How does The Boston Globe observe Saint Patrick’s Day? By publishing a revisionist polemic castigating Irish America for supporting Irish independence, authored by Ruth Dudley Edwards, an Anglo-Irish apologist for the Orange Order, known for her scornful criticisms of Irish nationalism and Roman Catholicism (“How Americans pushed the Irish to war’’).

Predictably, Edwards accuses Irish-Americans of fomenting hatred, practicing armchair terrorism, and cementing the partition of Ireland. She fails to mention, however, that prior to the Easter Rising of 1916, most Irish nationalists, including many in America, were committed to a path of peaceful, constitutional change within the United Kingdom, while northern Unionists, abetted by leaders of Britain’s Conservative Party, were preparing for armed revolt to stop home rule. It was not Irish America that introduced the gun into Irish politics.

What’s next? A United Empire Loyalist’s view of the American Revolution, just in time for the Fourth of July?

C. J. Doyle

Executive director

Catholic Action League of Massachusetts

Boston