He kept fighting his Protestant neighbours and suppressing the Calvinists in his territory.
After 1964 middle class Catholics started voting Republican in the same proportion as their Protestant neighbors.
'Republicans need to be mindful of the fears of our Protestant neighbours,' he said.
We stood and admired that display with our Jewish and Protestant neighbors.
When your living is tied to sin, you tend toward a liberal view on the subject, a fact our Protestant neighbors appreciated.
Kurtscheid stayed catholic and for the following centuries, a confessional border divided it from its Protestant neighbours.
Their predominantly Protestant neighbours to the north, including Germany and Scandinavia, are in comparatively good shape financially.
Through the first 50 years of partition, Catholics in Northern Ireland had far less access to voting, jobs and housing than did their Protestant neighbors.
So what has become of that other bulwark of partition, the unattractiveness of the republic to its Protestant neighbours?
And most of my Protestant neighbors would do likewise.