In the mid-nineteenth century, Catholics were allowed back into British politics and that hardened Protestant attitudes in Ulster. One reason, according to Msgr Paul, was Protestant fear of losing political influence. So in a sense, the religious tempo is upped on both sides of the confessional divide. But by the 1900s, the Protestant movement called Unionism, said home rule would submerge Ulster within Catholic Ireland. They vowed to fight even a modest lessening of British ties.
History often ignores the psychological roots of conflict.
Each new generation's children absorb inflexibility as a as virtue. Gary Mitchell is one of the few to have probed this psyche. A Protestant playwright, he's spent his life inside a low-income Protestant stronghold. He remembers how the eerie separation of Protestants and Catholics fed childhood paranoia. Some people take great pride in their murals, their ability to draw the murals, to paint them.