Father Sean McManus ("Silence on North a grave moral lapse") seems to have a very one sided call for justice. He forgets the IRA victims (civilians, children, mothers, foreign businessmen, tourists as well as Irish, Ulster and British security forces) blown up, kidnapped, tortured, shot and knee-capped.
He forgets the IRA bank robberies. He forgets the suspected Protestant/Loyalist paramilitaries interned. He forgets that the Irish Republic was deemed a "Catholic State for a Catholic people" by Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera. He forgets that Northern Ireland was self-governing for the majority of its existence and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
His claims of anti-Catholicism and anti-Irishness are baseless. As someone from Northern Ireland, I can tell readers that the same situation would have arisen in Northern Ireland regardless of Britain. It was in fact the British army and the RUC that kept a lid on what would have been civil war in Northern Ireland.
The shrieks of "shoot to kill" policies seem hypocritical when said victims were out to kill via acts of terrorism. I highly doubt that U.S. troops or police officers would act any differently and would take action to resolve the situation safely and quickly with least risk to themselves.
Fortunately, Northern Ireland has moved on, but it seems Father McManus has not. If he is calling for justice for victims, then let him stop calling for the release of dissident terrorists who kill Catholic cops; let him seek the release of the Boston College tapes which will help solve the IRA murder of mother of ten, Jean McConville, kidnapped, tortured, shot in the head and buried on a remote beach.
Let him call for all terrorist prisoners (loyalist and republican) to be returned to jail (they were all released early under the Good Friday Agreement). Let him call for justice for the massacre at Kingsmills where ten Protestant workmen were taken from their work van and shot (the sole Catholic workman told to run away).
Let him call for justice for the Darkley Gospel Hall massacre where the terrorists strafed the church during a service. There were victims on all sides, the Loughinisland massacre and the awful Shankill butchers being prime example of loyalist atrocities.
Yet the warped sense of victimhood currently has IRA members blown up by their own bombs defined as a victim rather than a victim maker. So warped is this definition that Sinn Féin are now calling the monsters that were the Shankill Butchers victims.
If he is not going to move on, or if he is not going to support justice for all victims, he (Fr. McManus) is a hypocrite.
Alan Day,
Cookstown, County Tyrone
