The St. John’s University School of Law

Jamaica, Queens, New York 11439

John P. McCarthy

Professor Emeritus of History, Fordham University

Until September 10:

The Ferry, Emlagh, Waterville, Co. Kerry, Ireland

Phone: (353) 66 947 4349

Email: ferrycolton@eircom.net

From September 11:

76-15 35^th Avenue

Jackson Heights, New York 11372

Email: ferryemlagh@aol.com

Phone: 718 672 2872

John P. McCarthy is Professor Emeritus of History, Fordham University, where he had been the Director of the Institute of Irish Studies. His B.S. is from Fordham University, his M.A. from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. is from Columbia. He has published Kevin O’Higgins: Builder of the Irish State (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), Ireland: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: Facts on File, 2006), Dissent from Irish America (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), and Hilaire Belloc: Edwardian Radical (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1978), and has written article and reviews for America, Catholic Historical Review, Chesterton Review, Crisis, Intercollegiate Review, Irish Literary Supplement, The Irish Times, Modern Age, National Review, The Recorder, Thought, Triumph, etc. He is a member of the Executive Council of the American Irish Historical Society, was a founding member of the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Irish Studies, and is a member of the American Conference on Irish Studies.

Abstract

The Catholic Church in Contemporary Ireland

By John P. McCarthy

The Catholic Church historically has been the popular faith of the masses of the Irish population, even after having undergone active persecution for several centuries and second class status until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. For one reason or another the Church became inseparably linked with the Irish national struggle, and with the attainment of independence, there developed a de facto if not de jure establishment of the Church. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Church had to contend with serious evangelical campaigns by members of the religions of the minority ruling class in Ireland. Then the belated nineteenth century implementation of the reforms of the sixteenth century Council of Trent on the Church, which had been cut off for centuries of persecution from normal institutional evolution, required a rapid absorption of discipline and regime. Both made Irish Catholicism defensive, rigorous, and, upon national independence, triumphalist. On the other hand, Irish Catholicism would serve the Church immensely in its missionary endeavors to the Third World and in providing the clerical manpower with which to organize the Church in the English speaking world. However, all that seems to have changed in the past twenty years. Various factors, including substantial sexual scandals involving clergy, the ascendancy of materialist consumerism accompanying economic prosperity, mass media anti-clericalism, and simplistic interpretations of Vatican II, have changed the earlier image of Ireland as a paradigm of devotedness. Statistics on church attendance and religious vocations, diluted religious education, increased divorce and marital breakdown, high rates of non-marital births, and popular hostility suggest that the position of the church is not good. My paper will exam what is the actual status of the church in Ireland today, what has brought about that situation, and what signs of optimism might exist for a rejuvenation.