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3 The devotional landscape of medieval Irish cultural Catholicism inter hibernicos et inter anglicos, c.1200–c.1550 Salvador Ryan In his 1985 survey entitled The Irish Catholic Experience, Patrick J. Corish points to ‘the complexity of the patterns of culture in which Christianity existed in Ireland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while noting that the source material allows little more than an impressionistic survey of what was distinctive about the Christian religion inter hibernicos as against its equivalent inter anglicos.1 Difficulties arising
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.
his freedom with miraculously found gold, thus preserving church practice in regard to the manumission of slaves. For some offences against church personnel Irish canon law stipulated the payment by the offender of female slaves who, as the Annals make clear, were often used for sexual purposes by their masters. Whatever about the absence of saintliness in the early medieval Irish Church, Ó Corráin is convinced that its reputation for scholarship is securely grounded. In Chapter 3, Salvador Ryan examines the issue of cultural Catholicism in the later middle ages (c
further damaged. Studies from the USA concerning trust in the institution of the Church have documented the impact on those abused (Rosetti 1995) and at parish level (Kline et al. 2008).The consequences include a deep hurt at the perceived betrayal by Church leaders, a reawakening of pain connected to past injuries by clergy, an effort to cope by separating one’s relationship with God from that with the Church and a concern for the spiritual well-being of other family members. This has contributed to what is referred to as ‘cultural Catholicism’.The abuse scandals have
economic, social and cultural changes of the postwar period. Touching upon issues of family cohesiveness, the socialisation of the young in the faith, liturgical adaptations, ecumenical and inter-faith rapprochement, and a ‘cultural Catholicism’ that might not be ‘dead dead religious’ or manifested by ‘going to church a lot’, the reflections of these ordinary Mancunian Catholics illustrate the shifts, both at an institutional level and amongst the laity, in the modes of expression and agreed forms for mediation of a Catholic identity towards the end of the century. In
’s conceptualisation of order, for it seemed to overlap so very distinctly with his own cultural Catholicism. Indeed, its emphasis on political order and the absence of themes such as divine purpose and meaning lend credence to Barrès’s interpretation, even if later on Bourget demonstrates a far more supernatural understanding of human conduct and society. In 1903 when L’Etape was published, however, Bourget was a very recent convert. Nationalising salvation The ambiguity we have noted in Bourget can be found also in Catholicism
editorial argued, it would have to find a way of reconciling those who favour a return to the discipline and certainties of the past and the ‘cultural Catholics’ who, while attached to their Catholic identity, refuse to be dictated to in matters of faith. The editorial concludes: 30 Eamon Maher What’s so terrible about ‘cultural Catholicism’ – the idea that the broad church is deeply intertwined with the way Irish people think and feel and, however occasionally, pray? There is a deep well of respect and affection for Catholic tradition even among those who do not wish
inform the consciences and expand the limits of how people perceive the world’.38 Thus in one way or another, as one looks to the future, there would indeed seem to be firm grounds to support the view that Irish Catholic identity, as opposed to a vague cultural Catholicism, is in jeopardy. The move to a more individualistic morality was evident in the Celtic Tiger era neo-liberal economic policies of successive Fianna Fáil led (but 368 Contemporary expressions of Catholic and Irish identity Progressive Democrat driven) governments, leaving us with the wrecked Irish
part of the Church of its actual influence. In both the Iberian peninsula, Latin America and Central-Eastern Europe a strong cultural Catholicism has not always been accompanied by the same levels of theological commitment. In Spain during the late 1970s the Vatican often did not understand why Archbishop Tarancón failed to push religious agendas more vigorously, attributing this to unwanted liberalism when it owed more to realistic perceptions of how far the public would follow the Church. Surveys in the early 1980s showed that whilst 78% of Spaniards described