What are the Historical Origins of the Power Of the Catholic Church in Irish Society?

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“If religion be the opium of people, the Irish were addicts”


(Tovey & Share, 000 p.06).


Do my coursework


Ireland is known to be the “Island of Saints and Scholars”, it is almost as if the Irish population have always been holy and religious people who are devoted to the Catholic Church, however Ireland has not always been this way. It seems that the Church dominated Ireland particularly in the period between the Famine and the 180’s. This is a result of many complex social factors.


The sixteenth century saw many changes not just in Ireland but throughout Western Europe. Western societies were undergoing what is known as the civilising process and there was also a growth in capitalist world systems. This resulted in many societies changing into ones that are more complex; people began to behave in more rational, predictable and less barbaric ways. For many, this movement towards civility operated in and through religious institutions, however it became an essentially secular movement. Ireland on the other hand was an exception in that most people learnt to become civil through the Catholic Church.


The British State took upon themselves the task of civilizing and socially controlling the Irish people. They imposed The Penal Laws which were basically class laws, directed at denying Catholics ownership of the basic means of production, this law was in addition to the confiscation of land in the previous century (Inglis, 18 p.10).


The British seemed intent on degrading and demoralising the Irish Catholics whom they saw as savages. They made laws restricting education and religion knowing that without knowledge and discipline, Catholics would remain uncivilised and ignorant.


The Penal Laws had unintended consequences, they seemed only to ‘fuel’ the Irish in becoming Catholics or in other words the laws united the Irish in a struggle against the state. Religion and national identity merged, and somewhere along the line being ‘Irish’ became equated with being ‘Catholic’. The Penal Laws seemed to cause an alliance to be formed between school teachers and priests. In 171, there were at least 54 illegal Popish schools in Ireland (Inglis, 18). The British State then decided to establish subsidised schools to protestantise the Irish. They introduced The Carter Schools in which the children who attended were forbidden to communicate with their parents. The schools were intended to “rescue the souls of thousands of poor children from the dangers of Popish superstition and idolatry, and their bodies from the miseries of idleness and beggary” (Inglis, 18 p.106). However, these schools were a complete failure.


The British State failed to regulate and control the Irish and abolish Catholicism in Ireland. It introduced a police force and also subsidised emigration. Between 1815 and 186 the state had conducted six separate experiments in state-aided emigration (Inglis, 18).


The Penal laws did not manage to stop the formation of a Catholic bourgeoisie which in search for civility allied itself close with the Catholic Church. This newly established alliance would become fully cemented after 1 in the new Irish State (Inglis, 18). Rome exerted considerable power over the Irish Catholic Church and encouraged the Church to become independent of the state.


Changes in Irish social and economic conditions were also important factors in the creation of the Catholic Church. There was a growth in Irish seminaries, Catholic Churches were built and schools, homes, asylums, hospitals and orphanages were established. There was also a general increase in vocations. The Catholic Church gained moral power in caring for the sick, elderly, poor and uneducated.


Although the Church gained control over health and social welfare, it was the fact that the state granted control of education to the Church, which was to prove decisive in the moralisation of the Irish population (Inglis, 18).


Besides helping to fulfill political, economic and religious needs, affiliation to the church brought a sense of prestige, civility and moral superiority. Catholic affiliation also enabled the accumulation of symbolic capital. The Church became the vehicle, by which the Irish became civilised.


A system of penance was introduced by the Church to control the sexual activity among the lay persons and eliminate it from the lives of clerics, monks and nuns. Engagement in penitential practices became a part of the overall struggle to attain social prestige by appearing to be morally superior. It was the regulation of sex, which became central to the Church maintaining its power. Being civilised and mannerly became associated with a disciplined control of the body. Civilised behavior was based on self-control and discipline. The Church also instilled an inculcation of shame and guilt about the body in the minds of the Irish.


The priest became a fundamental element of the civilising process in Irish society. Rigorous self-control became the hallmark of Catholic priesthood. The laity modeled themselves on priests, as they were a model of morality and civility, a shining example of what could be produced from a tenant farmer background. The ultimate threat from the Church was excommunication. Excommunication would make the victim a social outcast; it was a treat held over people, which could be enacted at any time. Priests were seen as mediators between God and the individual and could practically ensure eternal damnation (Inglis, 18).


It was the rapid growth in population from 1750 onwards which led to the adoption of population control practices. Postponed marriage, permanent celibacy and emigration were all features of the stem-family, in which only one son inherits the land.


The Church also institutionalised patterns of emotional relationships within families especially between husbands and wives and mechanisms of control within the wider community such as the bachelor drinking group (Inglis, 18).


From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the Irish mother became a crucial element in maintaining the power of the Catholic Church. Women, particularly mothers developed an alliance with priests. For women to attain and maintain moral power it was necessary that they retain their virtue and chastity (Inglis, 18). The mother became responsible for the domestic sphere and rearing children. Mothers inculcated strict Catholic discipline within the home and instilled guilt and shame about sex in their children. The Church depended on the Irish mother to educate her children in being good Catholics so that they would become like priests.


A major aspect of the civilising process was the segregation of the sexes, first into separate beds, then separate bedrooms and finally into separate lifestyles (Inglis, 18). The National School System was developed in 181 and it was through this system that the Catholic Church attained even more power of Irish society. There were separate schools for boys and girls. The boys would learn how to run a successful small farm and the girls would learn skills such as needlework. “The whole structure of the girls education was towards the development of modesty and virtue and the practice of being industrious” (Inglis, 18 p.10).


Schools introduced a cycle of discipline into the family and life revolved around the school timetable. It was through the schools that the Church reached out into the home. Throughout the nineteenth century the control of instincts, passions and emotions shifted from the schools to the home where such control became the specialised task of the mother. The National School System taught the Irish females basic practices of housekeeping and the moral upbringing of children.


Women depended heavily on their husbands to provide a source of income. Women had no involvement in work outside the home, they were expected only to keep the house and rear the children. As women had no occupational status they became powerless and it was the priests and later nuns who provided a source of hope for them. The priests would visit women in their homes and take an interest in what they were doing. By doing so, the Church gained a certain amount of moral power, among the Irish mothers in particular.


The home became an object of supervision by the Church. The way for the mother to attain religious capital was to bring her children up within the limits the priests laid down. In doing this, the mother was able to call upon the priest as an ally in her attempts to limit what her children and husband did and said. The Church was not only dominating social life but family life also.


In 187 in Knock, County Mayo, Our Lady appeared to fifteen people. “Taylor argues that devotion to her was introduced as a deliberate strategy by the Church to counteract heretical movements, mainly towards orgiastic, sex-imbued pagan practices” (Inglis, 18 p.14). She was a mother figure who at the same time was completely desexualised. She became an example in which the Irish Catholic mother modeled herself on becoming. It was through the devotion to Our Lady that the Irish mother fostered a devotion to herself and to motherhood.


“The domination and control of women by the Church and the necessity for women to ally themselves with that dominating power if they themselves were to have any power, led to their high level of marital fertility which, in turn, created the need for postponed marriage, permanent celibacy and emigration among their children” (Inglis, 18 p.18). Irish mothers produced a generation of devoted Catholic, and the Church was reliant and her to continue doing so. However, the 160’s saw Irish women gain political and economic power this resulted in the Church losing its foundations of power.


The Catholic Church played an important part in civilising the Irish population. It provided beliefs, norms and values to Irish society. The people united with the Church in the fight against the British State. Religion was an important part of the Irish person’s self-identity, it has the capacity to be a strong indicator of personal, community and national belonging (Tovey and Share, 000). Max Weber saw religion as a universal human interest, found in some shape or form in all societies throughout history. Religion provides social cohesion, social control and also gives meaning and purpose to life (Macionis & Plummer, 00 p. 46). The Catholic Church gained its power through its involvement with the laity; the people looked up to the Church and its priests and modeled their life around what was morally correct.


Even today, while passing through the towns and villages of Ireland, it is almost impossible to miss the large imposing churches that exist. It is obvious the importance of these buildings in Irish history, and the time and effort that went into the construction of them. “Religion imposes order on people’s lives and also on the history of their society” (De Swaan, 001).


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References


De Swaan, Abram (001), Human Societies; An Introduction. Oxford Polity Press.


Inglis, Tom (18), Moral Monopoly The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland. Dublin, UCD Press.


Macionis, J and K Plummer (00), Sociology A Global Introduction. London Prentice-Hall.


Tovey, Hilary and Share, Perry (000), A Sociology of Ireland. Dublin, Gill & Macmillan.


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