TRANSPLANTED IRISH INSTITUTIONS - University of Canterbury

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people' meant the Protestants; now it means the Roman Catholics. "7 When Catholics such as
Daniel O'Connell. who championed Catholic rights. began to assert themselves then the term
'Catholic Ireland' became fashionable. The coup for the Catholic Church was to develop
the equation of 'Catholic equals Irish' and thus 'non-Catholic equals non-Irish'.8
This
change helped to build the myth of Irish Catholics being the only true Irish.
Emmet
Larkin. in his study of nineteenth century Irish Catholicism. noted that during 1860
The launching of a national agitation, the inaugurating of the Peter's pence, and the raising of a
papal brigade by the bishops and clergy all resulted in the Irish people's thinking and acting more
in national, and less in regional, terms. This energetic focusing on the needs of the pope,
moreover, not only deepened that consciousness but intensified it in a way that made the Irish
people even more aware of how very Catholic they were. What was thus being focused and
strengthened, therefore, was not simply an Irish, but an Irish-Catholic consciousness, which was
to have profound consequences for their future as a people. 9
By thinking in nationalistic terms the Catholics wanted self-determination and this
heightened the sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants. I °
Cardinal Paul Cullen (1803-1878) also influenced sectarianism In Ireland. more
than any other Irish prelate. As Foster suggests. Cullen was "a nationalist faute de mieux.
given his anti-English. anti-Protestant proclivities and the temper of the times." II It was his
Ultramontanism or papal absolutism. however. which shaped Ireland to conform with the
desires of the Catholic Church. He strove to not only keep Ireland Catholic but also to
separate the Catholics from the Irish Protestants. Desmond Bowen in his study of Cullen's
influence on Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century argued that
Much of Ireland's tragic history of sectarian bitterness and warfare since Cullen's time has been a
result of his striving for Catholic religious and cultural ascendancy in the land. Ireland's
Protestants, confronted with the seemingly ever-expansionist Catholic confessional society which
7 J.e. Beckett, The Anglo-Irish Tradition, London, Faber and Faber, 1976, p. 10.
8Donald Harman Akenson, Small Differences. Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. 1815-1922 An
International Perspective, Kingston and Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988, p. 134.
9Emmet Larkin, The Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland 1860- 1870, Dublin, Gill
and Macmillan, 1987, p. SO.
I OSee the following works on Irish Nationalism- D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, London,
Canberra, Dublin, Croom Helm, Gill & Macmillan, 1982; Sean Cronin, Irish Nationalism A History of
its Roots and Ideology. Dublin, The Academy Press, 1980; and Robert Kee, The Green Rag: A History
of Irish Nationalism, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972.
I lOp. cit., Foster, pp. 386-387.