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Dallat Backs Contestant 1 in Pissing Contest
So much to blog and so little time. It's like being off work and coming back to an inbox overflowing with emails. Let's start with this kerfuffle over flags in Kilrea.
Long story short, some folk erect tricolour on Protestant church. Some other folk decide to repay the favour, erecting Union Jack on Roman Catholic church. As Turgon highlighted, more interesting than the incident itself is a local MLA's reaction (and the apparent double-standards therein). Compare and contrast his description of what happened to the Protestant church with what happened to the Catholic one.
"The congregation of the Church of Ireland have my deepest regret that their church was used to fly a Tricolour on Easter Sunday.
Likewise, as a member of the Catholic community, I deeply regret that the Marian Hall, built in honour of Our Lady, was also desecrated by the sectarian flying of the Union Flag."
I'm sure the disparity in condemnation wasn't deliberate, but if not that's possibly worse as it perhaps belies an underlying, unspoken attitude that British symbols are inherently more sectarian than republican ones.
I should point out that Dallat isn't alone in this and I'd be surprised if any other representatives, nationalist or unionist, would act any differently. I just thought it was worth highlighting an attitude which I think we're all guilty of sometimes - that somehow the motivations of 'our lot' are more noble and/or less immoral than 'theirs'.
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John Dallat's an SDLP MLA.
I also believe many, if not most, MLAs from either side would be just as blinkered.
That only makes it worse - the contagion must be spreading.
I really should try and pay attention to what passes for politicians on both sides of our little division, shouldn't I?
Of course one could really set the cat among the pigeons by asking was it a case of a hall built in honour of Our Lady, being desecrated by the sectarian flying of the Union Flag or a case of a union flag being desecrated by being flown from in a sectarian manner from a hall built in honour of their Lady.
I suppose it is necessary to state the blindingly obvious in pointing out that it was a case of both and that the same goes for the incident with the tricolour as well. (Even though nobody in the Republic or the Mainland would bat an eyelid at a flag at any church)
and on top of that he probably wants society's language activities to expand into revised Gaelic, my mind recoils at the scale for potential linguistic confusion.
The three crosses are named after Catholic Saints. The Flag of Saint George, is based on the Arms of Vakhtang Gorgasali from the 5th Century, who was the King of what would become Georgia. It is unknown as to whether the Cross of St George was actually used by Saint George.
The first use of the Cross of Saint Andrew happened in 832 AD, after Óengus, King of Scotland, prayed to Saint Andrew the night before a battle. The following day the only cloud in the sky was in the the shape of a Saltire. Saint Andrew was crucified on a Crux Decussata, a Saltire shape cross. So that is where the white Saltire (the cloud) on a blue background (the sky) came from. It was not an actual symbol of Saint Andrew.
The Flag of Saint Patrick was the arms of the Order of Saint Patrick, a British order of Chivalry established in 1783, and probably dates back to the arms of the FitzGerald family, a Norman family that settle in Ireland after the Norman conquest.
None of the three flags where actually used by the saints, so it is hardly a Catholic symbol.
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