Agree with what you said about Cal and his behavior. But how can you say, that they have forgotten what they were fighting for when it is said by Crilly and Skeffington over and over again? They are the IRA, they want to "get the Brits out of Ireland" by the use of violence and whatnot.
I am aware that the IRA are different from the Catholic confession, but it is clearly associated with it, just like the Protestant confession is clearly associated with loyalist side. The confessions are politicized and serve as a hood for the two ideologies who are contradicting each other. That's the whole deal with the confessions and parties, the topic has been beaten to death by now, so let's finally bury it.

I am not sure if this is because this is a special setting where where it's all hypothetical or I just simply misread something.
But,



He shoots his and Cal is the escape driver.
At least in the novel by Bernard Mac Laventry.
Please don't be offended, just trying to help.

As in each one of your posts your arguments were logical and style quite formal. It was a pretty good read, though I had to laugh a little bit when you tried to tell me that the value of a society can be measured in the possibilities for its people to have sex. Kind of a weird theisis, don't you think? When you present something like this, please elaborate a little more on it so we understand what you want to say.
You gave a very good answer to my question and I thank you for that.

I would not have agreed with the statement by Berenike either. Even though this is a very political novel the love story is what drives the plot and makes it possible to cover different controversial topics. The love between Cal and Marcella is heavily influenced by the Troubles, which lets the reader get involved in that conflict on his own. It helps him to see the conflict from the perspective of a young man madly in love with another woman. From this point of view the reader gets a whole new experience of the Northern Ireland conflict, one that's not covered in the media.

It's hard to find anything to add to your statement, Jonas. I fully agree with you, up to that point where you started talking about sexually measured societies.

TL;DR

Zitat

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Small differences between religious confessions always sufficed for violent conflicts. (Between protestants and catholics the base of differences worked very often as explanation for wars.) You can't make this clear cut between religion und politics.
Northern Ireland is a modern society, therefore the religious differences are not the key reasons, but the religion has a big influence as dividing factor, which enhances the gap between the two groups and exacerbates a rapprochement.
The conflict in its core is not really a confession war, but it follows a ideological logic, which seems kind of religious.

The attitude of the IRA is affected by the religious feeling of beeing justified for violence. This holy war of the IRA for a united Ireland shares some motives of the crusades, who also chased the "infidel oppressor".
In Cal this attitude is shown in the lesson by the priest, when he say: "There is such a thing as righteous anger", while the punishment of the "sinner".

Cal is not religious in the core meaning, but he internalized the Christian believing of moral supremacy. This helps Cal/ IRA to legitimize his deeds as unavoidably.

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I did not at all mean to make a clear cut between politics and religion. Your statement sounds absolutely reasonable and I actually agree with you on most of your point. In the novel and in the whole Northern Ireland Conflict religion is a dividing factor, I was looking for a term like that. Their confession influences the idiologies of the loyalists and nationalists and helps with the justification of violent actions against the other party.