Table Of Content_ _ _ THE _ __
HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS
OF IRISH CATHOLICISM
Emmet Larkin
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION
The Catholic University of America Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 1976, 1984 Emmet Larkin
. All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Cynthia Basil
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Larkin, Emmet j., 1927-
The historical dimensions of Irish Catholicism.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Arno Press,
1976. (Irish-Americans)
I. Catholic Church-Ireland-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Ireland-church
history-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title.
BX1503·L37 1984 282'.415 83-23175
ISBN 0-8132-0594-8
To my good friend
Lawrence]. McCaffrey
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Notes 11
I Economic Growth, Capital Investment, and the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland 13
Appendices 35
Notes 49
II The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-1875 57
Notes 85
III Church, State, and Nation in Modern Ireland 91
Notes 123 .
Index 131
v
Introduction
In the spring of 1975, my good friend Lawrence McCaffrey, while
enjoying a short holiday with our families in Brown County, Indiana,
suggested that I should consider reprinting a number of my articles
on the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in the nineteenth century
in the series he was then editing for the Arno Press on The lrish
Americans. He explained that he thought a reprint of a collection of
my articles would prove very useful in arriving at a better under
standing of that most interesting phenomenon, Irish Catholicism,
which became so important a part of the religious landscape of not
only the United States, but everywhere in the English-speaking
world in the nineteenth century. After some further discussion, I
suggested that perhaps my two articles published in The American
Historical Review, and a third that was about to be published in that
journal, might be appropriately reprinted in his series under the
title of "The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism." At the
same time, however, I also expressed some serious reservations
about the first of these articles, which had been published in 1967
and which would have to be modified or revised in the light of the
scholarly research in Irish economic history since that date. Professor
McCaffrey then proposed that I write a brief introduction to the
three articles, explaining the extent to which they had been modified
by either recent scholarly research or further reflection on my part.
I agreed, and the result was the appearance, with an appropriate
introduction, of The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism in 1976.
Because a great deal of what I wrote in that introduction some
2 THE HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS OF IRISH CATHOLICISM
eight years ago is still useful in explaining the genesis of these
articles, I trust the reader will not take it amiss, if I repeat to some
extent, at least, what I said then.
No one who has read anything about modern Ireland, or who
has lived there for any length of time, can have escaped the fact
that the Roman Catholic Church in that country is a very powerful
and influential institution. The power and influence of the Church
in Ireland is formidable because she is at one and the same time a
political presence of no mean proportion in the ongoing constitu
tional system, a social institution that permeates nearly every aspect
of Irish life, and one of the most powerful economic corporations
in the country. In understanding the role of the Church in modern
Ireland, however, the real question has actually less to do with the
fact of her power and influence, which is obvious, than with how
and why she has been able to acquire that power and influence.
Indeed, it may not be too much to say that no history of modern
Ireland can be written, nor any understanding of the dynamics of
Irish society today be come to, until the how and the why of the
Church's power and influence in that society has been fathomed.
In introducing these three essays, however, I should also explain
that while they are certainly an attempt to come to terms with the
questions of how and why posed above, they are also a function of
the fact that there is no history of the Church in Ireland in the
nineteenth century, and that I have for some years been engaged
in the researching and writing of such a history. Because that history
is now projected at some ten volumes (1780-1918), these essays
were a necessary preliminary to the conceptualizing of that history.
The chief problem, of course, in writing a multi-volume history is
how to maintain perspective. Each volume in itself may remain
whole and constant, but the volumes taken together may add up in
the end to no more than a series of disparate monographs. The
ideal solution to the difficulty perhaps would be to complete all the
volumes and then proceed to rewrite them in terms of the general
themes that had emerged. Such a solution, however, is obviated not
only by the fact that academic exigencies and professional ego
seldom allow for septuagenarian magna opera, but by the even more
deadly constraint that the great work may never be completed. The
difficulty might be partially remedied by proceeding chronologi
cally, but that remedy imposes its own limitations in terms of logic
and consistency in the developing presentation. Because I have
chosen, in any case, to proceed idiosyncratically in the writing of
Introduction 3
my history, and the sixth volume, The Roman Catholic Church and the
Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878-1886 (1975), has actually been
the first to be published, followed by the seventh, The Roman Catholic
Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland, 1886-1888 (1978), the
eighth, The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and the Fall of Parnell,
1888-91 (1979), and the third, The Making of the Roman Catholic
Church in Ireland, 1850-1860 (1980), I have to some extent, at least,
avoided the pitfalls of such a chronological approach. This proce
dure, however, while mitigating the difficulties by not compounding
them, has not contributed very much to the critical problem of
maintaining perspective, and these essays, therefore, are the result
of an effort on my part to see the Irish Church at least whole, if
not constant, in the nineteenth century.
Because the first essay in this volume on the growth of the
economic power and influence of the Church in Ireland in the
nineteenth century was written some twenty years ago, something
should be said about the extent to which it has been modified by
more recent research and thought. When the essay was written, in
fact, Irish economic history was still in its infancy. Since then a
considerable amount of very good work has been done, which has
certainly caused me to reconsider some of my earlier assumptions
with regard to the Church's role in Ireland vis-a-vis both capital
investment and economic growth. Twenty years ago I argued that
I
the Church inhibited economic growth in Ireland by diverting a
significant amount of the capital available for investment to its own
uses. My assumption then, of course, was that there was a shortage
of capital. Professor Joseph Lee, however, has persuasively argued
in a number of articles that what hampered economic growth in
Ireland was not a deficiency in the amount of capital available, but
rather that it was not used in an intelligent and productive way.
Both he and Dr. L. M. Cullen, for example, have pointed out that
bank deposits increased in Ireland in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. They rose, in fact, from £8 million in 1845 to £60 million
in 1913. Lee and Cullen have also pointed out that the continued
increase in livestock numbers after 1830 is yet another indication
that there was no shortage of capital, at least in terms of agricultural
development, and that indeed Ireland was a net exporter of capital
for much of the nineteenth century. In a word, the main problem
in achieving economic growth in Ireland in the nineteenth century
was the lack of risk capital rather than ordinary capital, which was
apparently sufficient. It must be admitted, therefore, that the
