Contemporary Catholic and Protestant Irish America: Social Identities, Forgiveness, and Attitudes Toward The Troubles

CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT IRISH AMERICA: SOCIAL IDENTITIES, FORGIVENESS, AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THE TROUBLES MÍCHEÁL D. ROE The intractability of ethnic conflicts is due in part to their selective focus on the past. Images of the past are used to legitimate the present social order, but such order presupposes shared memories, and as memories diverge, a society’s members share neither experiences nor assumptions .1 In addition, many of those memories are of past violence and humiliations, which have not been acknowledged or atoned for by the aggressors or their descendants, resulting in continuing pain, fear, and hatred in the victimized people.2 It is not surprising that interventions seeking lasting peace in ethnic conflicts often involve a revisiting of the history of each side and an acceptance of responsibility for past actions of one’s own community. Today this recovering of politically violent pasts can be observed in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission3 and in Guatemala’s Recovery of the Historic Memory Project.4 In addition to accountability for past actions, some also are calling for corporate forgiveness of political violence as an ultimate step in reconIRISH -AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD THE TROUBLES 153 1 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2 Joseph V. Montville, “The Healing Function in Political Conflict Resolution,” in D.J.D. Sandole and H. van der Merwe, eds., Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice: Integration and Application (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1993), 112–27. 3 Mary Burton, “The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Looking Back, Moving Forward—Revisiting Conflicts, Striving for Peace,” in Brandon Hamber, ed., Past Imperfect: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition (Derry/Londonderry: INCORE, 1998), 13–24. 4 Roberto Cabrera, “Should We Remember? Recovering Historical Memory in Guatemala,” in Hamber, ed., Past Imperfect, 25–30. ciliation;5 and such interventions are being at least tentatively explored for Northern Ireland.6 Political violence in Ireland/Northern Ireland has a history centuries old, and selective “remembering” of that history perpetuates current sectarian attitudes and conflict.7 Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants as distinct ethnic groups selectively remember, construct, interpret, and commemorate their shared history, resulting in distinct ethnic or social memories .8 In Lyons’s Social Identity Process Theory, these social memories serve to demonstrate each community’s continuity, collective self-esteem, distinctiveness, efficacy, and cohesion.9 Northern Ireland’s political violence certainly is not on the scale of the horrific aggression observed in settings such as South Africa or Guatemala. On the other hand, Northern Ireland is inhabited by only about 1.7 million people, distributed among close-knit urban neighborhoods and rural communities.10 Consequently, IRISH-AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD THE TROUBLES 154 5 See, for example, Marc H. Ellis, O, Jerusalem! The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 139–44; Robert D. Enright, “Piaget on the Moral Development of Forgiveness: Identity or Reciprocity?” Human Development 37 (1994), 78; Alan D. Falconer, “The Reconciling Power of Forgiveness,” in Alan D. Falconer, ed., Reconciling Memories (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Columba Press, 1988), 84–98; and Donald W. Shriver, Jr., “Is There Forgiveness in Politics? Germany, Vietnam, and America,” in Robert D. Enright and Joanna North, eds., Exploring Forgiveness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 131–49. 6 See Ed Cairns, Forgiveness and the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict in Northern Ireland: A Progress Report (Coleraine: University of Ulster, December 2000); and Brandon Hamber, “A Truth Commission for Northern Ireland?” in Hamber, ed., Past Imperfect, 79–86. 7 See, for example, John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) and Brian Walker, Dancing to History’s Tune: History, Myth and Politics in Ireland (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1996). It should be noted that Walker calls into question the continuous nature of such social memories (see 1–14). 8 See Frank Wright, “Reconciling the Histories of Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland,” in Falconer, ed., Reconciling Memories, 68–83; and Mícheál D. Roe, William Pegg, Kim Hodges, and Rebecca Trimm, “Forgiving the Other Side: Social Identity and Ethnic Memories in Northern Ireland,” in John P. Harrington and Elizabeth J. Mitchell, eds., Politics...