say it's not. And those who hold it have been excluded from any executive authority in Northern Ireland. As a church it's our responsibility to state that."

But is it part of Catholic church policy that Ireland should be united?

"I'm saying that it's a legitimate political aspiration and that people are entitled to hold it if they want to. I'm not

saying that the aspiration should be pursued through viollence," Would Cardinal Hume of Westminster agree? "I don't know if Cardinal Hume would agree. I'm speaking as an Irish Nationalist. You asked me the question. I can't help the way I was brought up. I feel it's a legitimate aspiraation. It's a legitimate concern of our people. Our people have been excluded from executive power."

But what about his people who are Alliance voters, or unionists? There are some. "Yes, the church must embrace people of all points of view as long as they pursue it withhout violence. I am speaking to you in a particular situation. I would never state my political views in an official stateement or from the pulpit."

CATHOLICS, HE ARGUES, CANNOT BE EXcluded permanently from power in Northern Ireland. "Protestants identify with the British presence. We're just asking that they treat us as equals, that they recognise the political aspirations we have as legitimate aspirations. I recognise that there are things happening which alienate Protestants, like the shooting of UDR men, and that the healing process has to happen beefore there is political movement.

"But as long as the British don't move, the unionists won't. I wouldn't if I was a unionist. The British have a responsibility now, after the Forum analysis to sit down and do something similar and look at a way forward."

And here the bishop entered a timely warning. "The British must look to the future. There's a major demograaphic change taking place and the majority that is in the six counties won't forever be a majority. If you look at the school system in Northern Ireland, you'll find that about fifty per cent of the children in the school system are accounted for by Catholic schools. Add to that the five per cent of children who attend state schools and that would show a major demographic change is taking place. With the availability of housing, young people are staying on in Northern Ireland, as well as which, of course, they can't now get into America and Australia. This diocese alone has inncreased by 40,000."

Was he talking about the Unionist nightmare, that Cathoolics would one day breed a majority for a United Ireland?

"Outbreeding is a reality that you cannot ignore. I don't want to sound triumphalistic or to be trumpeting, but it is a reality."

So is there a new bullishness on the part of Catholics, a new confidence in their identity on the part of the growwing Catholic middle class? Is that why Northern Catholics were so indignant at Margaret Thatcher's dismissal of the Forum?

"No, it's part of the alienation that's always been there.

After the post-Chequers press conference, there was dismay in the way she said it, the way she dismissed a constructive effort. People who abhor violence felt let down. There was the feeling of not being believed, of being treated as seconddclass citizens." And that anger, felt in the working class ghettoes for so long, is now starting to spread, he says.

"It's begun to percolate to the middle-class. You go to the beach on a Sunday and you sit at the checkpoint with the kids for hours. One bolshie soldier can make the differrence. It's a combination of a whole lot of different things but basically it's an insensitivity to people."

But it's on the level of prisons and the judicial system that the Northern Ireland administration can be most innsensitive, says Dr Daly, and that insensitivity is dangerous. The treatment of one prisoner can affect so many people Àhis family, his friends. "Prisoners' families' are badly affeccted. Having to visit Long Kesh week after week has a dreaddful effect on people." It's even worse for people whose relaations are in prison in Britain. "People accept a lot if a person is guilty. You won't get com plaints. But still, when the first soldier successfully convicted of an offence in Northern Ireland gets a transfer to England the very next day .... "

The bishop produced one of two large grey box files on Shane O'Doherty, convicted of a scheduled offence committted under eighteen years of age and held indefinitely under the Secretary of State's pleasure. "He was caught up in the political situation. He sent letter bombs that hurt some people when he was seventeen. He's twenty-eight now and his mother who is now nearly seventy, has to go to see him in Wormwood Scrubs." The bishop has argued for a transfer. He's also looking for an end date to O'Doherty's detention. Shane O'Doherty has become a reformed character and highly religious. His neat, fluent letters speak of the love of God and the natural sinfulness of man, his prison number stamped at the head of each page.

Bishop Daly tries to visit him every year at Wormwood Scrubs as he does other Derry prisoners at Durham, Wakeefield, Long Lartin and Limerick. He believes that the men convicted of the Birmingham bombing are innocent, and that the forensic evidence which convicted them has since been proved inconclusive. There has been, he says, "a clamp-up" by the authorities:

He is bound to protest at injustice he says, just as he is bound to protest at evidence of a shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces, or at the remarks made by Judge Gibson who commended the RUC on the shooting dead of three IRA men. "While I disagree with the IRA and its methods, one cannot be silent at the violence of the police and the army."

Insensitivity has its electoral effects, he says. He claims that about 40,000 of the 100,000 votes cast for Sinn Fein are effected by people in prison - the rest he says were formerly abstentionist votes, or a protest vote by the cyniical and apathetic.

But does he not worry when he says Mass, that in his congregation are active members of the IRA?

"Yes. But one cannot be totally judgemental about it, where they are hassled by the army, where their father isn't working. While I cannot agree with young people who get involved, their gut reaction, if they are hassled by the police, is 'Go and get them'. When it's your mates, or your girl friend or your boyfriend being hauled in, there's an anger there. "

Does he condemn violence? "I won't use the word con- <. dernn , Sub-editors think bishops do nothing else but condemn or slam. I say that the use of violence is incompatible with Christianity - all violence. institutional violence, court violence, army violence as well. Any solution by violence is only temporary and the situation here is one of threatened violence by the unionist community."

He looked up at the framed picture of a boy with boxing gloves on the shelf beside his fireplace. "That's Jackie Duddy who was shot dead beside me on Bloody Sunday. I keep that picture there. I cannot put my hands on my heart and say that if I was a young fellow I wouldn'thave become involved with the IRA because of what I saw and what happened on that day."

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONOR has a mind like your favourite vegetable knife: sharp, adaptable and capable of whittling off any clumsy thumbs an interviewer might leave in his way. Long regarded as one of the foremost intellects and best communicators in the Irish church, he hesitates not one second when asked if his public statements on the political aspirations of the minority involve him in more controversy than a bishop and churchhman should allow.

"I have always felt that I am playing the role a bishop should play. For instance, in the South of Ireland there is growing alienation between the rich and poor. There is the possibility that the Provisional IRA would make hay with those alienated people. Southern bishops would comment on that. As I'm originally from Northern Ireland, I know that the church had to show that there was a gospel message for both communities. If not the church could be dismissed as irrelevant to life."

For Cathal Daly the present situation in which Cathoolics are excluded from power, or from the peaceful expresssion of their aspiration to a United Ireland, is unacceptable. "To ask for change is my moral duty. It's one of the prinnciples of justice that one meets demands for social and poliitical rights."

But what about the question the IRA put to him this month - is the British presence morally justifiable?

"I would have to ask them for a definition of the British presence. I have to ask if the presence of a million Northern Ireland people who regard themselves as British constitutes the British presence and are we asking them to leave?" But is British sovereignty morally justifiable?

"I come back to the question of whether the Unionists have the right to remain British just so the Irish nationalists can remain Irish. Such structures are up to politicians to devise. "

But could not an internal Northern Ireland settlement provide justice for nationalists? "This is a political expresssion of the principle of justice and it is for the electorate to decide. But if Irish nationalists are people who by definiition have an aspiration for a United Ireland, they have an outreach to Dublin, which they see as defending their innterests. So there is a just involvement by Dublin in their welfare. It seems to me that Dublin playing the role of guarantor is one way forward. Not as a foreign power but as a recognition of the rights of 600,000 people who have to be accepted with that rightful involvement."

Bishop Daly believes that it was a serious misjudgement on the part of Loyalist politicians not -to accept Sunning dale. "Any solution now must contain pre-Sunningdale analysis, and Sunningdale type institutions set up." But nationalists must be allowed to reserve the ultimate aspiraation of the nationalist commitment to unity which can be worked towards by peaceful persuasion. Catholics, he says, have never been given realistic institutions. They have been defined out of existence.

But why should it matter to the Catholic church wheether there is unity or no unity? "It concerns us that justice be given to political expression." The right to political expression is not more important than the right to a job or a house, but as important, he says.

"Where Catholics are put on the same level as those who want to overthrow the state by violence, then the instituutions of the state are already inclined towards injustice.

"To be fully loyal in the loyalist state, you cannot be a nationalist. Therefore, a nationalist is by definition disloyal and consequences flow from that."

BORN IN THE GLENS OF ANTRIM, TWO years Bishop of Down and Conor. Does he feel he's regarded as disloyal? "I try as a Christian not to give into anger about it. But I know what it is to be an alien because the institutions are such that one has to be a unionist to feel that one belongs."

But would you use the institutions, wouldn't you call in the police if your house was burgled?

"You'd call in the police but then there are no other police to call in!

"People have to go about their daily living. Catholics don't want to overthrow the state by violence but that doesn't mean they are satisfied. Because all those agencies of public welfare are linked to institutions that are unilaaterally unionist, therefore within them they have a bias to regarding nationalists as disloyal."

But how is that bias expressed? "It's expressed in the experience of people in Catholic ghettoes who are treated as suspect terrorists whether they are or not; disruption of ordinary life; harassment because they are living in that area. There have to be security operations in that area, but the manner in which they are conducted leave the residents feeling that this whole area is regarded as enemy territory."

But there isn't a total breakdown of relations between Catholics and the RUC. Are there not many occasions on which Catholics will call in the police? "As far as normal law and order is concerned, Catholics would turn to the police. But it's their perception that the police do not proovide this sort of law enforcement in matters of vandalism and burglary, that they are concerned almost exclusively with terrorist violence." As a result, says Bishop Cathal Daly, there has been a rash of ordinary crime in these areas.

"As far as subversive crime is concerned, there is strong intimidation of the population by paramilitaries and people are laying their lives on the line if they pass on information to the police."

But is it not their moral duty as Catholics to pass inforrmation to the police?

While there is a prima facie obligation to cooperate with the police in suppressing subversive crime, we churchhmen recognise the grave risks suffered by people who could be suspected of passing information. There is a moral obliigation to prevent murder, but it's difficult to require people to expose themselves to immediate risk of death."

But is this not a moral loophole for the minority to jump through, the sort of moral loophole which unionists believe is constantly created by the Catholic church, to avoid confronting its flock with a stark moral choice on violence? One feels uncomfortable putting the question to Bishop Cathal Daly, who has been foremost among Catholic bishops in warning of the serious moral consequences of support for Sinn Fein and the IRA, and who has carried on a sharp public battle with Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams. But what. is the moral position of those Catholics who voted for Sinn Fein?

"If one considers that a vote for Sinn Fein is one for the IRA, then that's bad. But I know that a majority of them are not voting for the IRA." But don't they know, hasn't he told them, how their vote will be interpreted?

"They know how their vote is going to be interpreted but they see no grounds for progress through the constituutional parties. It is a vote of protest against the position of political immobilism into which constitutional nationalists have been forced. If peaceful alternatives were offered they would vote differently."

How do you know it's not a vote for violence?

"A bishop knows his people, he knows they are oppressed by violence, but he knows that vote is a barometer of prootest. Part of the propaganda appeal of the IRA is the conntinuing danger of Loyalist attacks in nationalist areas. That is one of the reasons for the acceptance of the IRA."

When the security forces treat all the residents of Cathoolic areas as though they are automatic supporters of the IRA, he says, they are playing right into the IRA's hands. Nothing suits IRA propaganda purposes better than to have all Catholics portrayed as IRA supporters - that's what they would like the world to believe. "But nationalists are not a violent people. In West Belfast indeed, there's a very edifying lack of bitterness," he says.

A small courteous man, who concentrates intensely on his subject, Bishop Catha I Daly becomes especially passionate when speaking of his battle with the IRA for the hearts and minds of nationalists. To win that battle, he argues, the church has to be seen to work for justice, and it is the denial of that justice which has distanced Catholics from the state.

"The alienation syndrome has many components. It would help if there could be a very significant industrial investment in deprived areas, real guarantees of employyment." It is not without political significance, he says, that there is no operational industrial site in West Belfast. "There have recently been proposals for rezoning industrial sites for housing and turning the whole of West Belfast into a ghetto for the jobless." Official attitudes like this, he says, add to the sense of demoralisation among Catholics.

But is that deliberate? Are the administrators of direct British rule as consciously discriminatory as their Unionist predecessors? "This is the result of generations of policy. The employment position among Catholics is not recoggnised for the grave and unjust problem that it is.

"Many people living in West Belfast have been driven away from job opportunities, they had to go to West Bellfast because of the troubles. They have never been in indusstrial employment.

"People see limitless sums available for industrial developpment in East Belfast. They are not resenting that fact, or begrudging those jobs created. But it is clear from the siting of the factories that there is a confessional imbalance. Even a proportion of that investment would help in West Belfast."

BISHOP DALY SPOKE OF THE RECENT INdustrial success of Short's and Harland and Wolff in obtaining big aircraft and shipping contracts. "Catholics don't resent the fact that they are doing well, but they want to see it in West Belfast." And in Belfast, he points out, there is a long tradition of working where you live, people don't tend to move out of tribal areas.

Discrimination against Catholics at Harland and Wolff, he says, has been well documented, but he has been hearrtened by the recent attitude of Short's. Short's have been visiting Catholic schools with a view to encouraging Catholic applications for jobs, and they are considering a new facctory in West Belfast, a proposal that Bishop Daly hopes will become a reality.

He accepts that the situation has been helped by the attiitude of American investors who refused to ratify a big conntract recently until there was evidence that Short's were not discriminating against Catholics. "But I believe that Short's are sincere."

But don't some investors shun West Belfast because they fear the mafia-like operations of the IRA? .

"If you treat the whole of West Belfast as though it 's a security risk you give in to the false Republican claim that this is the case. The pattern of mafia-type infiltration is not unique to the IRA. It is paralleled by Loyalist racketeers in Loyalist areas." But the institutions of the state, he says, make a distinction between IRA violence and Loyalist violence.

The Bishop is an optimist. It is his Christian duty to be so. He believes there is a real will among some industrialists, and among politicians in the Northern Ireland Office to move towards an alleviation of the Catholic employment problem. But it is an indictment of the Northern Ireland state that in sixty years it has failed even to reduce the sense of alienation among Catholics, he says, when the Reepublic has incorporated its Protestant minority, at least to the extent that political issues no longer break down on denominational lines. What about the anti-abortion amenddment, I protested? This issue, pointed out the Bishop sharpply, caused a division of opinion as much among Protestants as it did among Catholics, but he didn't really want to get into it. Going back to alienation, he pointed out that the sense of frustration was now spreading to the Catholic middle class.

"The middle class are becoming exasperated by unionist intransigence. There have been a series of shamefully secctarian outbursts about Catholic nurses from the Republic being security risks, about Catholics in the civil service, about Catholics in the media." (The latter at the Official Unionist Conference in November.) "There is bewilderment that the good social relations that exist, and the moderate views expressed by unionists on such occasions, don't find any public expression. Middle class Catholics seem to be constantly encountering unionists who see the need for change but won't come forward and say so publicly."

Like his colleague in Derry, Bishop Catha I Daly sees the prison system as a potent factor in spreading resentment and anger towards the state. In his diocese there are two full-time chaplains devoted to prisoners' welfare and he makes constant representation on behalf of Secretary of State's Pleasure prisoners, those who committed a scheduled offence under eighteen years of age and who are held inndefinitely; and for remand prisoners, who are held for connsiderable lengths of time without the preferment of a charge. Imprisonment is known, he says, to contribute to f-amily instability and Northern Ireland has one of the highest ratios of prisoners to population of any area of Europe. He feels there's more room for compassion and leniency in sentencing.

If there is alienation, however, can the Catholic church totally wash its hands of blame? What about segregated Catholic schooling which Bishop Daly has defended so fiercely, and which the Catholic church has maintained even to the extent of organising powerful and successful opposition to the merging of Catholic and Protestant trainning colleges? Does it not encourage some of the separate development which leads to the mutual suspicion and mutual ignorance displayed by Catholics and Protestants? Is not Catholic church insistence on totally separate schoolling and even totally separate teacher training for its schools, not an example on its part of "no surrender"?

"The church seeks separate schools for religious reasons, not political ones. It could be said that in Northern Ireland you have a unique situation so that you need to make exxceptions. My reply is that Catholic schools are the most powerful factor working for peace and reconciliation. No institutions are doing more than Catholic schools are. They are oases of peace for children in violent areas, oases of love, peace and respect."

But why can't interdenomination schools, where chilldren of both religions get to know one another, be equally, if not to a greater extent, oases of love, peace and respect? "If you had interdenominational schooling, it's much more likely that you would transfer into the playground the aniimosities in the streets outside. As well as which interdenoominational schools need to confine religious teaching to a totally separate time of the day." This, he said, was against the whole Catholic ethos of religion as a part of all one's life.

But Catholics and Protestants meet on social occasions, in golf clubs, sailing clubs. "When you're talking about golf clubs, you're talking about the middle class. In the ghettoes, an alternative way of life is only given in the schools.

"As well as which, interdenominational schooling would mean bussing of Catholic children into Protestant areas and Protestant children into Catholic areas." This has obvious difficulties, he said. Instead he was encouraging contacts on a school to school basis between the two religions, and encouraging visits to the schoolchildren by people of other religions.

And then, fixing me with a kindly eye, he said he didn't really understand the continuing fuss about integrated eduucation. It was, he declared, an out of date 1960s notion which had not proved to be effective. But Bishop Daly was a member of the Vatican Secretariat for Christianity. What about his claims to be an ecumenist, I asked with the stung pride of an out-of-date 1960s person, how did they fit in with upholding a system which kept Protestants and Catholics away from one another?

The bishop allowed himself a polite foray into sarcasm.

"By that argument, may not we all worship together? Would not separate churches be regarded as divisive?" Some ecumenists think they are, said I stoutly.

"Well, I'm not one of those ecumenists," snapped the bishop. So how does he describe his ecumenism, I asked.

He saw, as an ecumenist, occasions for common worship, common bible study, shared social concern, projects for job creation, care of the deprived, the aged, the handicapped, meeting of clergy of different churches. "Wherever possible, this is being done on an interdenominational basis."

The problem of suspicion was somewhat different for Catholics than for Protestants, he said. "You don't find among active working class Catholics the same prejudices and superstitions that exist among Protestants towards Catholics. It is a political hostility on the Catholic side, it's not because of religious beliefs. You must remember 400 Catholics have been killed here, just because they were Catholics."

The message of the Catholic church, he said, is that we all serve the same Lord. "We must try to close the differrences between us. But the motivation is for us to close the differences through close Christian communities.

"Those who suffer most in the present troubles are those who are sociologically Protestant or Catholic, who retain the prejudices of a religious group but not its faith. A proocess of genuine evangelisation would be one of the most effective ways of ending this division." •