What happened to Catholic Ireland?
Ireland. What comes to mind when you think about the “Emerald Isle”? Perhaps you think of its beautiful scenery, the green fields, the wild and rugged coastline. There is sure to be at least one reader who thinks of the leprechaun with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Many readers will, no doubt, think of the rich Christian heritage of Ireland — the place often named the “Island of Saints and Scholars.”
Ireland — past, present, and future — is, perhaps, best viewed through the lens of its Christian history: the coming of Christianity, the immense growth of the faith, the missionary spirit of countless Irish clergy and religious, and, in more modern times, the rapid decline of Catholicism in Ireland in recent decades.
In this two-part series, I will attempt to give the reader a brief overview of the faith in Ireland, looking firstly at the rise of Christianity in Ireland, and then looking at some of the factors which might cause us to ask if Ireland can be considered to be a Catholic country at all in the present day.
For millennia before the arrival of Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century, the country had had a long and rich history and culture. Poetry and storytelling were prominent art forms among the completely rural population. The great passage-tomb at Newgrange, County Meath, which is lit up once a year by the rising sun at the winter solstice, and which predates the great pyramids of Egypt, is a testament to both the engineering prowess and the religious devotion of the Irish in pre-Christian times.
Religious roots
However, the religious practice of the people before the arrival of Christianity was most likely based largely on superstition, the observation of omens, and the practice of magical rituals.
There was a “pantheon” of sorts, with the people worshipping gods and goddesses, seemingly without any central organizing principle — as one author has written, “It is rather as if the pagan Irish lived and breathed with one foot in this world and one foot in the otherworld: the two worlds interpenetrated.”
There is also archaeological evidence to suggest the practice of human sacrifice in Ireland before the arrival of St. Patrick. From a Christian perspective, pre-Christian Ireland was very bleak.
When one considers what Ireland and its people became — the Island of Saints and Scholars — we may rightly think that their history is one of extremes.
Writing in the early third century, Gaius Julius Solinus remarked that Ireland was “inhuman in the savage rituals of its inhabitants.” These inhabitants were “an unfriendly and warlike people. When the blood of killers has been drained, the victors smear it on their own faces. They treat right and wrong as the same thing.”
Not long before the arrival of St. Patrick, St. Jerome noted that when he was in Gaul, he witnessed the Irish feeding on human flesh. He also claimed that when they came across herds of pigs and cattle, they frequently cut off the buttocks and nipples of shepherds and their wives, regarding these as delicacies. It should be noted that Jerome may have exaggerated his accounts of the Irish — since he opposed the heretic Pelagius, whom he wrongly believed to be Irish, he may have felt it necessary to disparage the Irish as part of his fight against Pelagius.
Whether or not Jerome’s account is completely accurate, we must also bear in mind that the Roman Empire never extended to Ireland, although most of Britain was Roman. Although it seems that the Romans considered invading Ireland, they never even attempted an invasion. We do know, however, that Irish pirates would often raid Roman Britain, taking slaves back to Ireland. St. Patrick was one of those slaves.
Christianity arrives
According to Patrick’s own account in his Confessio, it was while he was in captivity in Ireland that he found the Christian faith which he had abandoned as a youth. After returning to Britain, he perceived the voice of the Irish in a dream: “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.”
Later annals indicate that Patrick was ordained a priest and a bishop and was sent by Pope Celestine I to preach the faith to the Irish and to baptize them. He arrived in Ireland around the year 432.
Patrick’s mission to the Irish paved the way for the conversion of the entire island of Ireland to the true faith.
It is quite remarkable, given how pagan religion was so central to the lives of the pre-Christian Irish, that there does not seem to be any substantial record of bloodshed on the arrival of Christianity to Ireland, although Patrick’s mission was certainly not without hardship. Perhaps the Christian faith preached by Patrick simply offered a convincing alternative to superstition, fear, and empty rituals.
It is also likely that the “ordinary” people would have felt freer to convert after Patrick had converted their kings.
Patrick himself says that he baptized thousands of people. It is unlikely that he himself baptized the entire population — he is said to have consecrated at least 350 bishops, including his nephew, St. Mel of Ardagh, who would have ensured that the faith reached every corner of the island. Over the course of the next century grew one of the chief hallmarks and treasures of early Christian Ireland: the monasteries.
Flourishing faith
From the fifth century onward, the faith in Ireland continued to prosper. While learning and Christian culture began to decline in much of Western Europe, the Irish monasteries became important centers of learning. St. Bede, in his eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, noted that “many in England, both nobles and commons … left their own country and retired to Ireland either for the sake of religious studies or to live a more ascetic life.”
The strengthening position of the Church in Ireland along with the growth of the monasteries meant that many monks were able to leave Ireland to establish new monasteries on the continent — one estimate suggests that in the seventh century the number of monasteries in Gaul increased from 220 to 550, mainly due to this Irish influence.
Prominent characters in medieval Ireland’s scholarly and missionary endeavors include St. Columbanus, Sedulius Scottus, and John Scotus Eriugena. However, the Church in this period was not merely concerned with learning: An enormous number of churches were built and rules existed to ensure the pastoral care of the faithful.
The Church in Ireland continued to increase over the centuries, with many religious orders (such as the Cistercians and the Augustinians) coming to prominence.
Outside attacks
However, while the faith of the Irish people grew, they were tested by various persecutions from the ninth century onwards. The increasing frequency of Viking raids weakened many monasteries — these attacks tended to be quick and focused on plundering any wealth the monastery might have.
Further and more sustained persecution of Catholics came in the sixteenth century with the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII of England. Monasteries such as Clonmacnoise, Mellifont Abbey, Kells Abbey, and Boyle Abbey, were no more — priests and religious went into hiding and restrictions on Catholics became more and more severe.
During this period of persecution, the Catholic faithful in Ireland learned firsthand the truth in Tertullian’s statement: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” This was a period during which the green landscape of Ireland ran red with the blood of her martyrs. St. Oliver Plunkett, who was the Archbishop of Armagh, and many more bishops, clergy, religious, and laity died for their faith at the hands of the English.
Despite the tragedy of these martyrdoms, it is during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that we see how much the Irish loved their Catholic faith, because we learn of what really sustained them through persecution: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
With the suppression of the monasteries, a number of churches, religious houses, priests, and bishops risked their lives to offer the sacraments to the faithful — indeed the faithful were risking their lives by partaking in these elements of the “popish religion.”
St. Oliver Plunkett himself confirmed thousands of children and adults in the woods and in the mountains, regardless of wind and rain. Father Augustine, OFM.Cap., in his book Ireland’s Loyalty to the Mass, records an account given by an Italian priest, Father Mezzafalce, to the Holy Father in 1706:
In order to hear Mass, the celebration of Mass not being tolerated within the city [Galway], they go forth, men and women, outside the city walls, and they do this to assist, not only at Mass, but also at Vespers, which, in the absence of the clergy, is sung by seculars…[They are not] at all afraid of the most bitter laws enacted in the Dublin Parliament against the Catholics. … We are forced to recognize how justly Ireland has received the designation of Insula Sanctorum.
Indeed, the situation got even worse for the Catholics of Ireland, and priests had no alternative but to celebrate Mass in secret locations in the countryside, particularly at Mass rocks, while members of the faithful kept watch lest they be discovered and put to death.
The aforementioned Fr. Augustine emphasizes frequently the devotion of the Irish to the Mass, and how the Eucharist was their strength during centuries of persecution. He says:
The Mass was … the light which shone through the thickening darkness of a fanatical persecution that eclipsed all the terrors through which Ireland had passed since the unhappy dawn of the so-called Reformation. … And Communion was the sacrificial food that gave them superhuman strength “to fight the good fight”.
There is no doubt but that the spiritual life of the persecuted Irish was their chief concern and their bishops and clergy were heroic in providing the sacraments. While Archbishop Oliver Plunkett was tending his flock in the Archdiocese of Armagh, the Bishop of the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore (which had been vacant for twenty years), Bishop John Brenan, confirmed 15,000 people of all ages.
So great was the faith of the people in that diocese that Mass was celebrated and confirmation administered in the mountains under a scorching sun. We also learn from the same Bishop Brenan that the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Oils were strongly guarded against the irreverence of anti-Catholic forces.
The risk taken daily by the Irish to remain faithful to their Catholic faith during penal times cannot be overstated.
A person who denounced clergy to the authorities could earn a handsome financial reward: fifty pounds for a bishop and twenty pounds for a secular cleric or religious. There were also professional “priest-hunters” whose sole task it was to roam the Irish countryside to ferret out faithful Catholic priests.
But the Irish were never deterred from holding onto the truth! Two successive Archbishops of Tuam, Francis Burke and Bernard O’Gara were consecrated secretly in the hills (in 1714 and 1724 respectively). Archbishop O’Gara observed that Masses were often said in private houses in his diocese and through secret ordinations, the number of priests greatly increased.
With the cunning use of huts, Mass rocks, and portable altars, the Mass was constantly offered, the Irish remained loyal to the Mass. Evidence of this loyalty remains in certain place names dotted around Ireland, such as Cnoc an Aifrinn (the Mass Hill), Carraig an Aifrinn (the Mass Rock), and Bórd an Tighearna (the Table of the Lord).
One further element of the faith of the Irish during penal times stands out, which had been a constant since the time of St. Patrick: their fidelity and closeness to Rome. We can see this loyalty to Rome in the letters of the previously mentioned Fr. Mezzafalce, written while he was detained on a ship in the port of Galway.
In a letter to Pope Clement XI, Fr. Mezzafalce describes how the Catholics of Galway, despite being persecuted, professed their faith before heretical officials and ministers by declaring themselves to be “Roman Catholics” or, more frequently, simply “Romans.”
The same letter recounts how the faithful, on hearing that Bishop Maigrot was aboard the same ship as Fr. Mezzafalce, came out to the ship in boats to receive his blessing. Finally, Fr. Mezzafalce tells the Holy Father of the reaction when the clergy and laity learned that Bishop Maigrot’s ship would soon depart:
The clergy and the laity came on board the ship to request him [Bishop Maigrot] to represent to Your Holiness their devoted homage and unbounded desire to kiss the sacred feet which, they said, as it was not possible for them to do in any other manner, they joyfully did with their hearts. They begged … that Your Holiness would impart … his holy blessing on that entire city and its neighbourhood, so that thus comforted, they would have the strength, amidst so many persecutions, to persevere ever constant in the Catholic faith.
In the next edition, we will see how the Catholic Church has fared in Ireland since those bloody centuries of persecution, during which the Irish remained steadfast in their faith.
read part ii - "The Island of Saints and Scholars"
By Father Gerard Quirke, FSSP, a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter who serves as associate pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Fort Worth. The fraternity is a clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right , that is, a community of priests who do not take religious vows, but who work together for a common mission in the Catholic Church, under the authority of the Holy See. The fraternity was canonically erected by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988. Ordained on June 3, 2018, Fr. Quirke was born and raised in Galway on the west coast of Ireland.