Sir, - It is of significance that Dr R. B. McCarthy's composition (March 11th) should coincide with the visit of President of Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Were the evicted and persistently humiliated Shona of the Russian Orthodox faith and Cecil Rhodes's English planters members of the Church of England, Dr McCarthy would have little difficulty in defining the recent war of independence in "Rhodesia" as a sectarian conflict.
I suspect that he would declare the hanging of Catholic priests to be because they were Catholic priests, and not because of their involvement in the United Irish revolt of 1798. I would also think that his evident conviction in his letter that Church of Ireland priests were killed because they were Church of Ireland priests is unalterable, and that those killings had nothing to do with the fact that some were armed magistrates and landlords agents.
Unless I am mistaken, and I might well be, Dr McCarthy's chosen logic would conclude that the Battle of Waterloo was sectarian. On one side, the Lutheran Prussians and the English under Wellington, staunch members of the Church of England, Protestant and Reformed. Arrayed against them the Roman Catholic French and their Emperor Napoleon, at whose coronation the Pope was a guest. What else but naked sectarianism? Yours, etc.,
Drinagh Lodge,
Wexford.