Religious Ireland
Sir: Mr Desmond Shaw's remarks (Letters, January 5), about the 'tyranny' exercised by the 'Roman church' over its Irish members seems to betray a profound lack of knowledge of Irish history. To commence with, no one in Ireland for the past six centuries or so has ever been forced to belong to the Roman Catholic church — rather the reverse. Since the Reformation, all the powers of an oppressive (I use the word as Mr Shaw would define it) foreign administration were directed at forcefully tearing away the Irish people from the ancient church of their ancestors. The vast numbers who remained faithful to Catholicism did so therefore of their own free will, and at the cost of much suffering. This oppressive situation remained till the time of the Napoleonic wars. Secondly, the church that Mr Shaw misrepresents is not the 'Roman' Church, but the 'Irish' church. The Catholic church has been adhered to because of its identification with the struggle of the common people against the domination of English State and English church. For nearly three centuries, the English colonial regime punished adherence to the Irish national religion (Catholicism) by the deprivation of education; imprisonment and death for adults; and the refinement of castration for priests. If some of the Irish are still capable of behaving in a childishly cruel way, much of the blame must be borne by the English who refused them for centuries any national culture or education. Thirdly, once toleration for their religion was granted, the Irish hierarchy and the Vatican refused to engage in subversion against English rule. Throughout the entire nineteenth century the official church leaders, with a few individual exceptions, condemned violence or discrimination by their flock against the English landlords or the Protestant workers of the north — a practice not followed by the various political organisations of the Protestant Sects. It was not, therefore, the Catholic church which produced Irish dislike of Protestantism, but the actions of Protestants themselves. The Irish have always tended to be more papal than the Pope. In the last two centuries both Pope and Bishops have been constantly criticised in Ireland for being ready to sell out to the English in exchange for ecclesiastical gains. For instance, in 1807 the Irish Catholic hierarchy was ready to concede control over the nomination of bishops to the British government, in exchange for further religious toleration. The aggrieved outbursts of the Irish laity forced Pope Pius VII to overrule the hierarchy. Again, at the time of Parnell, when activity for Home Rule was at its height, the great Pope Leo XIII condemned the nationalist-inspired land plan and the boycott campaign. The Irish ignored him, and criticised Leo's attempts for friendlier relations with Anglicanism. The opinion was commonly voiced in Ireland that the Pope should have a care to his 'faulty' theology rather than to interfering in Irish politics.
It is not really necessary to repeat that membership of the IRA has been punishable for a century by excommunication, both by the decree of the hierarchy, and by the canon law that
lays downipso facto excommunication _ . for any Catholic who joins a secret subversive society. But, as always, the Irish take their religion from Rome and their politics from home.
Mr Shaw's insinuation that the
Catholic church is responsible for the drift to communism is also misleading. As Leo XIII pointed out in Immortale Dei, it is Protestantism that (indirectly)results in communism — because it was Protestantism that produced the liberal capitalism of the nineteenth century, against which communism was a reaction.
Anyway, what little communism
there is in Ireland could better be ascribed rather to the present worldwide drift towards revolutionary socialism rather than to the activity of the Catholic church.
Mr Shaw expresses the hope that the
church of Rome is changing. Would that we had grounds for hoping the same was happening to the Orange Order, that traditional mainstay of
unionism, and the various ultraProtestant sects that support it.
It is all very strange of course, this banging of the Orange drum, which even now threatens to destroy Ulster's last hope for peace, Ireland; for thewhole Orange Order is based upon a false premise—that of the defence of Protestant freedom by William of Orange. The supposed victory at the Boyne of Protestant liberty against papist absolutism was, of course, nothing of the kind. James II, the Catholic, was aiming for toleration for all religions, including nonconformism. William was to set up the supremacy of one religion, Anglicanism. The Protestant sects had to wait for another century before they were granted civil equality. Moreover, James II, the Catholic champion, was at loggerheads with the Holy See for his alliance with the secretly-excommunicated Louis XIV. William invaded Britain as the ally of no less than the Pope. For the prime mover of the Grand Continental Alliance against France was Pope In nocentXI who was beatified in the 'fifties. For t — he Pope and for William, the British Isles were only another theatre of conflict. So, to secure a firm base against France, the homosexual Dutch prince posed as the champion of Protestantism. When William landed, amongst the first to desert James was the papal nuncio, Count d'Adda, whom William granted a safe-conduct back to Rome. The 'Protestant' army that won the battle of the Boyne was mostly composed of German Catholics supplied by the Jesuit-educated Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I. To sum up — the conflict in Ireland has been for centuries, and still is, a question of social, not religious differences. The Catholic Irish kept their religion and their politics separate. The English used religion to make political gains. The great Protestant churches in Ireland are today non-political. Only certiin bigoted sects, and the Orange Order still see the position in terms of a religious war.
David Hill 14 Park Hall Avenue, Chesterfield, Derbyshire
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