History of Christianity in Ireland
Scholars have long considered the term "Celtic Church" to be inappropriate for describing Christianity among Celtic-speaking peoples, since this would imply a notion of unity, or a self-identifying entity, that did not exist.
"[2] Celtic-speaking areas were part of Latin Christendom as a whole, wherein a significant degree of liturgical and structural variation existed, along with a collective veneration of the Bishop of Rome that was no less intense in Britain and Ireland.
Further fresh arrivals came from Ireland and the monastery, with Columba as its abbot, was soon a flourishing institution, from which the Dalriadian Scots in the south and the Picts beyond the Grampians were evangelized.
The period of Insular art, mainly in the fields of illuminated manuscripts, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, the Ardagh Chalice, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island.
Charlemagne, advised by Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York, attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, and by decree in AD 787 established schools in every abbey in his empire.
As the eighth century neared its close, religion and learning still flourished, but unexpected dangers approached and a new enemy came, before whose assaults monk and monastery and saint and scholar disappeared.
In Ireland as elsewhere they attacked the monasteries and churches, desecrated the altars, carried away the gold and silver vessels, and smoking ruins and murdered monks attested the fury of their assaults.
[citation needed] In a series of synods beginning with Ráth Breasail (1118) and including Kells (1152), at which the pope's legate presided, many salutary enactments were passed, and for the first time diocesan episcopacy was established.
It was not until he had reigned for a quarter of a century on the throne that he turned his attention to Ireland and then it was primarily due his conflict with the Church over his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
[11] The English-speaking minority mostly adhered to the Church of Ireland or to Presbyterianism, while the Irish-speaking majority remained faithful to the Latin liturgy of Roman Catholicism.
The land settlements in the aftermath of these wars, and the defeat of James II in 1691, reduced Irish Catholic freeholders to a fraction of their previous size.
A parliamentary faction led by Henry Grattan agitated for a more favourable trading relationship with England and for greater legislative independence for the Parliament of Ireland.
This treaty, however, was soon torn to shreds, and in spite of William's appeals the Irish Parliament refused to ratify it, and embarked on fresh penal legislation.
A few Catholics managed to hold their estates with the collaboration of friendly Protestants; the remainder gradually sank to the level of cottiers and day-labourers, reduced to a standard of living far below what they had been used to.
Moreover, it passed the Declaratory Act 1719, expressly declaring that it had power to legislate for Ireland, taking away also the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords.
As for Foster and Fitzgibbon, who led the forces of corruption and bigotry, they opposed every attempt at reform, and consented to the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 only under strong pressure from Pitt and Dundas.
These English ministers, alarmed at the progress of French revolutionary principles in Ireland, fearing a foreign invasion, wished to have the Catholics contented.
The high hopes raised by these events were dashed to the earth when Fitzwilliam was suddenly recalled, after having been allowed to go so far without any protest from Portland, the home secretary, or from the premier, Pitt.
He was probably also influenced by Beresford, who had powerful friends in England, and by the king, whom Fitzgibbon had mischievously convinced that to admit Catholics to Parliament would be to violate his coronation oath.
And he stirred up but too successfully the dying embers of sectarian hate, with the result that the Ulster factions, the Protestant "Peep-of-Day Boys" and the Catholic "Defenders", became embittered with a change of names.
On one side were eloquence and debating power, patriotism, and public virtue, Grattan, Plunket, and Bushe, Foster, Fitzgerald, Ponsonby, and Moore, a truly formidable combination.
The impecunious got well-paid sinecures; the briefless barrister was made a judge or a commissioner; the rich man, ambitious of social distinction, got a peerage, and places and pensions for his friends; and the owners of rotten boroughs large sums for their interests.
Troy, the Archbishop of Dublin, had been a strong advocate of the Union, and had induced nine of his brother bishops to concede a veto on episcopal appointments, not uncommon in European monarchies.
Castlereagh was not averse; but Pitt was publicly non-committal and vague, though the Catholic Unionists had no doubt that he favoured linking concession with passage of the Union thereby creating a totally new dispensation for a United Kingdom.
Troy that Pitt had resigned, unable to overcome the reluctance of King George III, who believed it contravened the Act of Settlement, and his coronation oath.
John Keogh, the able leader of 1793, was then old, and Lords Fingall and Gormanstone, Mr. Scully and Dr. Dromgoole, were not the men to grapple with great difficulties and powerful opponents.
Dr. Murray, the new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, joined it, and Dr. Doyle, the great Bishop of Kildare; other bishops followed; the clergy and people also came in; and thus rose a great national organization, supervising from its central office in Dublin subsidiary associations in every parish; maintained by a Catholic rent; watching over local and national affairs, discharging, as Mr. Canning described it, "all the functions of a regular government, and having obtained a complete mastery and control over the masses of the Irish people".
The forty-shilling freeholders, however, were temporarily disfranchised, and provisions excluding[ambiguous] Catholics from some of the higher civil and military offices, prohibiting priests from wearing vestments outside their churches, bishops from assuming the titles of their sees, and clergy from obtaining charitable bequests.
The clergy's influence meant that the Irish state had very conservative social policies, banning, for example, divorce, contraception, abortion and pornography as well as encouraging the censoring of many books and films.
We have throughout been careful to keep in mind and to make allowance for the particular points of view of Roman Catholics in regard to education so far as known to us, and it has been our desire to refrain as far as we could from recommending any course which might be thought to be contrary to their wishes.
