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What are the Historical Origins of the Power Of the Catholic Church in Irish Society?
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______________________________________________ “If religion be the opium of people, the Irish were addicts” (Tovey & Share, 2000 p.306). Ireland is known to be the “Island of Saints and Scholars”, it is almost as if the Irish population have always been holy and religious people who are devoted to the Catholic Church, however Ireland has not always been this way. It seems that the Church dominated Ireland particularly in the period between the Famine and the 1980’s. This is a result of many complex social factors. The sixteenth century saw many changes not just in Ireland but throughout Western Europe. Western societies were undergoing what is known as the civilising process and there was also a growth in capitalist world systems. This resulted in many societies changing into ones that are more complex; people began to behave in more rational, predictable and less barbaric ways. For many, this movement towards civility operated in and through religious institutions, however it became an essentially secular movement. Ireland on the other hand was an exception in that most people learnt to become civil through the Catholic Church. The British State took upon themselves the task of civilizing and socially controlling the Irish people. They imposed The Penal Laws which were basically class laws, directed at denying Catholics ownership of the basic means of production, this law was in addition to the confiscation of land in the previous century (Inglis, 1998 p.103). The British seemed intent on degrading and demoralising the Irish Catholics whom they saw as savages. They made laws restricting education and religion knowing that without knowledge and discipline, Catholics would remain uncivilised and ignorant. The Penal Laws had unintended consequences, they seemed only to ‘fuel’ the Irish in becoming Catholics or in other words the laws united the Irish in a struggle against the state. Religion and national identity merged, and somewhere along the line being ‘Irish’ became equated with being ‘Catholic’. The Penal Laws seemed to cause an alliance to be formed between school teachers and priests. In 1731, there were at least 549 illegal Popish schools in Ireland (Inglis, 1998). The British State then decided to establish subsidised schools to protestantise the Irish. They introduced The Carter Schools in which the children who attended were forbidden to communicate with their parents. The schools were intended to “rescue the souls of thousands of poor children from the dangers of Popish superstition and idolatry, and their bodies from the miseries of idleness and beggary” (Inglis, 1998 p.106). However, these schools were a complete failure. The British State failed to regulate and control the Irish and abolish Catholicism in Ireland.
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