Enough religion to make us hate - V. G. B Griffin

Victor Griffin, born in county Wicklow, talks of two major periods in his ministry in the Church of Ireland: a twenty-year stint in the city of Derry and a twenty-two year period as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He takes his title for this book from his distinguished predecessor as Dean of St Patrick's, Jonathan Swift, who said that in Ireland we have enough religion to make us hate and not enough to make us love. His reflections come in five chapters: absolutism and the tendency in all of us to decide that we are right and everyone else is therefore wrong is dealt with in chapter one: relatins between church and state and the problems they cause for both parties, the Orange Order and the Protestant Monarchy, the Drumcree debacle, Protestants in the Irish Free State, and his own conviction of the need for a pluralist society form chapter two; chapter three looks at the ups and downs of the ecumenical movement, chapter four at our notions of God and chapter five at the abortion referendum of 1983 in which Victor Griffin took a very high-profile part.