Catholicism in Ulster, 1603-1983 by Oliver P. Rafferty

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 249 France and Spain (1598), in which the papacy played a significant role. These negotiations were carried on through other channels, especially the general of the Franciscans,who served as a mediator between the two parties. So the need for a wide consultation of sources is obvious, a fact, however,which does not at all diminish the importance ofthe publication ofthe Hauptinstruktionen. One wishes that one contributor had taken as a topic Clement's conception of the papal office itself as found in the instructions. Robert Bireley, SJ. Loyola University Chicago Catholicism in Ulster, 1603-1983- By Oliver P. Rafferty. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1994. Pp. xiv, 306. $3995.) "Ulster," as is well known, is an ambiguous term. The historic province of Ulster was shired into nine counties, but since 1920 the name is often used of the six partitioned from the rest of Ireland. In this book the word is used in the narrower sense in describing events since partition, but in the broader sense for events before it. The author is a Jesuit priest with his roots very much in the "Ulster" of the twentieth century. His work is a courageous, and to a great extent successful, attempt at panoramic history. He begins with the surrender ofthe chiefs of Gaelic Ulster in 1603. This, and even more the Plantation which followed it, is taken as the crucial point in the distinctiveness of the Ulster Catholic experience, though, as he himself says,"a note of caution should be sounded when using the term 'Ulster Catholicism.'" In some ways it is not easy to pin down what separated Ulster Catholics from their social equals elsewhere in Ireland, whether they came from the poor areas of Donegal or the Sperrin Mountains in County Deny, or from certain parts of County Down, where even at the worst of times some Catholics managed a comparatively comfortable existence. In fact, "Ulster "is neither homogeneous nor altogether distinctive. It would seem arguable that the "Ulster Catholics" are a substantially separate community only since the foundation of the state of Northern Ireland in 1920, and that what marks them off from other Irish Catholics is political as well as religious and cultural. Certainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "Ulster"was part ofthe political unit of Ireland, and in the nineteenth, part of the even larger unit of the United Kingdom. These facts impose a certain measure of untidiness on the book, but overall it is a very useful compendium of information on what has a genuine claim to being a distinctive culture. The author is widely read and uses his knowledge well. I do feel it is unfair to Blessed Conor O'Devany to describe him as "a close associate of [Hugh] O'Neill." He was arraigned and executed in 1612 on a charge of treason, but at that date and certainly in his case a trial for treason was a show trial, with the state not too nice in its handling of evidence. He himself claimed that he was in no way involved in war or politics, and what 250 BOOK REVIEWS evidence there is supports him. He was bishop of Down and Connor, more or less coterminous with O'Neill Clandeboye, a group less than enthusiastic in support of "the Great O'Neill" during the Nine Years' War. From time to time there is something which either the author or the copy-editor should have noticed —for example, the seventeenth-century bishop David Rothe would scarcely recognize himself as "Michael," and a very well-known bishop of the nineteenth century,James Warren Doyle ("J.K.L.") appears as "John." PatrickJ. Corish Si. Patrick's College, Maynooth L'Augustinisme à l'ancienne Faculté de théologie de Louvain. Edited by Mathijs Lamberigts. [Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, CXL] (Leuven: Leuven University Press. Uitgeverij Peeters. 1994. Pp. vi, 455. B.F. 2400,-.) This book reproduces most of the papers presented in November, 1990, at a conference organized by the Center for the Study ofJansenism at the Catholic University in Leuven. The occasion was the 350th anniversary of the publication of CorneliusJansenius' famedAugustinus. The goal was to study more precisely the theological components ofJansenism...