Catholic realities and pastoral strategies: another look at the historiography of Scottish Catholicism, 1878–1920

Abstract

Catholics in Scotland and their historians have recounted their past in several ways. We have many celebrations of the faithful Irish immigrant steadfastness while their Scottish-born brethren have had at best negligible recognition.2 At the other extreme the Banffshire-born conservative priest Rev. Aeneas Dawson airbrushed the Irish from his massive nineteenth-century history: even Daniel O'Connell did not merit a mention. On the other side, the pioneering lay activist James Walsh virtually ignored native-born Scots in his monumental study.3 In more recent times several historians have begun to capture something of the complexity of the Catholic experience.4 The independent-minded Catholic laity, restless Irish-born clergy and working class leaders have received consideration. Highlanders, Italians, Lithuanians, Belgians, Poles, English, converts and religious orders of men and women have received some long overdue attention.5 Some leading clerical and lay figures who tried to create and sustain a sense of community now have their biographers.6