Contemporary Catholic and Protestant Irish America: social identities, forgiveness, and attitudes toward The Troubles

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2002 by Micheal D. Roe

Table 2 lists twenty-six historical events, which were examined through an open response format. The participants were asked first to indicate all the events for which they had sufficient knowledge to provide descriptions; second, to select the five most important of these events; and, third, to provide rationales for their importance. (41) Only three historical events were acknowledged by 50 percent or more of the participants: the potato famine (69 percent), the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (58 percent), and St. Patrick's mission to Ireland (52 percent). Marked differences existed between Irish-American Catholic and Protestant participants. For example, 84 percent of Catholics and 53 percent of Protestants were able to describe the importance of at least one historical event, while 76 percent of Catholics but only 31 percent of Protestants were able to describe the importance of five events. From all twenty-six events, the top ten in frequency selected and their rankings were as follows: (1) Potato blight and famine, (2) Good Friday Agreement of 1998, (3) St. Patrick's mission to Ireland, (4.5) Maze Prison hunger strike, (4.5) Partitioning of Northern Ireland, (6) Ireland joining the European Union, (7) Plantation of the North, (8.5) Battle of the Boyne, (8.5) Bloody Sunday of 1972, and (10) the Ceasefire of 1994. (42)

Social identities

Table 3 displays the condensed content of items used to assess social identities and the corresponding median responses on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). (43) A number of clear distinctions emerged between Catholic and Protestant Irish Americans. In general, the Protestant participants were less salient, providing middle values (i.e., neither agreeing nor disagreeing) on four of the ten items. On four other items, the patterns were similar for Protestants and Catholics, although some significant differences in magnitude emerged. Both strongly identified with being "American" and with being of "Irish descent," and neither identified with "militant Republicans" or "militant Loyalists." Clear distinctions between the two groups included Catholics identifying more strongly than Protestants with "Irish American," the "historic Catholic experience," and "Nationalists in Northern Ireland." Conversely, Catholics more strongly did not identify with "British descent," the "historic Protestant experience," or "Unionists in Northern Ireland."

An examination of the wider five-nation study shows that some noteworthy cross-national comparisons emerged as well. Not surprisingly, Catholics from all four of the five nations reporting these data were uniformly high on identifying with the "historic Catholic experience in Ireland." Under "historic Protestant experience in Ireland," Northern-Irish Protestants and Protestant-Irish in England were high; in contrast, Irish-Australian and Irish-American Protestants were low to neutral. Under "Nationalists in Northern Ireland," the strongest stated identity was found among Irish-American Catholics; and, although not evident in Table 3 (median values mask how scores are distributed), the second strongest was among Irish-American Protestants. Of particular note is that both Irish-American samples, Catholic and Protestant, were higher than Northern-Irish Catholics. Finally, under "Unionists in Northern Ireland" Irish-Australian and Irish-American Protestants were low.