The everyday sectarianism of Northern Ireland in the 1970s left few families untouched
In a tale of forbidden love, Lola Petticrew plays Cushla, a Catholic woman who falls in love with Protestant lawyer, played by Tom Cullen. Photo: Channel 4
It’s a midweek morning in the early 1990s and I’m on Pat Kenny’s show on RTÉ. I’ve been invited on along with a fellow female Northerner to talk about what it’s like living in the south: she as a Catholic and me as a Protestant. It’s an illuminating, deep-dive kind of a chat, covering many dimensions of our lives and seeking to shine a light on how our advance conceptions – and our lived realities – might differ.
In the course of the conversation I explain I am probably not your bog-standard Northern Prod because my father had been raised Catholic and my mother Protestant. While my sister and myself were brought up in my mother’s faith, because my mother was an only child that meant that each and every one of my aunts and uncles and cousins was Catholic. In the context of that discussion I used the words “mixed marriage”.