Catholic Church In Ireland Research Articles

‘Going Deep, Going Forth, Going Together’ Part I: The Catholic Church in Ireland, Vatican II and Pope Francis

‘Going Deep, Going Forth, Going Together’ Part I: The Catholic Church in Ireland, Vatican II and Pope Francis Brendan Leahy (bio) In a 1975 newspaper interview, Cardinal Conway spoke of the many changes and developments going on in the Church and society both in Ireland and worldwide. He described the situation as humanity going through ‘the birth pangs of a new civilisation’ and he foresaw it would involve a trauma that would last well into the next century.1 Just ten years previously, the Second Vatican Council had affirmed that ‘today, the human race is involved in a new stage of history … We can already speak of a true cultural and social transformation, one which has repercussions on humanity’s religious life as well’.2 We are now in the twenty-first century, and the birth pangs of a new civilisation with its many cultural and social transformations are continuing. Speaking in 2015 to a gathering of Italian Catholics in Florence, Pope Francis summarised things: ‘We are not living an era of change, but a change of era’. Models of global financial and social development are under scrutiny, church scandals abound, ecological concerns are increasing, the world is entering a world war ‘piece-meal’, as Pope Francis often repeats. No wonder many young and not so young people suffer social anxiety. The title of Sally Rooney’s novel captures a contemporary search for meaning – Beautiful World, Where Are You.3 The ‘long-haul project’ of Vatican II This year marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. As Yves Congar and others who participated in that event remarked, a way of seeing the Church changed at the Council. Coming just a few short years after a devastating World War, with new developments, culturally and socially worldwide, the Council wanted to help the Church respond to the challenges of the new emerging era by re-aligning her to its sources, particularly the Gospel. In and through its sixteen documents, the Council, [End Page 267] itself recognised as an exceptional event of the Holy Spirit, ‘re-positioned’, as it were, the Church in terms of understanding, living and expressing faith with a new missionary spirit of engagement in a world striving for unity, peace and fraternity. The Council was about more than a few ecclesial touch-ups. It was a long-haul project. In responding to a journalist’s question on the flight back from Abu Dhabi in 2019, Pope Francis observed how historians say that a council takes 100 years to take root in the Church. We’re about half-ways there. At this point, we are able to see there have been various phases in the ‘reception’, the taking root of the Council. The reception process is dynamic. It is possible, for instance, to illustrate at least a few key emphases in each of the pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. While no one Pope nor any one phase of reception will capture all the ‘Spirit is saying to the church’ (Rev 2:7) through an event as significant as the Second Vatican Council, nevertheless the key emphases in each pontificate are significant factors in the reception of the Council. Ten years after the conclusion of the Council, reflecting on the fervour of the initial impact of the Council, Paul VI, a Pope who underlined unity and charity in his teachings, issued an encyclical on the proclamation of the Gospel (Evangelii Nuntiandi), a document that would greatly influence the future Pope Francis. In this encyclical Pope Paul already felt a need to remind people that the Council’s purpose was to better equip the Church in proclaiming the Gospel as a dynamic force in people’s lives. His first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, as relevant today as ever, proposed dialogue as the way of the Church’s mission today, a theme very much taken up by Pope Francis: ‘The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. It has something to say, a message to give, a communication to make’ (n. 65). During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, who had attended the Council as a young...

Piety and Privilege: Catholic Secondary Schooling in Ireland and the Theocratic State, 1922–1967 by Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford

Reviewed by: Piety and Privilege: Catholic Secondary Schooling in Ireland and the Theocratic State, 1922–1967 by Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford Brian Fleming (bio) Piety and Privilege: Catholic Secondary Schooling in Ireland and the Theocratic State, 1922–1967, Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 256 pages. A major feature of Irish education in the last two centuries has been the dominant position of the churches, particularly the Catholic Church. Histories dealing with and explaining developments during the period invariably refer to this phenomenon and its impact. In their recent book, O’Donoghue and Harford make the point that no single work to date has addressed in detail how that dominance developed and was maintained by the Catholic Church and used, as they see it, to promote piety and privilege in Ireland in the period between the establishment of the independent Irish state in 1922 and 1967. So, that’s what they set out to do. Rather than adopting a hypothesis, they took the view that a more descriptive approach was needed. Both authors have written extensively on a range of topics including aspects of the history of Irish education. They also have access to an oral history project they undertook some years ago to capture people’s experiences of attending school in Ireland in the middle of the last century. In addition, they have extensive knowledge of the history of other education systems which allowed them to contrast the approach of the Catholic Church in Ireland with that which unfolded in other jurisdictions. In summary, they were ideally placed to undertake this project. In order to explain the context of Irish education when Irish Independence was secured in 1922, the authors present a useful summary of the main events that occurred during the previous hundred years. In particular, two policy developments had a fairly transformative effect on Irish education during that period. A watershed development occurred in 1831 when the British government decided to fund elementary (primary) education in Ireland. The mechanism used was to establish a Board of Commissioners to oversee the system and allocate resources. This was a particular achievement as the government did not introduce state funding for primary education in Britain for a further forty years. Whilst some scholars suggest that the government took this step in an effort to ‘civilize’ the unruly Irish, the main reason was a campaign for reform over the previous decades which came to fruition under Bishop James Doyle. It was a hard-won concession and the notion that E. G. Stanley, the British government’s chief secretary in Ireland, ‘championed’ the reform is misplaced. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the Catholic [End Page 320] hierarchy secured a further concession in relation to secondary (then known as intermediate) education when the Intermediate Education Act (1878) was passed. Under its terms, an examination board was established which disbursed funds to schools based on the success rates of students in the public examinations thus circumventing the politically sensitive controversy that direct state subvention to denominational schools would have engendered. So, at both primary and secondary level a system was now in place whereby the church authorities controlled educational provision whilst at the same time receiving some financial aid from the state. That’s what prevailed when the independent Irish state came into being. In 1922, the vast majority of the leading politicians in the newly independent Ireland were quite happy with the status quo in relation to education. The close association that had developed in the previous five decades or so between the Church and the independence movement meant that there was no significant anti-clerical feeling in Ireland similar to that which had arisen in other countries. Thus, the Church was allowed to retain ownership of the schools, control appointments of teachers and principals, and decide on curriculum by and large. The situation was copper-fastened in the constitution adopted in 1937, which describes the education system as state aided as distinct from provided. This suited successive governments as they had the advantage of an education system provided at far less than cost. Most of those working in the schools were doing...

Gay Byrne: The ‘Conservative Catholic’ Who Changed Ireland

Gay Byrne: The ‘Conservative Catholic’ Who Changed Ireland Mary Kenny When Parnell died, he was described as ‘the uncrowned King of Ireland’. Something similar might be said – was said – about the broadcaster Gay Byrne, when he died in November 2019, aged eighty-five. Gay (‘Gaybo’ as he was popularly known) was not only the most famous television and radio presence in Ireland.At his death, tributes poured in from all sides emphasising the width of his impact on Irish society. For thirty-four years Gay Byrne had been the hugely influential host of the longest-running TV show in Europe, ‘The Late Late Show’. He had also hosted a radio programme on the national airwaves for twenty-seven years, ‘The Gay Byrne Hour’, which had also had a meaningful country-wide impact. This earned him the title of ‘the Great Window-Opener’by academic Finola Doyle O’Neill1 – he ‘opened the windows’ on Irish society, and allowed what had been previously ‘brushed under the carpet’ to be spoken. Commentators even took to dividing Irish social mores into a ‘before Gaybo’ and an ‘after Gaybo’ era: as London’s Daily Telegraph reported, ‘he brought debates on abortion, AIDS, contraception, death, divorce and suicide into the nation’s homes’.2 It would be oft repeated that he lifted the stone which hid the squalid secrets of the past. Although a lifelong observant Catholic, he was, nonetheless, credited with breaking the dominant power of the Catholic Church in Ireland. He ‘pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in a Catholic country’, according to the obituary in The Times.3 ‘Anyone writing the social history of the country will have to consider Gay Byrne as one of the key figures in modern Ireland’, a letter-writer wrote in the Irish Times.4 Ed Walsh, another contributor, wrote that Gay was ‘A lone voice when Ireland was under the control of the Catholic Church. He … made such a difference, when people started to think for themselves’.5 ‘He bridged the chasm between the curtain-squinting, God-fearing, inward-looking Ireland of the past’, wrote the columnist Jennifer O’Connell, ‘and the more Studies • volume 110 • number 438 175 compassionate, courageous and forgiving one that was emerging’.6 It was even claimed by the feminist Carol Hunt that Gay was a steward of the Irish feminist movement. We forget, wrote Hunt, ‘just how oppressive, misogynistic and church-dominated this country was in 1962’. Gay helped to transform Ireland ‘from near theocracy to liberal secular state’.7 Gay didn’t invent Irish feminism, but he facilitated its réclame. He invited feminists onto his show (including myself, as a founder member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement), because he knew it would make good TV. Yet he was essentially quite an old-fashioned type of Irishman, who liked the idea of the mother being at the heart of a home, as his own mother had been. My contemporary in the movement, the late June Levine, who worked as a researcher for Gay, was critical of his alpha-male, domineering attitudes, which she compared to that of a Christian Brother – ‘merciless, unreasonable and relentless on anyone who fell short’.8 Nell McCafferty thought Gay’s attitude to women ‘patronising’: he had a spot on his radio show where he would telephone housewives, opening with the greeting ‘How’re ya, Missus?’ Nell’s mother in Derry was longing for such a call – so she could answer it with a withering ‘F*** off!’9 But June Levine was onto something when she mentioned the Christian Brother influence, for Gabriel Mary Byrne was indeed a grateful product of a Christian Brothers education at Dublin’s renowned Synge Street. He told the Dublin Hot Press, in 1986, that ‘I have great admiration for the Christian Brothers because without them none of us would have got an education of any kind’. Some of the Brothers were ‘brutal’ and some were ‘bonkers’, and the surroundings were ‘horrible’ – overcrowded classrooms, tenement buildings. And yet, he reflected, there were Brothers who were enlightened educators.10 Early days Gay was born in 1934, the youngest of six children (of whom five survived) into a Dublin family...

Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland: A Contemporary History of Divisive Social Issues by Don O'Leary

Reviewed by: Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland: A Contemporary History of Divisive Social Issues by Don O'Leary Colum Kenny Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland: A Contemporary History of Divisive Social Issues, by Don O'Leary (Cork: Eryn Press, 2020, 398 p., paperback, $20.99) Don O'Leary frames within an Irish context some continuing controversies relating to conception, care, and the termination of life. The waning role of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been marked and even hastened by related debates. Not just in Ireland but around the world, questions concerning abortion and assisted suicide, for example, have given rise to arguments so heated that they are at times termed "culture wars," although such "wars" may range beyond what O'Leary calls "biomedical controversies" to include marriage equality, gender fluidity, and other issues. He provides a context for debates by examining developments in biomedical science and law and by interrogating central aspects of Catholic moral teaching. O'Leary dedicates a chapter to each of the following topics: stem cell research and assisted reproduction (2000–2005), frozen embryo and stem cell research (2005–6), embryos and the right to life (2006–11), assisted suicide, assisted human reproduction (2013–20), and abortion (1992–2016). He prefaces these six chapters with an opening on "Papal Pronouncements" and follows them with "Challenges to the Catholic Ethos" before finally considering the successful campaign to repeal the section of the Irish constitution that severely limited the government's ability to legislate for abortion in Ireland. His book is a helpful resource for understanding the complexity of the topics on which he touches, although the absence of an index is regrettable. The volume is referenced and includes a useful bibliography. O'Leary's decision to locate his subject expressly in "Catholic Ireland" raises questions. The independent Irish state has never been constitutionally denominational, even if the Catholic Church long enjoyed a special and influential place in its affairs. Insofar as the state's ethos was for decades Catholic, it reflected [End Page 143] democratically the sentiments of a largely Catholic population that was then obedient to its church's teaching in respect to policy and legislation concerning procreation and marriage. The latter relationship changed fundamentally even before the end of the twentieth century. If there was a signal moment when official Ireland crossed some kind of Rubicon in its relationship with Catholic bishops, it was in August 1996 when, during a visit to Chicago and Detroit to attract financial institutions to Ireland, the Irish Minister for Finance Ruairi Quinn TD described his state as a "post-Catholic, pluralist republic." The head of state by then was Mary Robinson, a human rights lawyer and liberal who had been elected president of Ireland in 1990. If at the time Quinn offended some people, and if others regarded his statement as an expression of personal wishful thinking, in hindsight he seems to have been correct. Census returns continue to show the great majority of Irish people still recording their religion nominally as Catholic, yet their level of attendance at church has fallen steadily and their attitudes and behavior are in practice akin to what hitherto were regarded as Protestant or secular types. The dining metaphor "à la carte Catholics" is used by conservatives, often contemptuously, to describe the contemporary exercise of conscience by individuals with respect to Catholic dogma. Even one quite progressive bishop has spoken of "Nicodemus Catholics … living in a sort of de facto atheism." It is unlikely that Minister Quinn was being deliberately provocative. He did not seek publicity for his comment. It was barely reported, appearing as the very last sentence of a story in the middle of page seven of the Irish Times. He had been fielding a range of questions from Irish emigrants in the United States who remembered when their church's hand lay heavily on Irish social policy. Desmond Connell, then archbishop of Dublin, retorted that Quinn had spoken "in a way that seems to endorse a secular hostility to any Catholic influence on our national outlook." Connell would later be discredited for his handling of child abuse cases in the archdiocese of Dublin, especially when he invoked the casuistic doctrine...

Gerry O'Hanlon , SJ, The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis. A Synodal Catholic Church in Ireland? (review)

his faith, refusing to affiliate with mockers, dissenters, or pagans. As Pierce points out, the Portrait presents Stephen’s short-lived but intense period of post-retreat devotion with ‘honesty and sensitivity’ (74). Readers can only speculate where Stephen’s journey would take him, but Pierce sees the mature Joyce ‘inside the albeit outer orbit of the Church…with goodwill in his heart’(103). Or, as he says at the book’s close, ‘We [readers] are reminded of Shakespeare’s “dual residence”, only in Joyce’s case he is both inside and outside the faith of his fathers’ (187). His treatment of Joyce’s Jesuit affiliation is less precise. He finds Joyce’s famous distinction between his Catholicism and his Jesuitness to be ‘arcane’ (71), but I think it has substance. The two intersect, of course, but I see Joyce associating the Jesuits more with his education than his faith. Pierce rightly points out that Stephen conceives of Catholicism as ‘his mother’s religion’ (99); yet the Portrait repeatedly links the Jesuits with his father. His teachers share many of Simon Dedalus’s virtues and vices, and in Joyce’s life they followed the same relationship arc: youthful separation, later appreciation, and a lifelong connection that ebbed and flowed, but was never broken. Pierce makes one small mistake in referring to St Aloysius Gonzaga, whose name Joyce took at confirmation, as a Jesuit priest (71): he was an unordained scholastic, whose youth is significant since it makes him one of the order’s ‘boy saints’, with whom schoolboys like Joyce could identify. On the same subject, I would suggest St Aloysius and St Patrick as worthier candidates for Joyce’s ‘favourite saint’ than Pierce’s choice of St Thomas Aquinas. The latter might have been Stephen’s patron, but not his creator’s, at least according to Joyce’s friend in Paris, Jacques Mercanton. Finally, when Pierce considers the Portrait as ‘profoundly inner-directed’, he credits George Moore’s The Lake for inspiring Joyce. But surely its author’s twelve years of Jesuit education also had much to do with the Portrait’s deeply introspective nature, and its testing of all public values ‘in the only crucible of authentic life’ it recognises, ‘namely the privacy of conscience’ (81). These are small matters, however. I very much benefited from reading Pierce’s book and I would have no hesitation including it in a university class or recommending it to those wanting to understand and appreciate the Portrait more deeply. James Pribek SJ is Associate Professor at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 346 Autumn 2020: Book Reviews Gerry O’Hanlon, SJ, The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis. A Synodal Catholic Church in Ireland? (Dublin: Messenger Publications; revised edition, 2019), 168 pages. Motivated by commitment to the Gospel and possessed of both scholarship and literary skill, Gerry O’ Hanlon, former provincial of the Irish Jesuits, sets out to give life to the reform agenda of Pope Francis. He has written a book which could prove to be a catalyst for the renewal of the Church in Ireland. In an Address given in October 2015, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis said that what is appropriate in the third millennium is a ‘synodal Church’ which requires decentralisation, open debate and consultation. Collegiality needs to be present at all levels of the Church which means more authority for national and regional conferences with some share in local Church governance given to the baptised laity – the ‘voice of the faithful’. The Quiet Revolution was first published just before the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland in September 2018. This revised edition was published one year later. The book is divided into four parts. First, the current problems in the Church, including the reality of post-Catholic Ireland are presented. Next the vision of Pope Francis to rebuild the Church – his ‘quiet revolution’ – is outlined. Thirdly, emerging issues of teaching and governance, including the role of the laity, are examined. Finally, the question of how we in Ireland might respond is discussed. A gradual centralisation of the Church has taken place over centuries, but especially...

Parish Pastoral Councils and Community

Parish Pastoral Councils and Community Séamus Lillis Viewing Parish Pastoral Councils (PPCs) as community organisations delivers helpful insights into their supplementary relevance to the Catholic Church in Ireland. Community organisations have significant experience to share, a resource which should influence PPCs. In noteworthy ways, the latter find themselves freer to address their concerns than do civic communities, particularly those community organisations that obtain funding from the state. This autonomy augurs well for the future of PPCs. I have been engaging with civic communities since the early 1990s. I gradually came to the conviction that, because I have been privileged to gain insights into how secular communities can organise themselves, I should try to share these learning discoveries with the community that is the Church. To this end I have worked with PPCs in the archdiocese of Dublin and in the Killaloe diocese. The Church itself does not have the monopoly of wisdom and can stand to gain from the experiences of civic communities. My recollection of the pre-SecondVatican Council Church is of the absence of any community dimension. Certainly, a vastly higher percentage of people attended Sunday Mass then. While the priest addressed God in Latin, the congregations prayed individually and independently and – presumably! – in English. Parishes conducted these weekly gatherings and had apparently done so without significant variation since Catholic Emancipation. Parishes individually embodied the dominant core background of competitiveness and inter-parish rivalry in GAA matches, but the perception of a parish as a community had few adherents. I believe that, historically, community itself was not a major feature of Irish society. Some cite the Irish word meithal, or the assembly of neighbours at harvest thrashings and other labour dependent occasions, as evidence of community. This annual gathering to deliver a day’s labour for neighbours at harvest time is not convincing as confirmation of widespread community. Before gaining national independence, community meetings were not encouraged by the powers-that-be. After independence that same policy tended to continue. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 326 A community dimension in government decision-making was largely missing until the last three decades or so.Apolitical preference for centralised government was largely responsible. As recently as the nineties, Tony Varley criticised a dismissive and discouraging stance towards community representatives by the state and particularly by local government.1 Tom Collins suggested that the state’s new-found concern with official community development was motivated by an urgency to engage – however tenuously – with its disaffected citizens. Were it not for official community development schemes, instigated and part-funded by the European Union, the state would find itself at serious odds with such citizens and more prone to become caught up in confrontational and mutually perplexing conflict.2 The state’s endeavours targeted disadvantaged communities. This policy excluded the middle classes, albeit unintentionally; they were not invited to participate in communities. The passage of time has proved that dominance on the part of the public service has continued to be a feature of community development here. This supremacy has resulted in compromising the autonomy of communities that partnered with the state. What is a community? The word ‘community’ is hackneyed. Its synonyms range through ‘public’, ‘citizenry’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘society’, ‘group’, ‘commune’ and more. Margaret Thatcher’s much resented ‘community charge’ in Britain further diluted the meaning of community. We glibly speak of restoring at-risk, institutionalised people back into ‘the community’, where such community is notional and unaware of any responsibility to care for these vulnerable individuals. Yet community development is reliably depended upon by international agencies such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation to promote and deliver progress. The members of civic communities and of PPCs deploy their resources through purposeful conversations about effectively addressing matters of concern to their members. These three fundamentals – resources, discussion and concerns – capture the essence of committed, active communities and PPCs Moreover, concerns must be realistic. I recall working with one urban PPC, where members wished to restore the widespread Sunday observation of fifty years ago. Granted it was an aim, but it lacked any indication of insight into the processes needed to achieve it. Studies • volume 109...

George Goldie: A Catholic Architect in Post-Famine Ireland

George Goldie: A Catholic Architect in Post-Famine Ireland Caoimhín de Bhailís The nineteenth century saw the Catholic Church in Ireland express its newfound status after Emancipation in an expansive church building programme. Figures upward of two thousand have been given for the number of Roman Catholic churches either reconstructed or newly built between 1800 and 1870.1 This does not infer that there were no Catholic churches being built in the late eighteenth century nor does the increased output in ecclesiastical building after the Famine imply a lack of building prior to 1845. St Finbarr’s (South), Cork, was built in 1766, replacing an earlier church of 1728 and St Patrick’s, Waterford, 1764, and The Holy Trinity, Kildoagh, Cavan, 1796, no longer in use, are still extant pre-Emancipation churches that demonstrated a subdued presence, but nonetheless a re-emerging Catholic impact on the topography of the country. Thomas P Kennedy suggests that, even as early as 1752, ‘registered places of Catholic worship totalled 832 simple Mass houses and 52 private chapels’.2 In some cases, earlier nineteenth-century churches were replaced from the late 1840s onwards to assert the increased power of the Catholic Church, architecture acting as a symbol of its new-found status. The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Farran, Co. Cork, 1860, was constructed as a replacement for an earlier, smaller building; it was consecrated on 20 August 1860 and replaced the earlier church that was described by Samuel Lewis in 1837 as ‘a large plain old building’.3 The old church had a thatched roof and stood witness to the ‘poverty of the times in which it was erected’.4 Rev. Canon Walsh was credited with the drive to have the old church replaced and he was memorialised by a monument in the nearby church in Ovens5 . The monument was designed and its erection overseen by the architect George Goldie free of charge, ‘desirous of his regard and respect for the memory of the deceased’.6 It was removed when the building was renovated during the 1970s and all that remains of the memorial monument is the dedication tablet hidden from Studies • volume 109 • number 434 177 public view in the sacristy. Canon Walsh had engaged Goldie as the architect of the new church at Farran. Goldie was also the architect for St John’s Church in nearby Ballincollig and the interior of St Mary’s Dominican church in Cork city when it was renovated during the 1860s. He also completed the church of St Vincent’s in Cork and designed the presbytery. George Goldie Goldie was just one of many architects active in Ireland during this period, but he is one that has often been neglected when one considers both his output in Ireland and his Catholicity in a religiously contentious era. A preliminary survey by this author finds he was involved in upwards of forty completed builds, alterations or completions. This may appear to be a limited output in the overall number of churches built during the period, as outlined earlier, but we must remember that the Pugins had fewer solo outputs. A W N Pugin is listed in the Dictionary of Irish Architects as being involved in nineteen ecclesiastical commissions, Edward in nine in addition to St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, and other works as part of the partnership Pugin & Ashlin. Moreover, Ashlin and James Joseph McCarthy were both resident in Ireland, while Goldie, although a regular visitor, was based in England. Goldie’s reputation as an architect and the projects he was employed to design and oversee should come as no surprise given his output in England, where he designed numerous churches and cathedrals including St Wilfrid’s, York, and Our Lady of Victories, Kensington. Goldie also came from a family that was very much Catholic in their religious affiliation as well as in his architectural endeavours. George Goldie was born in York, United Kingdom, on 9 June 1828, and died in Saint Servan, Brittany, on 1 March 1887. He was what was termed in the nineteenth century a ‘cradle Catholic’, that is, he was born into that faith rather than being a convert from Anglicanism...

The Devotional Revolution at Fifty

The Devotional Revolution at Fifty Douglas Kanter (bio) In June 1972 the historian Emmet Larkin published his seminal article, "The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75," in the American Historical Review.1 Larkin's essay outlined what he characterized as a sudden and dramatic transformation in Irish Catholic devotional practice between the Synod of Thurles in 1850 and the Synod of Maynooth in 1875. Before 1850, he claimed, the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland struggled to meet its pastoral obligations owing to an insufficiency of priests and church plant—both of which were a function of institutional poverty—as well as to a rapidly growing population and problems of clerical indiscipline. As a result, only a minority of Irish Catholics in the decades before the Famine could properly be described as practicing their nominal religion, an assertion apparently borne out by the fact that perhaps 33 percent of the population attended weekly Mass. After 1850, however, "the great mass of the Irish people became practicing Catholics" in the span of a generation.2 The reforming leadership of Archbishop (later Cardinal) Paul Cullen was crucial to this remarkable development, Larkin maintained, as Cullen contained clerical faction, initiated pastoral reform, and remade the hierarchy in his own ultramontane image. But Cullen also benefitted from circumstances beyond his control—particularly, from the Great Famine, which by decimating the cottiers while preserving the more prosperous tenant farmers not only reduced pressure on the resources of the church but also left it with a stronger devotional nucleus and better economic prospects. Fundamentally, however, neither Cullen nor the Famine "caused" the devotional revolution. Rather, Larkin argued, the great change in devotional practice was the product of an "identity crisis" among the laity, brought about by Anglicization. Catholicism "provided the Irish with a substitute symbolic language and offered them a new cultural heritage with which they could identify and be identified and through which they could identify with one another."3 The piece concluded, rather rhapsodically, that "no [End Page 51] factor … was more important in the social and moral improvement of the Irish people either at home or abroad in the nineteenth century."4 Larkin's essay went on to become "probably the most famous article ever published by an Irish historian," and the devotional revolution is today one of those rare historical concepts that transcend academic debate and embed themselves in the public consciousness.5 The approaching fiftieth anniversary of the article's publication, consequently, seems an appropriate time to assess its continued relevance to our understanding of modern Irish history, while also exploring lines of inquiry that were not pursued by Larkin himself. The other contributors in this special feature, all leading experts on nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism, develop these themes at length. The present essay, rather more modestly, seeks to provide a review and retrospect of Larkin's controversial thesis. It does not rehearse the historiographic debate about Catholic devotional practice in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland, which has been surveyed elsewhere.6 Instead, it considers the development of Larkin's ideas about the devotional revolution over the course of his long career, utilizing both his extensive publications and archival materials, including his private papers, which were made available for study at Boston College shortly after his death in 2012. An examination of these sources reveals significant changes in Larkin's analysis over time, which reflected the accumulation of evidence over some five decades, his own evolving attitude to the church, and shifts in the intellectual and sociopolitical environment. ________ Larkin became interested in the historical role of the Catholic Church in Ireland in the early 1950s, while still in the early stages of the PhD program in history at Columbia University. In 1953, though he had not yet completed his comprehensive exams and was preparing to write a dissertation on the twentieth-century Irish labor leader James Larkin (no relation), he ruminated upon the need for a [End Page 52] history of the Irish Catholic Church in a letter to the Irish author and socialist Desmond Ryan. "The historical problem," Larkin informed Ryan on December 28, "is indeed what has been the affect [sic] of the clergy's influence in political matters...

Lazarists/Vincentians: Tridentine Reform and Parish Missions in Grand Siècle France and Cardinal Cullen's Ireland

Lazarists/Vincentians:Tridentine Reform and Parish Missions in Grand Siècle France and Cardinal Cullen's Ireland James H. Murphy (bio) What does a special feature in a journal to mark the fiftieth anniversary of an important scholarly milestone betoken? Is the debate over Emmet Larkin's devotional revolution thesis dead or alive? Are we admiring a concluded discussion or seeking for new life in it? In this article I hope to use the comparative cases of the roles of the priests of the mission, called Lazarists in France and Vincentians in Ireland, in the Catholic revivals of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in their respective countries and times to ask what further lines of enquiry might be pursued concerning the devotional revolution.1 First though, let us look at the devotional revolution thesis itself and at how the debate around it has grown and developed. Larkin's original article, "The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75," was published in 1972 in the American Historical Review. For nearly a quarter of a century thereafter, however, Larkin put his efforts into writing a multivolume series focused essentially on the political and constitutional roles of the Catholic Church in Ireland between 1780 and 1918. He completed seven volumes, covering the years 1850 to 1891. Thereafter, he returned to issues close to the devotional revolution, publishing The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church in Pre-famine Ireland, 1750–1850 (2006) and projecting a further volume on the era of the devotional revolution itself, 1850–75, before his death in 2012. The most obvious thing to note in a discussion of future directions for the devotional revolution debate, therefore, is that the 1850–75 period itself has not been the subject of a sustained narrative. Over the years a standard version of the devotional revolution thesis has [End Page 62] developed that was well articulated in 2017 by Colin Barr and Daithí Ó Corráin.2 The story begins in the mid-eighteenth century when the issue was an excess of priests. The solution to this problem was twofold: regulations severely limiting the number of diocesan priests bishops could ordain, and efforts to curtail what was considered to be the excessive numbers of mendicant friars by requiring them to be educated in part on the Continent. The number of friars went into steep decline, but so too, alarmingly, did the numbers of diocesan priests when the Irish seminaries based on the Continent that produced so many of them closed due to the French Revolution. The ratio of priests to people took a further downward dip as the population of Ireland increased exponentially in the lead-up to the Famine. The practice of station masses, whereby priests periodically offered Mass and heard confessions at various points in their parishes, was introduced as a measure to meet the pastoral gap caused by the scarcity of priests and the limited capacity of existing chapels to accommodate significant numbers at Mass. After the Famine, with a reduced Catholic population, with growing numbers of clergy, and, under the leadership of the determined Paul Cardinal Cullen (1803–78), a dramatic flowering of religious practice and adherence to the norms of Church life as laid down by the Council of Trent (1545–62), a "devotional revolution," as Larkin dubbed it, took place. There have been three distinctive features of the devotional revolution debate over the years: a focus on statistics, a debate over whether the devotional revolution might have begun earlier than Larkin claimed, and a speculation as to the reasons, other than religious ones, as to why it took place. Concerning the third of these Larkin speculated in his original article that the embrace of Tridentine Catholicism as a form of national identity served as a substitute for the loss of the Irish language.3 When the article was later republished with two other articles in book form some years later, Larkin engaged with alternative theories that had been proffered in response to his, though all of them saw the trauma of the Great Famine as causative. They included the collapse in folk religion and the desire of small farmers to increase landholdings by adopting the stem-family system, thus...

Clericalization of the Laity: A Prescient Warning of Pope Francis for the Catholic Church in Ireland

Pope Francis has consistently alerted the Catholic Church to the dangers of clericalism. One way in which clericalism finds expression is by clericalizing the laity and Francis’s warning in this has particular relevance for Ireland as we attempt to address the consequences at pastoral level of a collapse in vocations to priesthood and religious life. The temptation is to try to carry on as if nothing has changed and often to ask lay people to fill roles previously carried out by clergy in a way that suggests they are the ones who are truly living out their baptismal calling as opposed to those who live out their Christianity in the course of their ordinary daily lives. This raises important questions around the roles of laity and ordained, the evolution of ministry, and current pastoral practice. This article examines theological responses to these questions during and since Vatican II. I propose we are best served at this time by focusing on the relationship between the priesthood of the faithful and ordained priesthood. I also argue that we need an inductive methodology which enables our theology to be guided by praxis.

The Last Holdout: Ireland, the Right to Abortion and the European Federal Human Rights System

The article examines the recent May 2018 constitution referendum legalizing the right to abortion in Ireland, and claims that this must be explained in light of the transformative effect that supranational law – and notably the case law of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights – had on the Irish legal system. While in comparative perspective Ireland stood at the extreme by being the European country with the toughest abortion ban, subsequent developments at the supranational level had edged the Irish abortion prohibition and exposed the inconsistency of this regime with European free movement principles and human rights norms. By empowering social actors at the domestic level that sought a repeal of the national abortion ban, international courts favored a dynamic of transformation typical of the European federal human rights system which, also due to the diminishing influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland, eventually resulted in a landslide popular vote to recognize a right to abortion. As the article maintains, otherwise, as the result of the constitutional referendum in the Republic is quickly producing spill-over effects also in Northern Ireland – the only part of the United Kingdom where abortion still remains essentially prohibited – which suggests that the process of expansion of reproductive rights in the island of Ireland remains ongoing and convergent, despite Brexit.

After the Pope – the Catholic Church in Ireland

After the Pope – the Catholic Church in Ireland Gerry O’Hanlon SJ The role of the Catholic Church in Irish public and private life has changed considerably. The papal visits of Pope John Paul II in 1979 and Pope Francis in 2018 are useful lenses through which to view the change that has occurred. There was euphoria and even adulation around the visit of John Paul: huge and enthusiastic crowds, saturation-coverage from a largely uncritical media and a respect from public authorities that bordered at times on deference. The visit of Pope Francis was quite different: the crowds were noticeably smaller, there were well-organised protests and the hostility of some and indifference of many were evident in the media coverage. This reflected the shift in consciousness which has occurred since 1979, through which the Catholic Church has lost much of its prestige and moral authority, and can no longer expect to exert a monopoly influence in social, political or even personal life. In retrospect it is easier now to see the fault-lines which were already there in 1979, and which the papal visit served to conceal rather than heal – the growing secularisation which allowed, for example, many young people to respond warmly to the charism of Pope John Paul, without at all accepting his teaching on issues of sexuality or gender; the pressures in Irish society, long building up, for a more liberal approach to legislation around contraception and divorce, and in more recent years same-sex marriage and abortion, to which politicians were already beginning to respond; and the terrible wound of clerical child sexual abuse and harsh regimes in Catholic institutions like reformatories, orphanages and mother-and-baby homes, which existed then but only came to public light after the first papal visit. The visit of Francis, much more low-key and contested, was in this sense also more real and revelatory: it disclosed what was actually going on in Ireland.1 In the context of addressing this new situation, the words of An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at Dublin Castle welcoming Pope Francis to Ireland are important: ‘Holy Father, I believe that the time has now come for Gerry O’Hanlon SJ Studies • volume 108 • number 430 126 us to build a new relationship between church and state in Ireland – a new covenant for the twenty-first century. It is my hope that your visit marks the opening of a new chapter in the relationship between Ireland and the Catholic Church’. It is true that a new common sense, a new ‘group-think’, is already becoming embedded in Irish society. This would replace the old Christendom settlement, in which the Catholic Church occupied a dominant position in society and the state, by a rather shallow identification of all things modern, progressive and enlightened with out-and-out secularism. This absolute form of secularism, while claiming to be pluralist, wishes to turn a blind eye to the claims of religion for inclusion in the public square. But, as St Ignatius articulated in an important hermeneutical principle of his Spiritual Exercises, ‘every good Christian is more ready to put a good interpretation on another’s statement than to condemn it as false’ (Sp. Ex. 22). I think, with Patrick Hannon, that ‘…the Taoiseach should be taken at his word’.2 Christianity is at its best when, without either defensiveness or naiveté, it engages in constructive dialogue with its critics, external and internal. This, rather than hostile separation, is a better antidote to widespread defeatism and demoralisation. This will mean an exploration by theologians, by Catholics, by Christians but also by Ireland’s public intellectuals and general citizenry of the relationship between Church and state and society; between morality, law and politics; the place of religion in the public square; and, most fundamentally of all, the self-understanding of the Catholic Church, and its relationship to the personal and public lives of its members. This exploration will understand the perennial temptation for a Church under siege to simply remould itself to the prevailing dominant culture, thus losing its own distinctiveness. But it will also be cognisant of the temptation – echoing down through the centuries in the refrain of...

Carmelite Crusader: John Spratt of Dublin 1796-1871 Raising Dublin, Raising Ireland; a Friar's Campaigns D'Arcy Fergus (review)

Council was clear that we are always learning more about what the natural law is, and arguably a more coherent approach is, like Aquinas, to view it as human reasoning in operation as it tries to understand our world, including our humanity. In this latter context the observations of Canadian philosopher/ theologian Bernard Lonergan are germane- objectivity comes about through ‘authentic subjectivity’, a subjectivity that examines the evidence through a ‘self-corrective process of learning’. The evidence about human sexuality and gender is constantly gathering and requires new assessment by the church – and this is what Pope Francis has facilitated. Dillonisnotarguingthatthechurchshouldnecessarilydevelopapostsecular mentality, nor that the public relevance of Catholicism is contingent on its embrace of postsecular expectations. Rather, she is proposing that ‘the postsecular recognition of the mutual relevance of the religious and the secular opens up new lines of dialogue, and thus of action, both within the church and for its role in secular society’ (p.9). I note that, in applying her analysis to Ireland, it may be that, because modernity and secularism were late in coming here, we are still perhaps in a rather more reactionary mode towards the relevance of public religion. Curiously, while the book contains comprehensive notes and a helpful index, it does not have a bibliography. This is a scholarly, thoughtful and stimulating book, well written, and accessible also to the non-specialist reader. I recommend it highly. Dr Gerry O’Hanlon SJ is a theologian, who has lectured and written extensively on the post-Second Vatican Council Irish Catholic church. His The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis: A Synodal Catholic Church in Ireland (Dublin: Messenger Publications) was published recently. Carmelite Crusader: John Spratt of Dublin 1796–1871 Raising Dublin, Raising Ireland; a Friar’s Campaigns, Fergus D’Arcy (Dublin, Carmelite Publications, 2018), 621 pages. John Spratt (1796–1871), Carmelite and Dubliner, was the great ‘supporting actor’ in Dublin’s Catholic revival. Serving alongside Archbishops Troy, Murray and Cardinal Cullen, he played a pivotal role in the transformation of the penal, mission church, into the ultramontane institution that persisted Studies • volume 107 • number 428 510 Winter 2018/19: Book Reviews until the middle decades of the twentieth century. Specifically, Spratt devoted his attention towards the creation of the architecture of pastoral care that characterised the century, through the creation of schools and orphanages whichofferedanexplicitlyCatholicalternativetotheprotestantestablishments that were deeply distrusted by the Catholic clergy. Alongside ‘the Liberator’ and his successors, too, Spratt laboured to create an Irish Ireland, a ‘Catholic Ireland’, which would be characterised by freedom, industry and sobriety. Ireland in 1871 bore little resemblance to the island of Spratt’s youth. In politics, for instance, agendas moved from Emancipation, to Repeal, Fenianism and the Land Question. In the development of the church, too, Catholicism in Dublin had been radically transformed from a mission, to a confident institution, in a process personified by the characters of the city’s archbishops, the meek Murray and the regal Cullen. The former worked with a circle of bourgeois philanthropists, and the founders of fledgling religious orders, to put in place opportunities for charity, while the latter presided over a complex architecture of care to rival the state system, symbolised most starkly by the Mater Hospital, celebrated by contemporaries as ‘the palace of the sick poor’. The historiography of that transformation, and of nineteenth century Ireland in general, has been unkind to the memory of the ‘midwifes’ of those changes. Indeed, commentators are more assured speaking about Cullen and Parnell of the later decades, than they are addressing the achievements of Troy, Murray and O’Connell, religious and political leaders who navigated more nebulous waters of the early century. In many respects, John Spratt is a victim of that general amnesia, but there is a sense that he had become slightly anachronistic even in his own life time. Certainly, the Fenians portrayed him as a relic of an O’Connellite past, while the Cullenite church, basking in the victory of Church Disestablishment (1869), looked towards its own ascendancy, rather than recalling the ambiguous years between Emancipation and the Synod of Thurles. This is the context in which the memory of John Spratt faded. He was the subject of...

The Life and Times of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, 1823-1852 by Thomas J Morrissey (review)

baptised Christians within the church, and all citizens, believers and nonbelievers alike in the wider world, to be active participants in change, thus transforming the monarchical nature of the current understanding of papacy. Readers of Donal Dorr’s book will be helped greatly towards this active engagement. Dr Gerry O’Hanlon SJ is a theologian, who has lectured and written extensively on the post-Second Vatican Council Irish Catholic church. His The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis: A Synodal Catholic Church in Ireland (Dublin: Messenger Publications) has just appeared. The Life and Times of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, 1823–1852, Thomas J Morrissey SJ (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2018), 288 pages. AnyreputablegeneralhistoryofIrelandcoveringthefirsthalfofthenineteenth century cannot but feature the substantial presence and the influential role of Daniel Murray, archbishop of Dublin from 1823 to 1852. Indeed, his impact was discernible for far longer than that, as he was coadjutor archbishop to Dublin’s John Thomas Troy from 1809. That position was in itself a notable preferment, given that Fr Daniel was still then a curate: it was testimony to the esteem in which he was already held by his clerical peers and superiors alike. Over the succeeding four decades, he proceeded to transform the diocese in terms of church and school building, promoting the welfare of the poor, and in guiding that church successfully through the stormy waters of sectarian animosity and government hostility. For all that, it is remarkable that there has not been a substantial biography of the prelate since the pious memoir of his admirer, William Meagher, in 1853: not, that is, until the splendid biography by Thomas Morrissey, just published. Morrissey is, of course, one of the most prolific scholars working in the fields of Irish social, political and religious history and biography. The present study in a sense book-ends his remarkable contribution to modern Irish church history, since his previous works in this field include his masterly study of William J Walsh, 1841–1921, archbishop of Dublin from 1885 to 1921. This new study fills a major gap in the historiography of the Irish Catholic church of the nineteenth century. It accomplishes this, not only with economy and clarity but critically, with a radical revision of Autumn 2018: Book Reviews Studies • volume 107 • number 427 384 long-established perceptions of Daniel Murray. Born near Arklow in 1768, Daniel, as an eight-year-old, was sent in 1776 to the Dublin city school of the illustrious Jesuit priest, Thomas Betagh, at a time when the penal laws were beginning to be relaxed. As for these laws and their gradual rescinding, the author cites a 1985 article by the local historian, P J Murray, in the Journal of the Arklow Historical Society (incorrectly given as 1986) for the observation that a ‘slow process of dismantling this penal code began in 1759 but was marked by no significant progress until the 1770s’; this reviewer can find no such quotation in that place, and more recent and fertile sources for the code and its relaxation might be found in the works of James Kelly, ‘The impact of the penal laws’, in Kelly and Keogh (eds), History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000); in Bergin et al., New Perspectives on the Penal Laws (Dublin: Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, 2011), or in Bartlett’s ‘The penal laws against Irish Catholics: were they too good for them?’, in O P Rafferty (ed.), Irish Catholic Identities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). All that aside, the young Murray greatly impressed Betagh and the archbishop, Carpenter, by his ‘ability, gentle manner and general amiability’. Believing he had a vocation for the priesthood, Carpenter accepted him and directed him to the Irish College in Salamanca, where eight studious years followed. The importance of Salamanca for the Irish Catholic church at this time can hardly be overstated. Morrissey well demonstrates its significance, pointing out that Daniel’s fellow-students there included Kyran Marum, future bishop of Ossory (1814–27), Patrick Everard, later Coadjutor archbishop of Cashel (1814–20) and succeeding there over 1820–21, as also his successor in Cashel, Robert Laffan (1823–33). The author adds that some four archbishops in Ireland...

Faith and Ministry in a Diminishing Church and a Post-Church Society: A View from Ireland

This informal reflection discusses current aspects of the Catholic Church in Ireland in a ‘Post-Church Society’. The text is based on lessons from the lifelong ministry of Donal Dorr, an Irish Catholic priest who has served in both Africa and Ireland in pastoral and mission capacities. Dorr sets forth a series of challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland, but he also raises wider questions about the way the Church engages with contemporary societal issues. Specifically Dorr discusses reform in the Catholic Church, including post-Vatican II spirituality and the importance of lay and ordained ministry, all of which offer avenues for continuing theological reflection in contemporary Ireland.

The Catholic Church in Ireland Today

Studies • volume 106 • number 421 9 The Catholic Church in Ireland Today The Catholic Church in Ireland Today1 Gerry O’Hanlon SJ In the middle of summer 2016, commenting on a controversy surrounding Ireland’s national seminary, St Patrick’s College Maynooth, the country’s leading broadsheet, The Irish Times, had this to say in an editorial: The Maynooth controversy would once have given rise to major public disquiet. That it no longer does so reflects the Church’s recent history. Many Catholics have long since abandoned the institution – its princes, priests and politics – and are choosing to interpret the faith according to their own conscience.2 Coincidentally, earlier in the same year, an academic study in the field of the sociology of religion was published with the title Transforming PostCatholic Ireland.3 The author, Gladys Ganiel, in explaining her choice of title, refers explicitly to an article written by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin in 2013 titled ‘A post-Catholic Ireland?: Renewing the Irish Church from within’.4 Ganiel defines a post-Catholic Ireland in terms of ‘a shift in consciousness in which the Catholic Church, as an institution, is no longer held in high esteem by most of the population and can no longer expect to exert a monopoly influence in social and political life’.5 She argues that the future of faith in Ireland will depend on the development of ‘extra-institutional’ forms of religious expression (religion practised outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church).6 Her analysis ties in with the frequently observed characteristic of modern Catholicism in Ireland – and indeed further afield – as becoming individualised and de-institutionalised. With the new emphasis on personal conscience as opposed to magisterial teaching, this is sometimes referred to as the ‘Protestantisation’of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Dr Martin himself has spoken and written frequently about the crisis confronting the Irish Catholic Church, warning that it ran the risk of becoming an ‘irrelevant minority culture’.7 I propose in what follows to describe briefly some of the background to this crisis and then to suggest some ways forward. 10 Studies • volume 106 • number 421 Gerry O’Hanlon SJ Background to the crisis ThetraditionalCatholicismwhichisnowbeingsupersededinIrelandhadmany distinguishing features.8 It was a defining characteristic of Irish nationalism and identity, with ‘a monopoly on the Irish religious market’, a strong relationship with state power, elevating the status of cleric to extraordinary heights and emphasising the evils of sexual sin.9 This was Catholicism with high levels of religious practice, a stress on rule-keeping and sin, a strong ethos of sacrifice and delayed gratification, a familiarity with austerity and a hope for fulfilment in the after-life. It was characterised by a deep popular devotion featuring the likes of the rosary, benediction, sodalities, indulgences and processions. It provided comfort and fuelled the spiritual and ethical imaginations of its adherents, and had a deeply committed, global missionary outreach. However, its un- and even anti-intellectual nature meant that it was ill-prepared for the challenges posed by a late-emerging modernity in Ireland. It was a religion in which the voice of the priest, the bishop, and the Pope could rely on its formal authority to get a serious hearing, not just from the faithful, but also from the politician. A paternalistic ethos reigned and was almost universally accepted. Apart from the popular devotion already mentioned, this was Catholicism deeply institutional in form, dependent on a type of clericalism which was vulnerable to a more critical culture. From the 1960s onwards this more critical culture emerged in Ireland. The influence of television and other media, economic development and increased urbanisation, foreign travel, EEC membership and enhanced educational opportunities all conspired to open Ireland up to the waves of critical questioning and secularisation already well advanced in many other parts of Europe. Internally, the Church was at best lukewarm in its reception of the Second Vatican Council – there was liturgical change which was received for the most part positively, some increased lay involvement, not least in various episcopal commissions established in the wake of the Council, and a real energy around some issues of social justice (not least in the establishment of...

The End of Irish Catholicism? Fifteen Years On

Studies • volume 106 • number 421 39 The End of Irish Catholicism? Fifteen Years On D Vincent Twomey SVD My book, The End of Irish Catholicism?, began as a contribution to a seminar in Fordham University on the state of the Irish Church in 2001.1 I was on sabbatical in Boston at the time, and had the motivation and the leisure to read and reflect at a distance, as it were, on the situation back home. My objective was simple: to try to explain, to myself in the first instance, why the contemporary Catholic Church in Ireland seemed unable to face the many profound challenges posed by contemporary Irish society, and to propose a way forward in response. The reception of the book was quite remarkable and overwhelmingly positive. The first letter I received, from a married woman living in Terenure, reassured me that my effort was not entirely futile: [Y]our recent book … left me feeling more light-hearted and positive than I had felt for a long time. I think the key thing lay in your approach. Firstly, you ranged widely both over the preVatican II Irish Church and what happened since, but all times with a breadth of vision, referring back constantly to the central eternal truth. Suddenly things that had loomed large took their place in the calm perspective of a wider picture. Second, you spoke like someone who has not lost his nerve. It seems to me that many of our poor bishops and priests are paralysed with fear and from some of them the faithful are being served with defeatist language. It was great to hear a bugle blowing… I hope and pray you cause an explosion of debate and action. The book did cause considerable discussion. The number of people, mostly strangers at home and abroad, who contacted (and still contact) me about it was extraordinary. What action, if any, it produced, I am unable to assess. One of the more radical actions I proposed – namely the restructuring of the dioceses by reducing them from twenty-six to twelve, or even six ­ – was rejected. This proposal was so self-evident that it caught the imagination of The End of Irish Catholicism? Fifteen Years On 40 Studies • volume 106 • number 421 the media.2 It was also debated in the Bishops’ Conference, and in Rome, where, I gather, it was taken seriously. The Irish Bishops rejected it. They dissuaded Rome, arguing that, if the diocesan boundaries were now changed, they would in future always be associated with the stigma of the clerical scandals.3 Fundamental weaknesses Unfortunately, the discussion surrounding the structural changes distracted from discussion of the more fundamental issues, namely the weaknesses of traditional Irish Catholicism and how they could be overcome. I had reached the conclusion that what is commonly understood to be traditional Irish Catholicism was, for all its extraordinary achievements (as in education and healthcare), neither fully Catholic nor fully Irish. Consequently, it was not only life-defeating, but, as many of our best writers such as Frank O’Connor and Edna O’Brien have protested, intellectually suffocating. It contained within itself the seeds of its present demise. Living among the debris of a distorted cultural expression of Catholicism, the worst expression being the scandals and cover-ups, we are, as the Church, experiencing the end of a cultural phenomenon. My primary concern, then, was to ask: what must be done to forge a new one? To that end, I made various suggestions as to how we might begin to work towards a living, more vibrant Church in Ireland in the future, whose cultural expression would be more authentically both Catholic and Irish. The greater part of the book is devoted to that discussion. When I wrote the book, the clerical scandals were at the forefront of public discourse. I only treated of them in passing, since I was – and still am – convinced that, though they exacerbated the crisis facing the Church in Ireland, they were but a symptom of that crisis, not its cause. Roy Foster, in his Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change from 1700, cites the book as evidence that prominent Irish clerics...

The catholic parish, the catholic chapel and village development in Ireland

The Catholic Church in Ireland underwent profound transformations in the early modern period. Among the most significant of these was the need to reconstruct its parish network and to provide places of worship for its adherents. This reconstruction and rebuilding phase was largely compressed into the 1780–1860 period and gave rise to a radically new parish framework which was adapted to the demographic, social and economic conditions of that time. Chapels were also constructed in large numbers and their sites were determined by the attitudes of landlords, the wealth of the local Catholic community and the sponsorship of prominent Catholic families. The diffusion of chapel building shows pronounced regional biases. Associated with this reinvigorated parish and chapel network was the development of new villages, for which the chapel acted as a nucleus and focus. The term chapel-village is used to describe them and their economic, social and morphological characteristics are examined. Their distribution reveals marked regionalisation on both the micro and the macro scales, related to historical, cultural, economic and social factors.

Significant Television: Journalism, Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church in Ireland

Significant Television: Journalism, Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church in Ireland

Why the Reformation failed in Ireland

AbstractThe Reformation failed comprehensively and absolutely in Ireland before the end of Elizabeth’s reign: contemporaries estimated the number of Irish Protestants at between forty and 120 individuals. The debate about that failure has been long running, yet inconclusive. After a short historiographical review, this paper considers a range of factors which may have been pertinent in shaping Irish responses to the Reformation policies of Henry VIII and his Protestant children. It shows that Elizabeth’s Reformation in Ireland was stymied by the absence of indigenous support, which meant that religious change was neither propagated by local clergymen nor enforced by the local elites in Irish parishes. It points to the strength and persistence of Catholic resistance to the Reformation in different forms from the very start of Elizabeth’s reign in Ireland, contradicting the unsubstantiated notion that passive ‘church papistry’ was general. Nonetheless, it argues that it was only from the 1580s, when the Catholic church in Ireland was reorganised as a disestablished ‘people’s church’, and infused with the confidence inspired by the Counter-Reformation, can it be stated that the Reformation had failed in Ireland definitively.