A Protestant Ireland

Surely we would have been better off Protestant considering the hell the Catholic Church put this country through.

turnikett1 wrote: »

It got me thinking - what if Ireland had adopted Protestantism en masse? Would our language be more spoken today? Would the English have treated us better? Wouldn't we have suffered less post-independence, having rid ourselves from the cruel, conservative dictatorship of the Roman Catholic Church? Would our Proestant work ethic have driven us to greater economic propserity and combatted corruption?

Interesting questions. A couple of thoughts, in no particular order.

1. Scotland did embrace Protestantism, but Scots Gaelic had declined in pretty much the same way as Irish has.

2. The decline in Scots Gaelic, like the decline in Irish, happened over an extended period, but the bulk of it happened in the nineteenth century, by which time the Welsh had largely abandoned Anglicanism for Methodism. We might ask why Presbysterian Scotland lost its language while Methodist Wales didn’t, but the answer doesn’t appear to be anything to do with Anglicanism or Catholicism.

3. Cornwall and Man embraced and retained Anglicanism, but their languages declined.

4. In short, I don’t think there’s any very clear correlation between conformity to the established church and retention of language.

5. Would the English have treated us better if we had embraced Anglicanism? I think the question makes more sense if turned around; would we have embraced Anglicanism if the English had treated us better? An English policy of anglicising Ireland long predates the Reformation - attempts to impose English language and culture on the Irish were English policy from way back. This naturally led to tension, and to social and cultural divisions between natives and settlers. And I think the division between the English-imposed political establishment and the alienated and aggrieved natives over whom they ruled was the real obstacle to the Reformation in Ireland. The English population had a loyalty to, and a trust in, and an affinity with the king and the local landowner, and they would follow their leadership in matters of religion. The Irish had no such loyalty, trust or affinity, or at least didn’t have it in a sufficient degree to lead them to accept the Reformation.

As for “cruel, conservative dictatorship of the Catholic church”, I think there’s a degree of hyperbole in there. The Catholic church’s dominant role in, e.g., education was established by the UK government in the nineteenth century; there is no reason to think that it would have diminished had we remained in the UK after 1922. And, whatever about the church’s influence on social policy in the new state - censorship, divorce, etc - you can’t really blame it for economic policy, which I suggest was our most significant failure. And I think that the resulting insecurity and lack of confidence was at least partly responsible for much of the stifling conservatism of Ireland during the first fifty years or so after independence.

And if you’re going to assign blame to the church for the failures of the Irish state, should you assign credit to the church for the successes? Ireland was the only new democracy established in the years after the Great War not to fall victim to fascism in the 1930s, which I think is an acheivement we should acknowledge. Did the church have any role there?

turnikett1 wrote: »

It also begs me to ask a different question - what would life be like if we had stayed a part of the United Kingdom? Arguably we would have better infrastructure, less corruption and wouldn't have suffered the Troubles but at the cost of much of our language and culture (I will safely assume anyways).

Well, I have to point out that we were part of the UK from 1801 to 1922, and before that we were ruled colonially by the British, and neither period was characterised by good infrastructure, low levels of corruption, etc. Yes, of course governments standards were different at the time, but if we compare how Ireland was governed with how England was governed at the same time, Ireland was very badly governed. Foreign observers, e.g. de Tocqueville, commented on the striking fact that England was one of the best-governed countries in Europe, and Ireland one of the worst. Despite being much poorer than the rest of the UK, for instance, Ireland was a substantial net contributor to UK revenues; the UK collected more tax in Ireland than they spent here.

And if we look at the part of Ireland which remained in the UK after 1922, for most of the period since then it was astonishingly badly-governed. (And it certainly didn’t avoid the Troubles.)

So the thesis that Ireland would be better-governed if it had remained part of the UK doesn’t really fit with the evidence of how Ireland actually was governed by the British.

turnikett1 wrote: »

Personally, I'm not against an equal union of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales it's just very unfortunate that it ended up being completely Anglocentric...

It may be unfortunate, but given the balance of power, wealth and population and the location of the court in London was it not inevitable?

Well, is it too obvious to point out that the Troubles occurred while Ireland was in the UK? And that the part of Ireland which left the UK has subsequently been much less troubled by Troubles than the part which remained in the UK?

I think what the OP is inviting us to imagine is an Ireland in which there was no militant separatist movement, and therefore no Troubles, and therefore no independence/secession. But we have to ask ourselves, what would have to have happened for there to have been no militant separatist movement? And I suspect the only realistic answer is, the British would have to have governed Ireland a lot better than in fact they did.

The OP asks, if the Irish had embraced Protestantism, would this have improved British-Irish relations to the extent that Ireland would have been better governed, so averting the development of a separatist movement? And I have already suggested that the answer is that the British would have had to have governed Ireland better before the Reformation for the Irish to have accepted the English Reformation.

But we can also ask another speculative question; if there hadn't been an English Reformation - if Katherine of Aragon had borne sons who survived, say - so that England and Ireland both remained Catholic, would that have facilitated a better relationship, making for better government, making for no separatism? My guess is no, it wouldn't, but it's a fun speculation.

catbear wrote: »

In Ireland although we identify with catholicism in practice we're increasingly more protestant. The sense of individual conscience is very much a protestant ethos whereas the RCC has guidelines, hence while we may now have family planning which was resisted by the RCC we still have an RCC inspired ban on abortion. The right to abortion is not left to the individual conscience to decide

I wouldn’t be so sure. The primacy of personal conscience is a long-established Catholic teaching, strongly articulated by, e.g., St Thomas Aquinas.

And while it’s true to say that “the right to abortion is not left to the individual conscience to decide”, it doesn’t follow that this is “an RCC-inspired ban”. After all, the rights to murder and theft are not left to the individual conscience to decide; would you describe those laws as Christian-inspired bans on killing and taking?

As far as personal morality goes, differences between Catholicism and Protestantism tend to be marginal, and often transient. On most of the issues addressed by the law - murder, theft, prostitution, fraud - they line up pretty neatly. On something like contraception they differ just at the moment, though a hundred years ago they lined up, and I suspect in rather less than a hundred years' time they’ll line up again. On abortion, they pretty much line up currently - there is no Protestant tradition which suggests that the rightness or wrongness of abortion is a matter of personal choice (and I note that NI abortion laws are pretty much as restrictive - in fact, more restrictive - than RoI abortion laws).

Where there is a relevant difference between the Protestant and Catholic ethical traditions, though, is in relation to the proper role of the state. The Catholic tradition is that the proper role of the state is to secure the common good, and this is what laws should be directed towards. The Protestant tradition is that the role of the state is to foster and promote virtue, and this is what laws should be directed towards.

We can see this in, for example, laws about prostitution. In Catholic countries, it’s generally not illegal, and is frequently licensed and regulated. This was true even in Catholic theocracies like the Papal states. Sure, the Catholic tradition is that prostitution is profoundly immoral, but that doesn’t mean the state has to criminalise or restrict it; the common good may not require laws against prostitution any more than it requires laws against immoralities like, say, adultery. In fact, the common good may require regulation and licensing of prostitution (to protect prostitutes, for example, or to control disease.) And, again, you’ve got thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas explaining why the state should tolerate prostitution. But in Protestant countries (or historically Protestant countries) it’s much more likely to be restricted or outright criminalised, and you have thinkers like Luther and Calvin saying that the state should not be fostering or approving of definite evils like prostitution, and should not be complicit in prostitution through licensing and regulation. Even if laws against prostitution are ineffective, in this view, they make an important moral statement. And we see this also in areas like the licensing of alcohol sales, the toleration of gambling, etc - historically Protestant countries tend to be much more puritan in their laws than historically Catholic countries. (And don’t get me started on the US’s “war on drugs”.)

Ireland is a bit of an exception here - laws to, e.g., ban contraception because Contraception Is Wicked And Evil are, ironically, indicative of a characteristically Protestant understanding of the role of law. And I suspect this probably has to do with the enormous British influence on our legal and political culture. We take a Protestant approach to enforcing Catholic morality through law.

catbear wrote: »

I disagree about attitudes towards prostitution, traditional protestant European countries have some of the most progressive attitudes, public nursing homes for former prostitutes in Holland for example. If anything there tends to be openness about it.

They do now but that's a recent development. Until after WWII the Netherland was noted for the repressive bourgeois respecability of its laws and social conventions (the word "bourgeois" was in fact coined to describe the Netherlanders by the Catholic French neighbours). The liberalisation of Dutch laws and culture is associated with a dramatic decline in Dutch Protestantism.

catbear wrote: »

I do agree with you about the Victorian application of catholicism in Ireland, after all the RCC reestablishment was funded directly from London with the cooperation of Rome. They were a realively cheap security subcontractor to help suppress any French revolution style peasent uprisings.

Yes. Much of the social and institutional strength of the Catholic church in Ireland was in fact established under British rule, and with official support. The thesis that the Catholic Church would have less influence in Ireland if Ireland had remained in the UK is not well-supported by the evidence.

turnikett1 wrote: »

Well do you think [the Catholic church had a role in sustaining democracy in Ireland in the 1930s]? If so, how?

I suspect it did, actually, at least to this extent; the Catholic church generally, and the Irish Catholic church in particular, was intensely conservative (with a small ‘c’) in that they always preferred the devil they knew over the horrors of revolution. The church in Spain might have supported the Falangists, and the church in Italy never set themselves against the Fascists, but both O’Duffy and the Blueshirts (who had the trappings of fascism) and the IRA (who employed many of the tactics and strategies of fascism) were, at best, cold-shouldered by the church in Ireland. And, given the status of the church in Ireland at the time, I have to think this was at least part of the reason why O’Duffy in particular never got much traction.

turnikett1 wrote: »

So what DOES everyone think a Protestant Ireland would have turned out to be? The same? Better off or worse? How and why? etc... Cheers

It’s a fascinating question, but to answer it we have to come up with some explanation of why, in this alternative history, Ireland is Protestant. Something in Ireland has to be different at the time the Reformation comes along for Ireland to accept the Reformation. What is that something? Whatever it is, it’s likely to have effects which go beyond acceptance of the Reformation.

And we also have to come up with a scenario as to how Ireland accepts the Reformation. Is it a bloodless coup, as it were, like in most Scandinavian countries, with the national church switching almost overnight from Catholic to Protestant? Or is there a conflict between Catholics and Protestants which the Protestants win? Does Ireland become a battleground in the Thirty Years War? And, when the dust settles, is Ireland uniformly Protestant, or is there a Catholic minority? And, if the latter, how are they treated? Tolerated? Repressed? Protected, as long as they don’t get too uppity?

Basically, I think by tweaking your assumptions about how the Reformation plays out in Ireland, you can get almost any outcome you like.

Still, let’s play the game. Assume that the Irish church is Anglicanised smoothly and bloodlessly, and the result an Ireland largely Anglican, with a few Presbyterians in the black north who are tolerated because, if it’s good enough for Scotland, it can’t be intolerable in Ireland. The Anglican establishment in Ireland (and indeed in England) is much more secure as a result, and therefore less repressive. When the kerfuffle over James II happens, James does not expect to find particular support in Ireland and never comes here; the Battle of the Boyne never happens, or it happens in Scotland. In the eighteenth century there isn’t the same suspicion of disloyalty in Ireland, and so there isn’t the same need for penal legislation to protect the Anglican establishment. Irish Presbyterians benefit from this.

Nevertheless, Ireland continues to be governed colonially, and for the benefit of Britain. It is not a well-governed country, and therefore not a happy one. Enlightenment critiques of monarchical government find a ready audience in Ireland (as they do in the American colonies) and in due course a republican movement develops. It does not become associated with Catholicism, but rather with Presbyterianism and with the industrialised Ulster middle classes and, in due course, the urban working classes. But it’s not identified with Catholicism and the disloyalty associated with Catholicism. Because there is no need to “dilute” disloyal separatist Catholics within a larger political entity, the Act of Union never happens.

In the nineteenth century there’s a spectrum of republican, liberal and chartist opinion in Ireland which looks to the US and France for inspiration. With the growth of nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth century it acquires a nationalist characteristic, and so looks not to a British-and-Irish republic (or liberal constitutional monarchy) - Britain and Ireland are still separate states, remember - but to an Irish republic/constitutional monarchy, either independent of or in some kind of equal relationship with a similar British state.

The famine happens as scheduled - why wouldn’t it? - and it is mishandled by the British administration as disastrously as it was in the real world. There is the same consequent economic crisis, emigration and depopulation. When the dust settles the politicised classes have been considerably radicalised, and blame for the mishandling of the famine is laid at the door of Ireland’s subordinate, unequal relationship with Britain. An Irish government, accountable to Irish people, would not have failed so badly, the argument goes. Separatism is greatly strengthened. With the disparity in population and economic development between Britain and Ireland, an equal partnership between the two countries does not seem realistic.

The upshot is that, in this scenario, by the late nineteenth century we still have a separatist movement informed by liberal, republican and nationalist ideals, and fuelled by a sense of grievance over colonial misgovernment. (Given the colonial nature of British rule in Ireland, there’s no real reason to think that Ireland was only misgoverned because it was Catholic.) The only difference is that there is no Act of Union, and therefore there are still Irish political institutions, like a Parliament, through which separatist opinion can express its voice and seek influence. Possibly, as a result of that, we don’t have militant revolutionary separatism, because a constitutional path is open. But equally possibly we have it sooner, if the British response to a separatist Irish parliament in, say, 1848 is to supress it.

Tbh Ireland was hardly catholic when it came to societal mores before the reformation. One only has to look at the prevalance of civil marriage and the general sexual mores of Gaelic society to see that it didn't really "gel" with what we consider a "catholic society".

Now if the Gaelic elite had actually became protestant as part of the whole surrender and regrant system (some did such as "The O'Brien" but it was mostly in name only). There could been a possibility of a surviving native land holding elite, this would probably have led to very different outcome for the Irish language.