The 'high' level of the NI problem is completely political. In fact, the IRA is not a Catholic organisation, as it is Marxist and antagonistic towards religion. Many are the Catholics that have spoken against them and must forever live in fear of reprisal (Priests especially ). The 'low' level is very sectarian. Both sides are at fault and on the 'low' level it is the inability to forgive past trangressions in order to move on to a more productive, less bloody future. That's one thing that disgusts me about some of the posters here at FR on the religious threads. People who are blinded by hatred to the point where one can not reasonably discuss religion with them are sick.
Oh please dont think I meant to imply (infer?) that the IRA is backed by the Church! Obviously it is not, perhaps at the very local level only. The current conflict there is far more ploitical than it is religious in the traditional context.
We Southerners should be grateful to the RCC and the Pope for his kind intervention in the late War, as the Pope apparently interceded on the South's behalf to largely end the recruitment of Irishmen for the Union Army, though the effort was too late. The Church, certainly in the South and to a lesser degree in Rome, was pretty solidly on the side of the South. One brave priest went so far as to raise a home guard with the entention of attacking a Union position, justified as "self defense"-which it was, the Union force threatening his home city you see. Unfortunately, a druken superior squashed his plans. Another priest in the South was nearly imprisoned for refusing to pray for Abe and the union, but a Northern Irish regiment barred the way when the provost guard came to arrest him.