Catholics in Northern Ireland, 1921–1969

Abstract

Abstract Starting out with a discussion of the sectarian violence which accompanied partition and early failures in peaceful cooperation, this contribution looks at the grievance culture which characterized northern Catholicism thereafter. In many ways the position of Catholics in Northern Ireland had been preordained centuries earlier: a largely poor grouping, looking to the Catholic Church for leadership in a state which considered them ‘disloyal’. The religion itself was their politics and until the 1960s this deterred the development of anything like normal nationalist politics. A form of ghetto religious culture developed, enclosed, comforting, uncritical. Such a church was not well-prepared for the social and religious revolution of the welfare state and the reforms of Vatican II.