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3 • The Catholic Church It is generally agreed that the Catholic Church played a highly significant role in almost every dimension of the life of Irish migrants in nineteenthcentury Britain.1 Nonetheless, two caveats should be borne in mind. First, whilst a good deal of attention will be focused on the social, cultural and political impact of the church, its prime self-defined function was spiritual, namely to preach its version of the Christian message and provide the faithful with opportunities for worship, spiritual solace, instruction and guidance.2 Second
This book provides a review and consideration of the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland in the intense political and social changes after 1879 through a major figure in Irish history, Michael Logue. Despite being a figure of pivotal historical importance in Ireland, no substantial study of Michael Logue (1840–1924) has previously been undertaken. Exploring previously under-researched areas, such as the clash between science and faith, university education and state-building, the book contributes to our understanding of the relationship between the Church and the state in modern Ireland. It also sets out to redress any historical misunderstanding of Michael Logue and provides a fresh perspective on existing interpretations of the role of the Church and on areas of historical debate in this period.
1 Scotland’s Catholic Church before emancipation For much of the period between the Reformation and the nineteenth century, Catholicism existed on the periphery of Scottish society, its survival fraught with uncertainty in an atmosphere of institutionalised anti-Catholicism and extreme poverty. The Scottish Mission, a term used to describe the Catholic Church in Scotland between 1603 and 1878, when it had no formal governing hierarchy, had been thrown into complete disarray by the Reformation. Those who remained Catholics went underground, keeping their
parts of Gaelic Scotland – provided that preachers were sent to convert them. Yet by the outbreak of the rising in 1641–42, the Roman Catholic Church was so strong that its prelates and clergy soon replaced the Church of Ireland personnel as the de facto ecclesiastical establishment in those large areas of mid- and west Ulster under Irish military control. This transformation demands exploration, for Catholic life has been a neglected corner in the field of recent plantation scholarship. 2 It is well known that the lack of any serious Protestant engagement with
This chapter focuses on two distinguishing features of HIV/AIDS in Italy, and
their intersection: the prevalence of HIV transmission via intravenous drug
use in Italy, and the interventions of the Catholic Church. It uses as a
case study the controversial founding by Caritas of an AIDS care centre in
Rome in 1988, to serve young current or former heroin users who lacked a
stable home. There is also an important international context in that the
controversy that delayed the opening of the centre coincided with the
passing of stricter drug legislation in the USA and the visit of Italian
Socialist Party Secretary Bettino Craxi to New York and Washington to
discuss related matters. Craxi soon introduced similar legislation into
Italian parliament. The confluence of these events and their conflation in
government and media discourse alike, this chapter argues, affected
attitudes towards the care centre, and led to the effective criminalisation
of HIV/AIDS in Italy.
The sources cited and analysed to reconstruct
this history include print and audio-visual media from both Italy and the
USA. These sources highlight Italy’s concern for its image on the
international stage; the ‘activism’ of Caritas and the counter-activism of
neighbourhood residents; the fears of these residents of social contagion
and drug use in their wealthy area; and how all of these factors contributed
to the construction of an aetiology that posited intravenous drug users as
the ur-sources of HIV, outside the bounds of ‘normal’ society and the
traditional Italian family.
This book is concerned with political, intellectual and cultural developments in the context of assessments as to how Ireland was transformed during the 1950s and the 1960s. It analyses how Tuairim (meaning ‘opinion’ in Irish), an intellectual movement influenced key public policy decisions in relation to Northern Ireland, education, industrial schools and censorship.
An analysis of Tuairim shows that the 1950s and 1960s were a transformative phase in modern Irish history. In these years, a conservative society dominated by the Catholic Church, and a state which was inward-looking and distrustful of novelty, gradually opened up to fresh ideas. This study considers this change. It explores how Tuairim was at the vanguard of the challenge to orthodoxy and conservatism. The society established branches throughout Ireland, including Belfast, and in London. It produced frequent critical publications and boasted a number of members who later became prominent in Irish public life; this included the future Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, Donal Barrington, later a Supreme Court Judge and Miriam Hederman O’Brien, a future Chancellor in the University of Limerick. Tuairim provided a unique space for civic engagement for its members and made a significant contribution to debates on contemporary Ireland and its future.
This book is concerned with the society’s role in the modernisation of Ireland. In so doing it also addresses topics of continued relevance for the Ireland of today, including the Northern Ireland Peace Process and the institutional care of children.
Henry Edward Manning (1808–92) was involved in some of the most pressing social issues of his time, from the defence of workers and trade unionism to finding a solution for the dock strike and the education of the poor. English Catholic social conscience, as a whole and with some singular exceptions, was somewhat slow in following the leadership of the cardinal in some of these matters. This article studies a barely known aspect of Manning’s social activity: his involvement in the British response to the Russian pogroms of 1881–82 and in other contemporary Jewish issues.
This study reveals the desperate plight of the poor, neglected, illegitimate and abused children in an Irish society that claimed to ‘cherish’ and hold them sacred, but in fact marginalized and ignored them. It examines the history of childhood in post-independence Ireland, breaking new ground in examining the role of the state in caring for its most vulnerable citizens. In foregrounding policy and practice as it related to poor, illegitimate and abused children, the book gives voice to historical actors who formed a significant proportion of the Irish population but who have been ignored and marginalized in the historical record. Moreover, it uses the experiences of those children as lenses through which to re-evaluate the Catholic influence in post-independence Irish society. The historiography on church and state in modern Ireland tends to emphasise the formal means through which the church sought to ensure that Irish social policy was infused with Catholic principles. While it is almost cliché to suggest that the Catholic Church exerted influence over many aspects of Irish life, there have been few attempts to examine what this meant in practical terms. The book offers a different interpretation of the relationship between and among the Catholic Church, the political establishment and Irish people.
Given its significance in the history of Britain as the pioneer city of the industrial revolution, it is surprising that until the 1990s there was little academic research on the Manchester Irish. This book examines the development of the Irish community in Manchester, one of the most dynamic cities of nineteenth-century Britain. It examines the process by which the Irish came to be blamed for all the ills of the Industrial Revolution and the ways in which they attempted to cope with a sometimes actively hostile environment. The book first traces the gradual development of links between Manchester and Ireland, largely through the build-up of commercial connections, but also noting the two-way movement of people across the Irish Sea. Then, it focuses on Angel Meadow, discussing the rapid build-up of the resident Irish population and the spatial distribution of the Irish in the network of streets. An account on the significance of the Catholic Church for the migrant Irish follows. The book also examines the evolution St Patrick's Day. Next, it discusses how Manchester's Irish related to the broader political concerns of the city during the period from the 1790s to the 1850s whilst retaining a keen interest in Irish affairs. The role of the Irish in the electoral politics of the city from the 1870s onwards is subsequently examined. After an analyses on the evolution of the commemoration rituals for the Manchester Martyrs, the book attempts to trace the hidden history of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Manchester.
Identity is contingent and dynamic, constituting and reconstituting subjects with political effects. This book explores the implications of Protestant and 'British' incursions for the development of Irish Catholic identity as preserved in Irish language texts from the early modern period until the end of Stuart pretensions. Questions of citizenship, belonging, migration, conflict, security, peace and subjectivity are examined through social construction, post-colonialism, and gendered lenses from an interdisciplinary perspective. The book explains the issue of cultural Catholicism in the later middle ages, by way of devotional cults and practices. It examines Catholic unionism vis-a-vis Victorian politics, military and imperial service, the crown, and the position of the Catholic Church with relation to the structures of the state in Ireland. In particular the North American experience and especially the importance of the USA for consolidating a particular interpretation of Irish Catholic nationalist identity, is explored. Children studied in English Catholic public schools like Stonyhurst and Downside where the establishment Irish Catholics and rising mercantile classes sought to have the characteristics of the Catholic gentleman instilled in their progeny. The book sets out to detect the voices of those Catholic women who managed to make themselves heard by a wider audience than family and friends in Ireland in the years between the Act of Union of 1800 and independence/partition. It considers what devotional interests both Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Norman actually shared in common as part of a wider late medieval Catholic culture.