This week saw the launch of the new Assembly in Northern Ireland. One of the lessons we learn is that when the community in that part of our country takes one step forward, it is just as likely to take two steps backward. The burning of 10 Roman Catholic Churches on Wednesday night followed by St. Peter’s Derry along with several Orange halls the next night was certainly a backward step.

Such sectarian outrages are wrong in every sense. They are contrary to christian teaching, they defame the spirit of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and they deny the civil and religious liberty for which the Orange Order stands.

In the context of elections in Northern Ireland the currency of language has become debased. Democracy -which means the care of minorities- is used by some to mean dictatorship and domination of one group by another. The concept of Law and Order is interpreted by some to mean keeping the other side down and Loyalty, to the state and to the Crown, comes to mean "providing it coincides with my own point of view."

It remains to be seen if today’s events at Drumcree will take us a step further forwards or backwards. In the scale of priorities it makes little sense for the achievement of the Assembly to be undermined by the ability or otherwise of a number of Orangemen to walk down half a mile of public road.

Yes, the Orangemen have a right to go to church and a right to march. Yes, the residents have a right to protest.

Here we have a conflict between two equal rights, both of which are entitled to be exercised peacefully and within the law. There are two other factors involved - Accommodation can only be reached through dialogue. And, You cannot go where you are not wanted. That is a statement of the problem. The solution may be harder to find.

A further complication is that there is actually a basic "civil rights" issue involved which we can easily lose sight of. The right to march is part of the right to protest, against government or anything else. To set that right aside, however it may be justified, is in fact to diminish the full "civil rights" of the whole community.