Priest's article is 'offensive' – MLA
Comments by an American priest and academic likening Ulster Protestants to white supremacists in the US deep south have been described as "offensive and ignorant".
In a column published in papers in New York and Chicago last week, Father Andrew Greeley, a sociology professor at the University of Arizona, described Protestants living in Ireland as the descendants of “genocidal colonisers”.
He also alleged they still believe Catholics are “racially inferior” to them.
DUP Assembly member Robin Newton said Fr Greeley’s “biased and bigoted reporting” should be treated with contempt.
In articles in the Chicago Sun Times and New York-based Times Union on the landmark political developments of last month, Fr Greeley claimed Protestants would now try and find an excuse to delay power-sharing with Catholics.
“The descendants of the Protestant genocidal col- onisers believe as self-evident that they are morally, intellectually and humanly superior to the descendants of the Catholics who were not quite eliminated,” he wrote. “Hence, it is difficult for them to accept any agreement that constrains them to share power with Catholics – just as whites in Mississippi found it so difficult to share power with blacks.
“Paisley is very sensitive to the emotions of his hardline constituents. He knows that he must humiliate the Catholics by cooking up new requirements (added to the substance of the Good Friday Agreement) to prove their good faith.”
Fr Greeley also offered his own brief historical overview of Ireland.
“It would be wise for Americans to understand the history of the rump state of Northern Ireland as racial, with religion a symbol of race,” he said.
“Ireland is the only country in Western Europe with a foreign colony imposed on it, a colony with gerrymandered boundaries that permit a minority in the whole island to impose its will on the part of the majority group that lives within its artificial boundaries.”
Mr Newton said it was alarming that republican sympathisers in America still held such a skewed view of Northern Ireland.
“These articles are without doubt examples of prejudiced thinking and deserve to be treated with contempt but cannot be ignored,” he said.
“His description of Northern Ireland as a rump state and racial, with religion as the symbol of race is offensive. His comments about Ireland as the only country in Western Europe with a foreign colony imposed on it ignores the wishes of the majority population and signed international agreements.
“If Andrew Greeley would remove his heavily green-tinted glasses, he might just remember the Catholic IRA’s very recent genocide campaign against their Protestant neighbours.”
Fr Greeley’s comments follow last Friday’s remarks by US Congressman Richie Neal claiming that recent political progress had all but created a united Ireland.
http://www.belfasttoday.net/viewarti...icleid=2693131
US Priest likens Ulster Protestants to White Supremacists - Irish Nationalism