Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

savage beast who came to Ireland to propagate his faith by fire and sword. . . The truth
is that the English government increased the moral value of Catholicism when they
banished it" (Joyce, "Ireland" 168). Curiously, as the British empire struggled under the
rampant fervor that permeated its colonies in the late nineteenth century, the Irish
Catholic Church often worked in collusion with the same colonial government that had
previously attempted to extinguish its powerful hold over the Irish consciousness
through persecution and bribery. The Church's vocal condemnation of, and disaffiliation
from, the Irish politician and Home Rule advocate, Charles Parnell, following his extra­
marital affair with Kitty O'Shea, is perhaps the most renowned instance of this
complicity. This evolved into a deeply divisive chasm in Irish society, as Joyce
demonstrates through numerous allusions in Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, and Ulysses.
When James Joyce was a youth, approximately 80% of Dubliners were Roman
Catholic (O'Brien 282). In 1904, the year in which Ulysses is set, the figure had risen to
approximately 90% of Dublin's population. This figure steadily increased from the time
of Joyce's youth, possibly in response to the decline in religious persecution by the
colonial powers and Ireland's increased political independence from England. As Louis
Paul-Dubois described in 1907: "No one can visit Ireland without being impressed by
the intensity of Catholic belief there, and by the fervor of its outward manifestations"
(Miller 1). Or, as Joyce himself would relate before the same Triestian audience:
"Without any doubt, Ireland has been up to now the most faithful daughter of the
Catholic Church" (Joyce, "Ireland" 169). Nevertheless, these figures do not accurately
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