The Catholic Community in the Nineteenth Century

The Catholic Community in the Nineteenth CenturyAuthor(s): Patrick J. CorishSource: Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. 38 (1983), pp. 26-33Published by: Catholic Historical Society of IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25487446 .

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THE CATHOLIC COMMUNITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

by PATRICK J. CORISH

For some time now the perspectives of many historians have been changing. Their interest has turned to 'community history' rather than to the history of

the leaders in the community. This line of enquiry has been going on for a

long time in Europe, especially in France. Its consequences for religious

history are well summarized in the book by Jean Delumeau, Catholicism

between Luther and Voltaire: a new view of the Counter-reformation

(English translation, 1977), and nearer home Professor John Bossy has

produced a stimulating study, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850

(1975). I have recently published a little volume, The Irish Catholic

Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1981), Since this was finished I have begun to explore the nineteenth century. This paper is,

among other things, a plea for help. There can be no doubt that the Great Famine is also the great divide in

nineteenth-century Ireland. It is also a great divide in the religious history of

the Irish Catholic community. Broadly speaking, before the Famine we have an old world admittedly under pressure but still very much alive, but after

vards this old world is in full flight before a new pattern of things.

Any historian is very conscious that he speaks broadly only at his peril, rid if he is wise he will immediately seek refuge in qualifications. It is

undoubtedly true that the central social factor in pre-famine Ireland was a

relentless pressure of population on resources. The pressure was not uniform, however: some areas had more resources than others. It is quite some time since the distinction of pre-famine Ireland into 'maritime* and 'subsistence* economies was first introduced,1 and it has kept its usefulness despite the inevitable erosion of historical criticism.

Certain distinctions are particularly useful if we are to apply this division to cultural and more specifically to religious history. For Catholics, industrial ized east Ulster was a 'subsistence' or 'deprived' area. Further, the whole

history of the Catholic community in Ireland emphasizes the fact that this division does not make its first appearance after 1800. The religious culture of Catholic Ireland shows marked regionalisms from the very beginning of the effective Counter-reformation mission about 1600, and indeed these regional isms quite certainly have even deeper roots. This cultural regionalism expresses itself among other things in language. The language of'subsistenee* Catholic Ireland is Irish. The language of 'maritime' Catholic Ireland is

English, and where Irish is spoken within it it is the language of the poor. We must still, I suppose, begin any exploration of Catholic culture with

the clergy. In early nineteenth-century Ireland there were simply not enough of (hem for the work to be done. When the continental colleges reopened

26



after the revolutionary wars it was on a very reduced scale. Maynooth

expanded only slowly and in the face of formidable difficulties. Until about

1840 the ratio of priests to people got steadily worse as the population grew. The 'subsistence' sector was particularly bad. Figures from the mid-1830s

range from one priest to slightly less than 2000 Catholics in the diocese of

Ferns to one to rather more than 4000 Catholics in some western dioceses, notably Tuam. What has been described as heroic efforts stabilized these

ratios in the 1840s, but it must be clear that the range they run is from

inadequacy to disaster.2

The regular clergy were in no position to give much support. In effect, the

regular clergy meant the friars, and their prospects did not appear good. In

1751 Pope Benedict XIV had imposed serious restrictions on them, especially on how they were to receive novices. This had led to a sharp decline in their

numbers. Further, the conditions under which they had necessarily existed in

penal times had attenuated the concept of religious and community life. In

the early nineteenth century it was hard to distinguish their life-style from

that of diocesan priests living in a presbytery, except, of course, that they did not have parish responsibility. The number of their houses was declining, and

in each house there was only a small group. Their overall contribution to the

pastoral mission was small.3 It was by any standards a crisis situation. Let us take the yardstick of

attendance at Sunday Mass, for which there are very detailed but not fully satisfactory statistics from the mid-1830s. These have recently been analyzed

by the American historian, David W. Miller.4 I have indicated reasons why I

believe his estimates to be too low, and the more I look at these statistics the

more convinced I become that in fact they are.5 Attendance is best in the

'old towns' of the 'maritime economy'. Here on any analysis it is effectively 100 per cent. In the 'rural maritime' areas and in the four large cities ?

Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Limerick - it ranges up to 75 per cent and

occasionally higher. In the 'subsistence economy' it is at best 50 per cent and

often lower. The pattern is as might be expected. In the countryside as a

whole, there has been a decline in attendance at Sunday Mass as compared with fifty years before, and the decline is sharpest in the poorer, 'subsistence'

areas.

Next to the priest conies the schoolmaster. What evidence we have

indicates that at least in the more prosperous areas the Catholic church had in

the late eighteenth century developed an effective system of parish schools.

Even in these, however, the resources of the church could not meet the needs

of the rising population in the early ..'r.-ieenth century. Privale schools

multiplied. These early nineteenth-century schoolmasters arc a fascinating

group of whom we know too little, but it might well be suspected that this is

the heyday of the schoolmaster as a 'radical' figure. However, even for the

most radical schoolmaster the priest was still a figure of power. His permis sion might not be necessary to open the school, but his determined opposition

27



might well close it. In these circumstances, the priest was normally able to

ensure that some catechesis was given in the school, though perhaps not as

much as he might wish. There was the further problem that increasing numbers of the poor got no schooling at all, because they could not afford to

pay even the schoolmaster's modest fee. Ironically, it was the growth of the

National Schools that solved the church's problems here. Over most of the

country they were effectively denominational. The priest, as patron, had

considerable control. The system made explicit provision for denominational

religious instruction. And most of the expense of the National Schools was

borne by the state, not by the church.

A clear pattern emerges of Catholic life in the 'maritime' economy,

especially in the towns. Here the social leaders were a prosperous merchant

class. Most of them had added considerably to their fortunes during the long wars with France. They were already taking the final step to the top of the

social pyramid by buying landed estates, like the Redmond family of

Wexford, successful bankers, who established themselves as landed gentry at

Ballytrent in 1799. As a body, this class had deep personal religious convic

tions, like Edmund Rice of Waterford, founder of the Christian Brothers, or

Richard Devereux of Wexford, wealthy shipowner and merchant, whose

benefactions went a long way towards equipping his native town and diocese

with schools and charitable institutions. They poured money into such things as temperance societies, mechanics' institutes, lectures, libraries and reading rooms, for 'the rational enjoyment and intellectual improvement' of the

working-classes. No doubt there was an element of self-interest in their

anxiety to elevate the worker, but there was a genuine religious concern as

well. These men were already in the Victorian tradition of Samuel Smiles.6

Something of this attitude spilled over into the rural *maritime' culture,

though here, inevitably, it met more resistance. I can best give the feel of this area by taking two examples. One is Bartholomew Keegan, schoolmaster at

Rathangan in the 'English baronies' of Co. Wexford. On 14 January 1822 he wrote to a priest-friend:7

I am with Mr Barry of Rathangan these three years ? a worthy priest he

is. The mistress keeps a little shop and between that and the school

(tho' not a very good one) we are living pretty well... I have two fine choirs in the two chapels and music to no end, and we sing the Mass and Office for the Dead in Rathangan in grand stile on every corpse that comes to the chapel.

I have about ?10 a year from the two priests for my care of the two

choirs and teaching the poor children of the parish. I have made the science of music my chief study and have made so rapid a progress therein that I am capable of conversing with any band-man in Wexford in theory or practice. I got a lend of a bassoon from Father Ryan of the

Glen who is curate at Adamstown, and in one fortnight I could play every Mass we had in the chapel. I also got a lend of a clarionet and can

play all the hymns on it and marches and duetts in a nice stile. This is

28



the instrument I like, tho' I have not been able to spare one guinea to

get one of my own; however I hope to have one before you come home

and to play it with singing at your Mass when you come to old Ireland

We do have great work here on festivals. On Corpus Christi we have a

procession of the Blessed Sacrament, on Palm Sunday a grand proces sion of palm, on 15th of August, our patron day, a grand solemn Mass

and procession of candles. Every Sunday in Lent we sing round the

Stations, and on other festivals we have a Benediction of the Blessed

Sacrament, all which serve very much to excite devotion in our people.

The second person I have in mind is another schoolmaster, Amhlaoibh O

Stiilleabhain of Callan in Co. Kilkenny. He is a sharper observer than

Bartholomew Keegan, a less naive man it might be said, but then he was from

Kerry. His incomparable eye misses little. Above all, he is a valuable witness

to the persistence of old ways and customs and to the difference in social and

religious usages as between the more comfortably circumstanced and the less

well-off. The shadow of pressure on resources hung over even these relatively

prosperous lands. Down in Rathangan Bartholomew Keegan noted that 'my school is not the best, as the country abounds with a number of poor people

who are not able to pay very much for their children', while in Callan

Amhlaoibh 6 Suilleabhain mused, as he watched the young boys and girls

dancing in the hungry month of July, 'Is aoibhinn saol d6ibh mura deirc e a

dheireadh'.8

Already before the Famine there were pressures towards a conformity of

religious observance, to bring every place into line with the pattern in the

towns and the 'maritime economy' generally. From the 1820s the Catholic

bishops had been meeting regularly as a body, and several sets of statutes of

the early 1830s attempted to impose a broadly uniform discipline.9 Inevitab

ly the attempt was less successful in the 'subsistence' economy, though an

unusual episcopal appointment, like that of James Browne to Kilmore in

1827, could have a real impact. Browne was a native of Forth in Co. Wexford.

At the time of his appointment he was professor of Scripture in Maynooth, and the reason he was sent north was to combat evangelical Protestant

preachers. He at least claimed some success in putting new ideas into practice in his diocese.

The area as a whole, however, Irish-speaking and poor, was less open to

outside influences. It must be remembered too that even within it there were

considerable regional differences, the fruit of differing historical experience. Everywhere, however, the old ways died hard. It was a tightly-knit rural

community, and even in its towns religious novelties like confraternities were

hard to establish.10 Paul Cullen introduced Benediction to Armagh in 1850, and when he held the Holy Week ceremonies there in 1851 he claimed the

people were overjoyed at the complete novelty, though he confided to a

friend in a private letter, 'The singing is horrible, and other things seem

29



miserable to me when recordamur tui Sion \n They were doing better in rural

Rathangan.

This is fascinating territory, and we have far better sources for it than in

preceding centuries. In itself, it is sufficiently alive to be vocal, and outside

observers are coming to take an increased interest in it. Here I will single out

two types of source-material. The first, which continues right through the

century, arises from the fact that the government was beginning to inform

itself much better on Ireland, and, in an age when printing was becoming

cheaper than it ever had been before or ever was to be again, was publishing its findings in massive 'Blue Books', such as the education enquiries of the

1820s or that great survey of Ireland just before the Famine by the Devon

Commission. The second set of sources is even more attractive. This was the

heyday of the individual social surveyor or statistician, like Edward Wakefield, William Shaw Mason, or Samuel Lewis, or enquiring travellers like Mr and Mrs

Hall.12 Certainly they had never before appeared on the Irish scene in such

numbers. After the turn of the century they practically disappear. The new

traveller is a different kind of person. He has become the tourist, travelling by

train, not a collector of information, but having it predigested for him in a

guide-book, while statistics have become a government monopoly. After 1850, the overall pattern becomes clearer and more uniform. There

were many reasons for this. To begin with, the Famine brought about far

reaching changes in the structure of Irish society. Inevitably, it had borne

most heavily on the poor. As has been seen, these were the Irish-speakers, the

'subsistence economy'. The retreat of the Irish language and the cultural

values it embodied had become a flight. The language of the new patriotism was English, even of its ballads. Everyone knew the words of 'The Peeler and

the Goat'.

To this may be added the fact that new developments in the Catholic

church were making for uniformity. A consideration of these suggests that

the new Irish Catholic culture was firmly established by 1878, the year that saw the deaths of Pope Pius IX and of Paul Cardinal Cullen.

The pontificate of Pius IX saw ^ultramontane' Catholicism become the norm in Ireland as elsewhere. Once again, however, we must beware of regard

ing this as in any a total break with the past. While much of Catholic

devotional life took on an additional 'Italian' or 'Roman' tinge, it remained

built on a very solid foundation of what had been there before.

These developments in Ireland are often seen as embodied in the person of

Cardinal Cullen. Again, qualifications are necessary. The impetus from Rome was so strong that much of these developments would have come about had he never come to Ireland as archbishop and apostolic delegate. In Ireland as

elsewhere, much of what happened built on existing foundations. Here one

thinks especially of his predecessors in the see of Dublin, John Thomas Troy and Daniel Murray, noting too that their contribution lay within the area of

English-speaking, 'maritime' culture. There must be serious reservations about

using the word 'revolution' to describe the changes after 1850. It was not

30



Paul Cullen who first taught the Irish people how to pray, or even how to

pray in English.13 This is not to underestimate the achievements of a very remarkable man.

He certainly presided over striking developments set against a background of

social change in Ireland and growing ultramontanism in the Catholic church as a whole. He did not always get his way, though he usually did. He changed the character of the meetings of the Irish hierarchy, though he did not

succeed in replacing the national conference by provincial meetings.14 He

presided over the synod of Thurles, that imposed uniformity of discipline on

the Irish Catholic church. Thurles, however, must be seen as continuing a

drive for uniformity that had been already strongly marked in the synods of the 1830s. We usually associate Thurles with controversy, but the controversy,

though sharp, was limited to one area, that of the Queen's Colleges. Most of

what was decided at the synod was non-controversial, in the sense that it was

what the bishops as a body wanted, and when Cullen tried to push them

further, by having the Roman authorities write into the finally-approved text

definite decisions on matters where they were divided, such as the 'stations', these developments were fairly effectively resisted.

The great weakness of the first half of the century was remedied, in that

the diocesan clergy increased in numbers, and were now able to work even

more effectively because they had a much-diminished population to minister

to. Here the central factor was the expansion of Maynooth, made possible because of the increased government aid it had been receiving since 1845.

One of Cullen's many mandates from Rome was to reform and revitalize the

friars, but here developments came slowly. He also encouraged, though he did

not quite initiate, the introduction of newer religious congregations such as

the Vincentians and the Redemptorists. These were to provide a very effective pastoral presence, especially through parish missions. The numbers of nuns and brothers also rose rapidly after 1850, but the reasons for this still

await detailed investigation and will almost certainly prove to be complex. It all added up to a pastoral mission much more effective than had been

possible in the first half of the century. It must be noted, however, that this new and effective mission was solidly rooted in the English-speaking, 'maritime' culture. I will just pick out two important elements.

The first is education. I have already called attention to the fact that it was

the development of the National system that provided the church with the

instrument for effective catechesis in the schools. The bishops, led by Cullen, and excluding only MacHale - and him only for a time ~ saw them as the

only way there could be a universal system of primary education affording the church an opportunity for catechesis; and this catechesis tended to be in

English because the English language was the basis of the whole National

system.

The second is the parish mission. This too antedated Cullen. Missions had

begun in the 1840s as a response to proselytism.15 Cullen did give them every

encouragement, and though priests qualified to conduct missions remained

31



scarce they did make a very powerful impact. They left behind them a

reformed religious observance, but everywhere it was the religious observance

of English-speaking Catholic Ireland.

So, the Irish-speaking Catholic culture is in retreat, and at an accelerating

pace. The 'old ways' increasingly become the preserve of the poor. This

culture is harder to track down than it was earlier in the century. In itself it

has become less vocal. Fewer outsiders are interested in it. We miss the social

surveyors and the enquiring travellers of previous years. The government

commissions are primarily interested in economic matters, especially in the

land-question. I have no doubt that a great deal of information could be

distilled from the archives of the Irish Folklore Commission, but in religious matters the task of distillation has only begun. So far, we have to content

ourselves with an impressionistic verdict, such as can be got from, say, Canon Sheehan's novels, Peadar 0 Laoighaire's Mo Sgeul Fein, or the opening chapters of Walter MacDonald's Reminiscences of a Maynooth Professor. My own favourite is that marvellous book, The Farm by Lough Gur. With all allowances for the caution needed with memoir-type sources, it does have a real ring of authenticity. What is particularly striking is the fact that the

members of the wealthy farming family live in a different cultural and

religious world from that of the farmhands and maidservants, despite the easy personal relations that so clearly exist between them.

This paper has only sketched out the outlines of the question, and I am

very conscious of the fact. There are huge omissions, not just because I do not have the space, but because there is so much I simply do not know. The number of topics to be investigated is endless - the quality of catechesls, the level of Mass-attendance, sacramental practice, this in particular in connection

with what the anthropologist calls *the rites of passage', baptisms, marriages and funerals. Even after 1850 the story is neither simple nor uniform. Here, and even more in the first half of the century, before the historian can make

much progress beyond 'educated guesses' there is need for much patient and detailed work at a very local level. Much is indeed being done by our flourish

ing local history societies, where, more and more, religious history is coming to be seen as something much wider than succession-lists of parish priests or records of antiquities. Religious history is a history of flesh and blood, a

highly important element in cultural and social history, perhaps the most

important section. To see it this way is to realize we can never have too much of it.

NOTES

1. In Patrick Lynch and John Vaizey, Guinness's Brewery in the Irish Economw 1759-1876 (Cambridge, 1960).

2. See S.J. Connolly, 'Catholicism in Ulster, 1800-50' in Peter Roebuck (ed,), Plantation to Partition (Belfast, 1981), pp. 157-60; Priests and People in prc-Famine Ireland, 1780-1845 (Dublin, 1982), pp. 24-73, 283-6.

3. There is much interesting material on this topic in the Dublin Diocesan Archives. \ See also Patrick Conlan (ed,), SA short-title catalogue of Hibernia, vol. I (1 706-1 869) in j

32



the General Archives of the Friars Minor, Rome* in Collect. Hib., xviii-xix (1977), pp. 132-83 and 'A short-title catalogue of material of Irish interest in five volumes of the

General Archives of the Friars Minor, Rome', ibid., xx (1978), pp. 10446. 4. 'Irish Catholicism and the Great Famine* in Journal of Social History, ix (1975),

pp. 81-98.

5. The Irish Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

(Dublin, 1981), pp. 107-8.

6. I owe this detail to the work of one of my students, Jarlath Glynn (The Catholic

church iri Wexford town, 1800-1858').

7. Bartholomew Keegan to Michael Doyle, O.F.M., 14 January 1822 (Padraig 6

Suilleabhain (ed.), 'Sidelights on the Irish church, 1811-38' in Collect. Hib., ix (1966),

pp. 74-6.

8. Tomas de Bhaldraithe (ed.), Cm Lae Amhlaoibh (Dublin, 1970), pp. 11-12 (12

July 1827). 9. Compare Statuta diocesana per provinciam Dublinensem observanda (1834) with

Statuta diocesana in diocesi Ardacadensi observanda (1834) - these represent the

situation of the dioceses in the province of Armagh. 10. The earlier volumes of the annual Catholic Directory (beginning in 1836) provide at least an impressionistic picture. 11. Cullen to Tobias Kirby, rector of the Irish College, Rome, 16 April 1851, in

Peadar MacSuibhne (ed.), Paul Cullen and his Contemporaries, iii (Naas, 1965), 81.

12. Edward Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, (2 vols.,

London, 1812); William Shaw Mason, A Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland (3 vols., Dublin, 1814-19); Samuel Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Ireland

(2 vols,, London, 1837); Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, Ireland: its Scenery and Character (3

vols., London, 1841-3). 13. See Emmet Larkin, 'The devotional revolution in Ireland, 1850-75* in A.H.R.,

lxxvii(1972), pp. 625-52.

14. Sean Cannon, Irish Episcopal Meetings, 1788-1882 (Rome, 1979); Emmet Larkin, The Making of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1850-1860 (University of North

Carolina Press, 1980). 15. For details of the origins of parish missions I am indebted to the work of one of

my students, James H. Murphy ('Vincentian missions in mid-nineteenth century Ireland').



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The Catholic Community in the Nineteenth Century