The Orange Order’s Twelfth of July demonstrations passed off without serious incident, a welcome development that will have been greeted with a sigh of relief in some areas, such as Ardoyne in north Belfast.
Elsewhere, however, these days the Twelfth is met largely with relative, if weary, indifference. It speaks well of the overwhelming majority of the public that they put up with its impositions with so little complaint.
It is customary for the order to say that the Twelfth is for everyone, as if it were an entirely benign jamboree. That is self-evidently untrue. Catholics, even if they were so minded, are not able to join while practising their faith, while an Orangeman who deigns to attend the funeral of a Catholic friend or neighbour can face a disciplinary process.
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Although the Orange Order aims to promote biblical Protestantism, it is striking that today it seems far more comfortable in the political sphere.
The Rev Mervyn Gibson, the Presbyterian minister who is the order’s grand secretary, spoke yesterday during a BBC radio interview about “promoting” and “persuading for the union”.
Exactly how or who the order is seeking to persuade about the benefits it perceives to lie in the union is a mystery; it is difficult to think of an organisation more focused on preaching to the already converted, or an event as inimical to winning new adherents as the Twelfth.
Resolutions covering three areas - faith, loyalty and the state - are traditionally read out at Twelfth ‘fields’. This year the order affirmed its entirely legitimate constitutional desire that Northern Ireland should remain in the UK, and once again bewailed how Brexit had worked out from its point of view.
It is customary for the Orange Order to say that the Twelfth is for everyone, as if it were an entirely benign jamboree. That is self-evidently untrue
In a reference to the Safeguarding the Union deal - whose negotiators included the DUP’s two most recent leaders, both Orangemen at the time - it complained that “more recent political assurances have, to date, delivered little” before going on to make the historically futile appeal for “unionist unity”.
Acknowledgement that unionism bears more than a little responsibility for the outworkings of Brexit was conspicuous by its absence.
Brexit has been the single most destabilising political endeavour in more than a generation, though Mr Gibson said it was those “agitating” for Irish unity who had contributed to making relationships in Northern Ireland “the worst they’ve been for 20 years” - an entirely hyperbolic claim for anyone who remembers the violence and mayhem around Drumcree, Twaddell and other flashpoints linked to parades.
We all bear a duty to be better neighbours as we navigate our complex social, political and religious landscape. A keener sense of self-awareness from the Orange Order would go a long way. There’s always next year.
