CATHOLIC CHURCH

3 presuppositions

• Tenuous existence• Represented poor• Major authority within

communities

TENUOUS EXISTENCE?

‘Penal era’

2 types of law

• Laws against church

• Laws against catholic lay elite

TENUOUS EXISTENCE?

Laws against catholic lay elite:

• Cannot buy land

• Cannot take lease over 31 years

• Cannot vote

• Cannot have guns, warhorses

• All enforced

TENUOUS EXISTENCE?

Laws against church:

• No prohibition of practice

• Prohibition of continental education

• Prohibition of bishops

• ie no new clergy, church decays

• Not enforced, not enforcable

TENUOUS EXISTENCE?

• After 1720 functioned openly

• 1700 - 1,000 priests

• 1730 - 1,500 priests

• Dublin city - 1730 - had bishop, 16 churches, 102 priests

CHURCH OF POOR?

Yes, in the sense that the majority of the poor were Catholic

CHURCH OF POOR?

No, as the institution and its personnel were better-off

• European education expensive

• Priests from wealthy farming families

• Bishops from gentry (Butlers in Cashel)

CHURCH OF POOR?

• In social conflict - church sided with better off, farmers

• Opposed to secret societies eg Whiteboys

• Battle of Ballyraggett 1775

• Excommunication of Whiteboys 1778

CHURCH OF POOR?

• Agrarian societies against Catholic church dues

• Baptism marriage fees rising with inflation

• Rightboys Co. Cork 1786

• Church synod agrees to regulate fees

AUTHORITY OF CLERGY?

• Rightboy agitation showed limits

• Clerical authority contested

• Priests targeted in militia riots

Cork priest 1806: ‘The influence which the clergy formerly

possessed over their flocks, and which was for a long series of years proverbial, was considerably diminished by the relaxation of the popery laws; it thenceforward continued gradually to decline, and received at length the coup de grace by the Rightboy disturbances in 1786. At that period not only all former influence was lost, but even that confidence in their clergy, without which all their exertions must prove abortive, ceased in a great measure to exist among the people’

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 1790s

• Main influence - French Revolution

• 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy

• Not accepted by Pope

• 30,000 clergy left France

• Politically - counter-revolutionary

• Irish clergy returned to Ireland

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 1790s

• ‘Dechristianisation’ in France• War in 1793 - papacy sided

with Britain - France captures Rome in 1798, Pope a refugee

• London government well-disposed to Irish Catholics - 1793 Relief Act

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 1790s

• Strong loyalty to state• State founded national

seminary in 1795 - Maynooth• First president, Hussey:

Maynooth was ‘the salvation of Ireland from Jacobinism and anarchy’

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 1790s

• After Bantry Bay - pastoral calling for loyalty

• Thanksgiving service in Dublin

Troy, Archbishop of Dublin, Feb. 1797… the sophistical theory of abstract

but impracticable rights of man, and the uniform silence on his duties to God studiously observed by the constitution framers and revolutionary dictators of France. Hence, their malevolence to pious institutions, their incessant and atrocious persecution of the faithful ministers of religion…

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 1790s

• After Bantry Bay - pastoral calling for loyalty

• Thanksgiving service in Dublin• Many declarations of loyalty by

parish clergy, signed by parishioners

PRIESTS IN REBELLION

• John Murphy, Philip Roche in Wexford

• Military leaders

• Partly due to emphasis in Catholic nationalist writing in 19th century - play down revolutionary influence - people react to state terror, led by priests

PRIESTS IN REBELLION

• Participation of priests not invented - emphasised in contemporary ballads (not Boolavogue - 1898)

• Small minority of priests involved - in Wexford, 10 out of 85

• Of 10, only three were parish clergy

• Opposed by bishop