Counting Catholics is not sectarian head-counting but countering the original sectarian headcount

However, acknowledging that there will soon be a majority of nationalists/republicans (‘Catholics’) in Northern Ireland is not indulging in sectarian head-counting.

It is, rather, countering and righting the original sectarian headcount and gerrymander on which the British ‘Government of Ireland Act, 1920’ was based.

The founder of the artificial state of Northern Ireland, Edward Carson, and other unionist leaders, at the time, spelled out clearly why counties Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan had to be excluded from the new, unheard of state: those three counties had too many Catholics. As simple as that. Their inclusion would have made a Protestant caliphate impossible.

Now almost 100 years later, the folly of such an artificial creation is evident — made more obvious by Brexit.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. used to like to quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” (Theodore Parker. 1810-1860).

One also has to be careful whom one quotes: the celebrated abolitionist Parker was virulently anti-Catholic!

Father Sean Mc Manus, President, Irish National Caucus, Washington, DC