WORKING for the BBC as a religious affairs journalist in Northern Ireland meant that I had to be routinely aware of the differences between religious denominations and traditions.
This was back at the end of the last century and two traditions prevailed, Catholicism and Protestantism.
Both were associated with ethnic identities and perspectives on the constitution, the desirability of the region remaining within the United Kingdom or merging with the rest of Ireland.
Because of the focus on the politics of this divide and the breadth of the gap between the two sides, each side had little interest in how theology framed the other.
But I had to know - just as any political journalist would need to know the differences between political parties.
I would joke with friends that the key difference between Catholic and Protestant customs, revealed by my researches, was that when you visited a Catholic priest he would offer you whiskey whereas when you visited a Presbyterian or Church of Ireland minister, he would, while helping you off with your coat, discreetly point out the bathroom to spare you the embarrassment of asking.
This distinction maps onto a much bigger one.
These are two very different Christian traditions, each surely having an impact on the cultures in which they are revered; each influencing, if to a declining extent, the social and political attitudes of followers.
I came to think of Catholicism as a matriarchal religion and Protestantism as patriarchal.
The loving mother indulges the playfulness of the child - hence the whiskey. The father, however, wants order and manners.
At the risk of stereotyping one might suggest that the Catholic culture accommodates a little anarchy while the Protestant wants people to stick to the rules.
I also saw the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism as being like that between two other traditions at odds with each other, Hinduism and Islam.
Catholicism, like Hinduism, favours icons and ritual, bells and smells, and includes worship of a divine mother. Catholics have as many saints to pray to as Hindus have deities, each with an allotted role, St Anthony for helping you find your glasses or your wallet, Laxmi for bringing wealth, Saraswati for helping you to pass an exam.
Islam and Protestantism are religions of the book and abhor the idea of praying before icons. Catholics hear New Testament readings at mass but pay little attention to the Old Testament. If Protestants have any icon at all it is the Bible itself.
One of the big stories of my time in religious affairs was the moving statues. Worshippers had begun to notice statues of the Virgin Mary making gestures or moving about. Thousands of people flocked to grottos at which these movements had been witnessed.
The prominent ones were at Ballinspittle in County Cork and Mount Melleray in Wexford.
Protestants, and indeed quite a few Catholics, saw all this as madness and heresy but Protestants had their own reports of miraculous events. These tended to be healings and revivals.
I covered services at which people would queue up for a visiting pastor to touch them on the brow causing them to fall backwards and to find themselves miraculously relieved of some ailment.
It appeared that God or the spirit was communicating with the faithful in ways that suited their separate theologies and traditions.
At first I marvelled at reports of miraculous occurrences of this kind and then I discovered that they were so common that if I reported on all of them I would have little time for any other kind of story.
The Virgin Mary wasn't just sending signals through her statues in Cork and Wexford. She was popping up in County Tyrone and Derry, and of course she was busy in Medjugorje and Lourdes.
I went to Medjugorje in 1987, before the Balkan wars and met some of the young people who reported that they were having nightly meetings with the mother of God and relaying her messages to the world.
I was allowed among a select few into a room behind the church where some of these meetings were happening and saw two teenagers kneel in prayer then fall silent to listen to the messages they were getting.
There are people who take these manifestations seriously and some who disparage them as nonsense, but in between there is the large number of people who will take a chance on a pilgrimage for a healing when other measures have failed.
Today, in a more secularised Ireland, we may look back on those periods of religious enthusiasm with a conviction that they will not come back. I wouldn't be so sure.
I could test the eagerness of the people for revelation and miracles by starting a rumour that a little girl in our street had seen Mary up a tree but I expect I would get crushed in the rush.
Malachi O’Doherty’s novel on the Northern Irish Troubles, Terry Brankin Has A Gun, is published by Merrion
Malachi’s book, How To Fix Northern Ireland, is published by Atlantic Books
See More: Catholic, Northern Ireland, Protestant, Religion, Troubles
