'Imperium in Imperio': Irish Episcopal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The heavily Irish character of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, United Kingdom, and much of the former British Empire is evident. This was not, however, the necessary consequence of large-scale Irish emigration in the nineteenth-century. Rather, it was the result of a carefully-planned campaign to install Irish bishops in the several national hierarchies, a campaign which began in earnest in the United States from 1830, before effecting the Maritime provinces of British North America, the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, and New Zealand. Only Scotland was able - temporarily - to repel the Irish. This phenomenon was directed by Paul Cullen, in his successive roles as rector of the Irish College, Rome, archbishop of Armagh, and, from 1852, archbishop of Dublin. Cullen was able to use his influence at Rome to manipulate and control information regarding English-language conflicts. This allowed him to secure the appointment as bishops of a substantial number of his relatives, former students, and diocesan priests around the world. In every case save the Cape of Good Hope, this occurred in the face of determined opposition on the part of a pre-existing national hierarchy: French and German in the United States, Scots in Maritime Canada (and Scotland), English Benedictines in Australia, French Marists in New Zealand. Excepting Scotland, Cullen's bishops largely supplanted their predecessors. More than merely ethnically Irish, these bishops and many of their successors shared a distinctive Hiberno-Roman devotional and disciplinary model of Catholicism that became normative in the areas to which they were sent.