This was, however, precisely why the IRA could not respond to the pope’s plea. Its system of classification was not objective but subjective. In their different ways, the British and the pope used a taxonomy based on action – what was the deed that had been done and how did it fit into the legal codes or the Ten Commandments? The IRA arranged its world according to motivation – why was the deed done? It agreed with Hamlet: ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
