THE Orange Order has welcomed comments from Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, in which he called for reciprocation of "sincere" community relations efforts from the Order.
In a speech at the Humbert Summer School in Co Mayo at the weekend, Cardinal Brady said the Order was sincere in its efforts to reach across the community.

The Orange Order "deserves credit for what I believe are sincere and convincing efforts to promote dialogue and understanding," he said. "These should be acknowledged and reciprocated.

"Attacks on Orange halls, such as those which took place last week around Armagh, deserve to be unequivocally condemned.

"They are symptomatic of a sectarian pathology which is evil and has to be continually challenged in ourselves and every aspect of social, religious and political life."

Grand Secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, Drew Nelson, welcomed the Cardinal's comments.

He said that about four years ago all the Loyal Orders got together to address issues surrounding parading and that they then arranged meetings with societal stakeholders including the Alliance Party, SDLP and the Roman Catholic Church leadership.

"Our aim was to discuss face-to-face the difficulties we had with the Parades Commission system and we found these meetings very useful," he said.

"We are pleased that Cardinal Brady has gone on record to recognise our bona fides and indeed he has done so before."

Mr Nelson noted that the order has made its written submission to the review of parade regulation which is being led by Paddy Ashdown. The public consultation of the review is open for another month.

"We would like to see the subsequent recommendations being implemented as soon as possible," added Mr Nelson.

But Cardinal Brady's comments were rejected by Breandan Maccionnaith of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition in Portadown.

"That is his (the Cardinal's] opinion but there are a lot of other people with different views about how sincere the Orange Order is about dialogue," said Mr Maccionnaith.

The ongoing dispute about the Order's right to march on the Garvaghy Road was about "anti-Irishness" and was more about ethnicity and race than religion, he said.

A recent survey of residents in the area found that 87 per cent of them wanted the Order to take an alternative route to Garvaghy in their annual parade from Drumcree church, he added.

Portadown District recently met Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to discuss the Drumcree situation and many within the Order hope its now constant appeal for face-to-face mediation will be duly rewarded by Ashdown's review.