Nationalism caused a strong reaction among many Protestants, especially in Ulster.  As passions became inflamed at the beginning of the twentieth century rival associations were formed, many of them with military capabilities.  As the government moved towards a policy of Home rule for Ireland, wanting to establish a Parliament once more in Dublin, resistance stiffened among the Protestant population.  A Solemn Covenant was signed in 1912 by more than half a million Protestant men and women determined to defend the Union with Britain by all necessary means, fearing that Home Rule would mean “Rome rule”.

At the same time Irish nationalism was becoming more republican and more revolutionary In tone.  Patrick Pearse's poetry and skill as a speaker, allied with a revival of the old Celtic myths by Anglo-Irish writers encouraged the concept of sacrifice for the sake of Irish freedom.  The Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein were formed.  A citizen's army began to parade and agitate for independence.  In the North, the Ulster Volunteer force was also recruited and armed.

The First World War interrupted plans for Home Rule as Britain and both Unionists and Nationalist united against Germany.  The Nationalists hoped to achieve Home Rule or something more while the Unionists hoped to retain integration with Britain at the war’s end.  A failed rebellion in 1916 by Republicans led by Pearse did not have popular support but the British government’s policy of executing its leaders turned them into national martyrs.  Following the end of the First World War, violence erupted throughout Ireland.  After a series of encounters between the IRA and the British security forces a compromise solution was agreed between the government and most of the republican leadership.  In 1922, Ireland was partitioned into the separate states of Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State.

THE CURRENT SITUATION
The events following partition really form part of our current situation and, in many ways, are all too close, to view with any degree of objectivity.  Nonetheless, we must mention a few of the more important points.  In the south, partition was followed by a brief but bloody and bitter civil war.  In the North by rioting and communal violence.  Perhaps exhausted not only by the “troubles” but also by the Great War which preceded them, an uneasy peace of sorts fell on the island, interrupted, from time to time, by outbursts of violence which were usually easily confined and short-lived.

The Irish Free State moved in stages from being part of the British Empire to becoming the Republic of Ireland, a sovereign state in 1947.  The Free State had remained neutral during the Second World War, even though both Germany and the United Kingdom had considered invading it if circumstances dictated that this would have been in their interests.  The Protestant population fell dramatically, partly because of the closure of British army garrisons, partly because some Protestant families relocated to Britain or to Northern Ireland and partly as a result of the Roman Catholic Church’s insistence that any children born into a “mixed” marriage had to be brought up in the Catholic Faith.  The Roman Catholic Church initially held a privileged position within the Irish Republic’s constitution, but this was subsequently changed.  In practice, during the existence of the Free State the Roman Catholic Church’s moral teaching found expression in social legislation but this, by and large, is no longer the case.