The Church of Ireland
Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough has criticised members who
describe newcomers as “Polyester Protestants” in a fresh intervention in
the debate on “sectarianism” in the church.
Archbishop Michael Jackson
criticised those who had “hurt” other members because they had married
outside the church, as well as those who had recently been “deeply
pejorative” about the Catholic Church’s position on abortion.
In an article in The Irish Times, he also lamented the treatment meted out in Ireland to members of his church who had fought in the two World Wars.
The archbishop recalls from earlier this year “deeply pejorative remarks I heard directed against the Roman Catholic Church by members of these [Dublin and Glendalough] dioceses to me because of its stance and principle on abortion.”
People
also “speak with me and write to me about the continuing hurt to which
they are subjected from within the Church of Ireland community because
they married someone of a tradition other than their own, most usually a
Roman Catholic person,” he says.
He further expresses astonishment at church members using the phrase “Polyester Protestants” to describe newcomers.
He
also recalls the “lives of public and private shame” in Ireland forced
on members of the church “who had fought both in WWI and WWII as Irish
people and who were shunned as ‘disloyalists’ (my own phrase) in their
communities on their return”.
Archbishop Jackson’s
article follows on from his presidential address to the Dublin and
Glendalough diocesan synods where he spoke of his “bitter
experience” of sectarianism in Dublin and Glendalough since becoming
archbishop in 2011.