John Paul McCarthy in The Independent states: The justice minister’s Holocaust speech showed how ‘context’ comes from the heart, and that the C of I Bishop of Cork is the only protestant with a similar stance
In a masterly essay McCarthy comments:
“The Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, gave a master class in this regard last week with his landmark speech on the Holocaust.
“Cutting a chastening swathe through the various arguments about “context”, Shatter denounced Irish neutrality as morally bankrupt. Previous Fine Gael politicians have handled the Emergency era fairly roughly as well. Remember that Garret FitzGerald dismissed neutrality as morally inadequate in Ireland in the World (2005), arguing: “I could never regard our decision to opt out of western European defence and to rely for our defence exclusively on a combination of other states in the formulation of whose policy we have no say as being in accordance with our dignity as a state, or with our moral responsibilities.”
He writes, “There was something special about Shatter’s critique. Mr Shatter is the Republic’s second Jewish cabinet minister, and his reflections on our non-intervention during the attempted extirpation of European Jewry carry extra moral freight.”
He later comments: “Mr Shatter’s topic was, of course, European Jewry, but I, for one, could not shake the feeling that he was speaking for Protestant Ireland as well. Reading a Jewish critique of Irish anti-Semitism prompts awkward comparisons and made me at least ask about the specifically Protestant critique of the sectarian element in modern Irish Catholic nationalism.
“President Hyde never broke a lance publicly for the many hundreds of his innocent and helpless rural co-religionists who were murdered during 1919-22. President Childers never said a word so far as I am aware about the profoundly sectarian dimension in Bunreacht na h-Eireann’s education clauses.”
He states, “The only practising Protestant who seems as willing as Alan Shatter to stand up for his diminished flock is Bishop Colton of Cork City.”
For complete text see:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/john-paul-mccarthy-shatter-spoke-for-irish-protestants-as-well-as-the-jewish-congregation-3002921.html