Is Arlene Foster trying to say her kind of unionism is multicultural and welcoming to all people?

I’M beginning to think that Arlene Foster has, as Donald Trump would say, “tapped my lines”, because she has used language from Catholic theology that I recently used to explain the meaning of “Catholic” to a person in the north.

Here’s how I explained it. The famous expert on world religions, Mircea Eliade, has pointed out that the opposite of Catholicism is not Protestantism, but rather sectarianism. Catholicism is universal. It does not seek to “come out’’ of this world, but rather to transform this world. “Come-outism” is the very antithesis of Catholicism.

Moreover, “Catholic” means more than “universal”. Let me, ironically and ecumenically, turn to a good Protestant (and a leading expert on Martin Luther), the Rev Martin Marty, for perfect explication: “If ‘universal’ is the adequate meaning of ‘Catholic’, why did the Latin Church, which in its vernacular language had the word ‘universalis’, not use this word, but rather borrowed from Greek the term ‘katholikos’ instead? The etymological history of ‘universalis’ is not, in every detail, clear; but it certainly involves the concepts of ‘one’ and ‘vertere’ (‘turn’).

“It suggests using a compass to make a circle around a central point. It is an inclusive concept in the sense that the circle includes everything within it. But, by the same token, it also excludes everything outside it.

“‘Universalis’ contains a subtle note of negativity. ‘Katholikos’ does not. It is more unequivocally positive. It means simply ‘through the whole’, or ‘throughout the whole’ (‘kata’, or ‘kath’, or through or throughout holos, whole, from the same Indo-European roots as our English ‘whole’).”

So, why do I say Arlene Foster “tapped my lines”? Well, because she is now saying: “Nationalism is, by its nature, narrow and exclusive. Being a unionist is the opposite. Unionism stands for pluralism and multiculturalism. We are inclusive and welcome all.”

Can we now expect the DUP to be renamed “Katholikos DUP”?

FR SEAN McMANUS President, Irish National Caucus Washington, DC, USA