IAN Paisley was last night unrepentant about his "Catholic IRA" remarks, insisting the claim was an "uncomfortable truth" that his critics failed to recognise.
But the DUP MP said he made "no association of the RC [Roman Catholic] Church with the IRA" and that Alliance's Stephen Farry "wanted to take offence when none was given".
Historian Eamon Phoenix said it was incorrect to directly link Catholicism and violent republicanism, and that the Church had been a consistent critic of the IRA and its forerunners.
The Irish News contributor said the overlap between the IRA and Catholicism was "historical coincidence" and that neither theology and religion were drivers of republican violence.
Mr Paisley was censured by the chair of Westminster's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC) on Wednesday after referring to the "genocide of sectarian murder where the IRA, the Catholic IRA, murdered Protestants at the border".
He made the remarks in the context of Holocaust Memorial Day, saying it was an occasion to "remember victims of the Holocaust and also other genocides around the world".
Committee chair Simon Hoare, who described himself as a "practising Catholic", voiced concern at the North Antrim MP's comments while fellow MP Mr Farry asked to be disassociated from them.
Read more: The non-Catholics who joined republican paramilitaries
But Mr Paisley yesterday issued a statement standing over the remarks, saying criticism was "misplaced".
"The IRA is/was a sectarian murder machine – its 'sect' identity background is/was RC [Roman Catholic]," he said.
"There were no long line of leading protestant and nonconformist sect members of the IRA."
He said the IRA's targets were "almost exclusively Protestant", especially in the border counties.
"Are my critics really trying to sustain a position that the IRA was a non-denominational and non-sectarian and egalitarian organisation?" he said.
"I am afraid the uncomfortable truth of my comments are a fact."
The DUP MP said there was a need to "face these uncomfortable truths".
He said Mr Farry's comments implied "he did not listen to what was said", while Mr Hoare and other English Catholics could not "understand or be associated with the sectarian nature of the IRA".
"Indeed many ask why the Church did not excommunicate IRA members," he said.
SDLP MP Claire Hanna, who also sits on the NIAC, said Mr Paisley's comments were "calculated and crass".
"The IRA’s sectarian murder campaign was opposed by the vast majority of Catholics, Protestants and people in all of our communities," she said.
"To seek to associate the heinous acts of any paramilitary group with one community or faith is absolutely shameful – what makes it worse is that Ian Paisley knows exactly what he’s doing and doesn’t care."
Ms Hanna urged the DUP leadership to intervene and not "allow him to shred relationships between our communities".
Mr Farry said Mr Paisley's phraseology was "both offensive and inaccurate", and he called on the North Antrim MP to apologise.
"Made in the context of Holocaust Memorial Day, the phrase implies wider Catholic legitimisation of sectarian murders of Protestants," he said.
"The members of the IRA may have mainly come from a Catholic background, but the IRA was never a Catholic organisation or reflective of the vast majority of Catholics in Northern Ireland or anywhere else, who clearly and unequivocally rejected terrorism."
Mr Phoenix pointed out how many of the founders of the violent republican tradition – namely the United Irishmen – were Protestant and how leading Catholic clerics had later been critics of the Fenians and the IRA.
"The Catholic hierarchy excommunicated members of anti-Treaty IRA during the civil war of 1922 and from that period on right through to Cardinal Cathal Daly in the 1990s condemnation of the IRA was the norm," he said.
"There's no doubt that the overwhelming majority of IRA members came from a Catholic background, almost exclusively, but conversely we don't we talk of the Protestant UDA/UFF or Protestant UVF?"
Read more: The non-Catholics who joined republican paramilitaries
