McEvoy has no awareness of the making of western Christendom

Peter McEvoy (May 19) in drawing a parallel, in his speculations on the Euro song contest between Ukraine and Ireland (and invites readers to respond) omits much in the similarity he draws between the Ukraine and Russia, and Ireland and the neighbouring Britannic island (to follow the terminology of Aristotle and the classical writers).

The Russians were invited in 1654 by a Cossack leader to assist in liberating the Ukraine from Polish rule.

The Russians liberated and stayed, of course, much as Strongbow did many years earlier in Leinster, and much as the French , as Castlereagh speculated, would have stayed in Ireland if, accepting Wolfe Tone’s invitation, they had been successful in “liberating” it from the Crown.

If Peter McEvoy had some awareness (and he obviously has none) of the making of Western Christendom (the Christendom that was in confrontation with Orthodoxy in the Ukraine and the traces of which underlie present confrontations, exploited by secularists in Nato) he would give a different account of the relations within and between these Britannic islands.

He might well stand at Downpatrick’s bus station and look upwards to what was the Choir of the great Norman Abbey, the present Cathedral of the Church of Ireland, and reflect on how it got there, and who welcomed it.

There is a lot of history to be learned from it, from what went before, and what came after, and what is going on in the present day.

It is not quite the picture he painted in his letter.

W A Miller, Belfast