Peter Kearney’s attack
on bigotry is nothing short of a historic moment for Scotland, one of
the country’s leading historians has claimed.
Professor
Tom Devine, of Edinburgh University, said the statement on the nation’s
“deep, wide and vicious” sectarianism was the most public condemnation
yet issued by the Catholic Church in this country, and reflected a sea
change in the mindset of the Scottish Catholic community.
“Whether one accepts it or not, it is
historically significant,” he said, adding that “this is the first time
that an official spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland has come
out to say this with such vehemence”.
Mr Devine, who has written extensively on
the history of sectarianism and the Catholic experience in Scotland,
said the days of discrimination in the job market are long gone.
Catholics under the age of 55 now sit equally alongside the rest of the
population according to a range of socioeconomic measures, he said.
However, a secondary type of sectarianism, expressed through “nasty and
unpleasant” bigoted attitudes, is “alive and well”, he argues.
He said: “This is a reflection of the fact
that people of a Roman Catholic background, overwhelmingly from an Irish
ethnic tradition, have a renewed self-confidence in Scottish society.
“Until the 1970s, the whole attitude – and
I’m a Roman Catholic, so I know this – was ‘Don’t disturb things’.
The
Kearney intervention is a very dramatic reversal of that, and this is
the great irony: the reason why it has occurred is in large part because
of the new confidence of Catholic people in Scotland.
“The fact that labour market discrimination
is no longer able to hold them back [means] many of them are now in
professional, academic, business occupations. The Kearney intervention
is a symbol of this new collective self-consciousness; that they’re able
to stand up and be counted.”
Sectarianism rose to the forefront of
political debate in 2002, when then first minister Jack McConnell spoke
out against “Scotland’s secret shame”, in allusion to a speech by the
Catholic composer James MacMillan at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999.
At the time of a 2001 census, there were
803,700 Catholics in Scotland, compared to slightly more than two
million Church of Scotland adherents.
In 2002 Holyrood unveiled a 12-point,
cross-party plan to stamp out sectarianism.
The police and the
Commission for Racial Equality were consulted and, in 2005, Mr McConnell
stated his belief that bigotry could be eliminated within a generation.
However, he criticised his successors, the SNP, saying they had failed to pursue the anti-sectarian forums he had initiated.
In 2006 a campaign was launched to twin
faith schools in a bid to assimilate children but, three years later, an
investigation by The Herald found that fewer than half of local
authorities had put the plan in action.
Debate was re-ignited earlier this year when
Benedict XVI visited Scotland at the height of the Catholic Church’s
sex abuse scandal.
Many people, as Mr Kearney also points out, felt that
the vilification of the priesthood for this was unjustified; less than
one in 200 Scottish priests over the past 25 years has been convicted of
sexual abuse, but all have been tarred by the scandal.
Chillingly, according to Mr Kearney, a
current of anti-Catholic violence has reared its head, with attacks on
priests and churches, terrifying the clergy.
The crimes he describes
have not been brought to light, and eyes will now be on the Scottish
Government’s response to this apparent threat.
“If this is to be taken further, and taken
seriously, then systematic evidence has got to be provided so that
authorities can respond in an appropriate way,” Professor Devine said.
“What we need ... is for the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in
Scotland to come clean on this.”
SIC: HS/UK