The Irish Fight for the Latin Mass
In the English speaking world, the story of Catholicism during and after the Reformation is dominated by the experience of England. The sad tale of an ancient Catholic kingdom subjected to the yoke of Protestantism, of a systematic persecution of the Faith, and the making of martyrs. Who, can I ask, has not heard of St. Thomas More, or St. John Fisher, the scandal of Henry VIII and his six wives, the Pilgrimage of Grace, Mary, the Queen of Scots, the Gunpowder Plot and Treason?
The history of English Catholicism is well known and deservedly beloved.
Yet, to the west of Britain, there lies another island whose story is unique for the period. Ireland is peculiar in many ways, but is particularly strange for being the only country in northern Europe to have successfully resisted the Reformation.[1]
That story is largely unknown. For most, it is simply a tale of Irish national resistance against the dominance of her larger and more powerful neighbour. As one historian put it, “had the English remained Catholics, the Irish would have adopted devout Protestantism out of spite,” but such an assumption is gravely mistaken.
The truth is that Irish nationhood was born in the crucible of the Reformation, through a union of two peoples, not by shared birth on this Atlantic battered island, but through adherence to a common faith. Certainly, the politics of identity and ethnicity played its part, and at points in this story, it can be hard to see where Irishness ends and Catholicism begins.
Nonetheless, in the epic I am about
Article from LewRockwell
