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Impact of Protestant Reformation on the Catholic Church
Influence of the Protestant Reformation
Impact of Protestant Reformation on the Catholic Church
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The reason Protestants helped Catholics was that, it was not Catholics and Protestants, but instead, Irish and the Protestant Ascendancy (McGarry, 2002). The Protestant Ascendancy was the group of Protestant landholders and political elite that worked with, or often times were, the British colonizers. Protestants and Catholics worked together, because they were together, they were Irish. The Volunteers and The United Irishmen campaigned to achieve Irish equality for two decades. At that point they had achieved many success and were in the process of achieving total equality, ‘Catholic Emancipation’. The bill was put forward and passed through both houses of Parliament. Just as it was to be signed into law, King George III intervened.
Despite the new proviso, the number of Catholics began to grow. This increasing number is attributed to the immigrating Irish who were coming to England to escape over-population and the beginnings of a famine. The English were already anti-Irish, and they heightened their prejudice by attaching the anti-Catholic prejudice onto the immigrating Irish.
Many of England’s problems could be solved in America, and so colonization began. When the earliest settlers came, England had the responsibility to continue the Protestant Church, and prevent the Catholic Church from converting the entire Native American population of North America (Morison, p.105) A potential Protestant refuge could be based there in the threat of civil wars or a change of religion.
Eamon De Valera put much effort into the making of the Irish Constitution. In fact he is said to have “helped to confirm the stable, constitutional direction of the independent Irish state. ” The Constitution is often referred to as “De Valera’s Constitution ” as it was something that he put so much effort and time into. Chubb has said that at times, De Valera seemed to see Catholicism and Irishness as the one and the same. He uses a reference from De Valera’s Patrick’s Day broadcast to demonstrate this; “Since the coming of St. Patrick, fifteen hundred years ago, Ireland has been a Christian and a Catholic nation. All the ruthless attempts made down through the centuries to force her from this allegiance have not shaken her faith. She remains a Catholic nation.”
The Irish Republican Army started in Northern Ireland to protect and fight for the rights of the catholic citizens there. Ireland was conquered in 1607 by England, this brought protestant immigrants from England and Scotland. The Protestants quickly came to be the majority of the population. In the 1920s the island was partitioned and Catholics in the north felt that they had been removed from their political heritage. The Protestants felt like they were losing out on resources and wanted to keep control of the north. Neither side was satisfied and problems continued.
During the mid 1840’s, blight in the potato crops in Ireland caused widespread starvation and migration of Irish citizens to the United States. Yet, the massive loss of life and massive exodus could have been avoided if British taxation upon the working class of Ireland was nullified. Though the struggle for liberation was already taking place, the potato famine furthered the cause and helped spread awareness. Furthermore, the potato famine made the average Irish family more reliant upon the government for subsidies and supports to get by.
The underlying causes of the revolution that happened in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century stem from vast injustices that the Irish people suffered at the hand of British rule. ‘For the history of nineteenth-century Ireland is more than a prologue to the events of the twentieth and has a character of its own, which is all too often distorted by those who, neglecting all else, confine their attention to the signposts which point to the developments of a later age. Irish history would be a simpler, but less rewarding subject, were it indeed that all the signposts pointed one way.’ (A...
15 Abbie L. Cory, Women, Rebellion, and Republicanism: The United Irish Risings of 1798 and 1803 (Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 2001), 16
As most Irish immigrants came over around the same time, in large numbers, they all most likely had the same kind of hope, that America was going to be great. When Ireland gained their freedom from Britain, it placed an achievement upon their sleeve, and no one was about to take that away. Not even Great ‘ole America.
The Irish and British governments fought for many years over the ownership of Northern Ireland. Britain had main control over Northern Ireland, and Ireland did not think that was fair. Be...
Small groups of United Irishmen who had escaped the persecution earlier in the rebellion started fighting using guerilla tactics. General Joseph Holt fought until his surrender in the Autumn of 1798. Small groups of United Irish resistance had also survived in Wexford. The last United Irishmen group under James Corcoran was not defeated until February 1804. The Act of Union was passed in 1800 and finally came into effect on 1 January 1801. This law took away power from the Irish Anglican minority of Ireland. This law was passed due to the Rebellion of 1798. Finally, persecution against the Catholic majority and non-Anglican Protestant minority was stopped after the Act of Union. Finally, the Catholic majority gained rights and had a what they
The lifetime of Hugh and Jimmy Jack, the sixty years or so running up to 1833, bore witness to many important events in the metamorphosis of Ireland from a rural Gaelic society to a modern colonial nation. To go back another seven decades, in 1704 penal laws were enacted “which decreed that a Catholic could not hold any office of state, nor stand for Parliament, vote, join the army or navy, practise at the bar nor....buy land” (Kee Ireland: A History 54). Thus, by 1778 a mere five per cent of the land of Ireland was owned by Catholics. The Irish people (most notably Catholics, though Protestants also) such as those portrayed in Translations suffered severe discrimination, poverty and hardship.
The first event that led up to the war was the Home Rule Crisis. Ever since the 1880s, the Irish people wanted their own self-government. Eventually in 1912, after continuous efforts, the Irish finally got what they wanted when the British passed the Third Home Rule Act. This act simply gave Ireland political control over their own country. However, this did not last long because a group called the Ulster Unionists did not agree with Ireland’s home rule. The Ulster Unionists were a political party in Northern Ireland that wanted Ireland to stay under Britain’s control. They formed a group called the Ulster Volunteers which used physical force to show their opposition against the Third Home Rule Act. In response, the Irish nationalists set up a group called the Irish Volunteers to “secure the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland.” As tensions grew, both groups started collecting weapons...
Beginning with partition in 1922, the political and social structures implemented in Northern Ireland were extremely oppressive toward the Catholic minority that remained in the North. As Byrne et. al (2009) point out, Unionist (Protestant) policies in place after partition led to an increase in Catholic alienation through socioeconomic inequality and political exclusion. Arguably, this contributed to the dissolution of a working class alliance between the Protestant and Catholic communities (Byrne et. al, 2009). The civil rights movement, which is often seen as the catalyst to the beginning of the Troubles, instituted policy change in terms of allocation of public housing, and reduced religion-based discrimination in the workplace. However,
Since the potato famine Ireland has had its ups and downs. In the 1850’s the Irish fought for land and would eventually become known as a main idea for Irish politics. Throughout the years the Irish had created leagues and organizations that appealed to many to fight the ongoing battles of Irish culture. At first there was the Irish Tennant League that dealt with the land distribution. (Douglas, 52) Then a secret militia of Irish veterans came together on Saint Patrick’s Day to create an Organization that would lead the crusade of Ireland. Most of the organizations were made up of the lower-middle class and the lower-class population. These gave way to bombings, riots, rebellions, and movements. (Douglas, 53-54)
Irish citizens took upon themselves the responsibility of overthrowing the British Government in Ireland during the “Easter Rising of 1916”, which was the result of centuries of rights violations against the Irish by the British. Oppression of the Irish began in A.D. 1367 with the Statute of Kilkenny, which restricted the traditions of the Irish and placed them under the authority of the English in Ireland. (Hardiman) Oppression of the Irish was expanded in the late 1600s and early 1700s with a series of penal laws. These laws were directed at “Papists” or Irish Catholics, and restricted everything from education to the right to own weapons. (umn.edu)