THE CATHOLIC PRESS IN SCOTLAND SINCE THE RESTORATION OF THE HIERARCHY

Abstract

The history of the Catholic press in Scotland in the last 100 years is the history of an indigenous Scottish Catholic culture trying to assert its identity against the self-interest of immigrant influences. It also has much to say of change and continuity in journalistic standards and ethics, techniques and preoccupations. But the main historical theme that asserts itself is that of a Scottish struggle against what often must have appeared to be alien oppression. It should be stressed that neither of the two obvious villains were the worst sinners: the Scottish Catholic press was not overshadowed unduly by either England or Rome. But French and Irish Catholics seriously tried a form of cultural enslavement on Scottish Catholicism, and their aggressiveness was far more serious than English or Roman indifference. It was, naturally, Ireland whose effects were most long-lasting, but it seems likely that French influences were out of all proportion to the numerical strength of their agents.1