How can we integrate Unionism into a possible United Ireland?

Did you comb through it looking for keywords Doc.

No-one is denying that there were incidents.

Aren't they all part of the 'Catholic; tradition - the Roman's, the COI's, The Anglicans etc etc.

The Methodists are; the Presbyterians are not. In the Reformation the Scottish church passed straight from Catholicism to Presbyterianism without any detour into Anglicanism.

About a century later, after the English Civil War, a separate English Presbyterianism did emerge in a split from the Church of England (and, a bit later again, Scottish Anglicanism emerged in a split from the Church of Scotland).

Presbyterianism came to Ireland from Scotland, not England, and it came before there was even a separate English Presbyterian movement.

Why is that Doc?

Is it maybe the only retort you can come up with that is negative? And it has to be a negative doesn't it?

Whatever you want, there is plenty of evidence out there that what happened to protestants here after Independence comes nowhere near what happened Roman Catholics in the failed sectarian bigoted statelet Unionists created.

What seems to stick in the craw of belligerent Unionists is the clear fact that Protestants are fully integrated in southern society and are actually growing in number.

Admitting that, leaves them one significantly less scaremongering opportunity.

Absolutely true of the south. Majority of the people couldn't care less and that figure is rising by the day, as religious influence wanes.

I'm NOT Fred. Please stop.

I clearly said 'a majority'.

That is abundantly obvious from statistics.

I believe they are, however a tiny tiny fraction of the population have issues with that, hence isolated issues like the one you describe.

Pretty silly to think that a UI is going to be smelling of roses and we'll all be buddy buddy with one another. There will still be people who hate the government being criticised and people who hate the government etc etc.

By the way, you don't 'vote parties/people out'. You vote to elect people, i.e. you vote them 'in'.

I was always annoyed when Dara O'Briain made a joke about it years later, because it made it look like I'd stolen his story, but many moons ago when walking near Sandy Row in Belfast, I had a few youths ask me what I was and when I said I was an Atheist, one retorted, 'aye, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist'.

You couldn’t make this up. You really need to think through what you are saying.

the decrease in Presbyterians in roi is due to the anglicans? This is the best one I have heard yet!

anything to remove any shred of blame from the Lilly-white republicans.

FYI my father was part of a family of 11 Presbyterians who lived in ROI. Each one independently left ROI and all set up home in NI (a few lived a number of years in England but also moved to NI). Their offspring now totals 400-500. All except about 40 live in NI (those 40 are spread between Scotland, England & USA) - not one of the 500 live in ROI - is that not noteable?. I also am only aware of about 6 who are Anglican

Everyone of the 11 who left ROI would tell you that they left because protestants did not get fair play in employment and they were dominated by Catholicism. A couple still farm small plots of land in roi but live in NI.

this is a huge problem for CNR going forward. PUL have had a painful enough journey coming to terms with admitting/accepting that there was significant discrimination against catholics in the north and that it was entirely wrong and must never happen again.

Most Catholic/Irish/republicans have not even begun the journey, and it will be a difficult embarrassing journey - one that a UI would def necessitate.

you blaming the anglicans for the demise of my faith group in ROI would be as ridiculous as me blaming the lack of jobs for catholics in the north on the Pope for his bar on contraception

I’m confused. I did not refer to ‘we’ in that post so can’t answer you

I didn't "blame the Anglicans", downcow. I observed that the children of Presbyterians were far more likely to be raised as Anglicans than they ever were as Catholics, and you can hardly blame Ne Temere for that. If you think that raising children as Anglicans is some kind of assault on Presbyterianism for which Anglicans are to be "blamed" well, that's a matter between you and your Anglican friends. I won't interfere.

If anything, your personal family history bears me out. Not a single one of your family had children who were raised as Catholics. If there had been no Ne Temere decree, and if intermarriage had occurred in your family, presumably some of the children born to those marriages would have been raised as Catholic. Because of Ne Temere, that never happened. QED.

I note that only a few of your family ended up as Anglicans, but that's because the family relocated to NI where - newsflash! - Presbyterians are not a minority relative to Anglicans, so the phenomenon I have described didn't happen. If you look at the history of Presbyterian families that remained in the Republic, I think you'll find that, um, demographic leakage to Anglicanism vastly exceeded any demographic leakage to Catholicism that can be attributed to Ne Temere.

As for leaving because of not getting "fair play in employment", I can't obviously speak to the experience of your family in particular. Religious discrimination in employment was common in the culture of the time, on both sides - Protestant firms tended to favour Protestant employees, and Catholic firms Catholic employees. While this was unfair to individuals on both sides, on balance it worked out better for Protestants than for Catholics, simply because Protestants were significantly over-represented, relative to their numbers, in the professional,, managerial and business-owning classes. The result was that there were more opportunities open to Protestants than to Catholics, and Protestant workers tended to have lower unemployment and higher wages than Catholic workers. This effect persisted well into into the 1960s. (Let me tell you some day about my father, who nearly fifty years after independence, was the first ever Catholic appointed to the senior staff grades at Guinness's Brewery.)

Prior to 1922 Protestants enjoyed a significant advantage in employment in both the public and private sectors. They lost this from 1922 onwards, more rapidly in the public sector than in the private sector, and no doubt this loss of economic privilege was experienced by many as victimisation or discrimination. But, basically, it wasn't; it was simply a painful transition to something more like equality. The perception that they were being discriminated against may have been reinforced by the ability to move to NI, where they would still enjoy social and official privilege on account of their religion, but would have been in (understandable) denial that this was the case, or that any commercial or professional success they acheived was in any way attributable to this.