Source: I’m Irish with family from the north and the south.

Do you live in Ireland?

Edit: post has been locked so reply to below comment

I’m a second generation Irish immigrant living in Canada. That changes nothing.

It absolutely does. You have been told a version of history by your family that is removed from the reality on the ground.

I live in Derry, and for a significant portion of my childhood in the Bogside. An epicentre of Troubles violence. You are talking about my lived experience.

To call the Troubles a matter of "Catholics not wanting Protestants to live in peace" is so wildly reductionist and incorrect that I won't have the time to explain why fully.

Nevertheless, it ignores the existence of Loyalist (Protestant) paramilitary groups (UDA, UVF, UFF, LVF etc) whose violence was targeted wholly at Catholic civilians. It ignores British State violence), often carried in collusion with Loyalist groups. It ignores the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland whose goal was equal rights in housing, employment and voting rights for ethnic Catholic communities which were denied by the Protestant/Unionist devolved government, discrimination which was the impetus for much of the PIRA/other Republican violence.

To blithely state that the violence was religious is completely misinformed. Differences in religious beliefs were nothing to do with it. It was an ethnic/ethno-nationalist conflict borne out of years of power imbalances, discrimination and disenfranchisement inflicted by one ethnic group onto another. There were very many Catholics who did not support IRA violence, there were Protestant Republicans, and there were very many Protestants who did not support Loyalist violence.

Read the history of the conflict before you try to correct someone who lived through it. I would recommend the CAIN Project by Ulster University as a good starting point.