Catholic Church in Ireland
The Catholic Church in Ireland, or Irish Catholic Church, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See. With approximately 4.3 million members, it is the largest Christian church in Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland's 2022 census, 69% of the population identified as Roman Catholic, and in Northern Ireland's 2021 census, 42.3% identified as Roman Catholic.
The Archbishop of Armagh, as the Primate of All Ireland, has ceremonial precedence in the church. The church is administered on an all-Ireland basis. The Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference is a consultative body for ordinaries in Ireland.
Christianity has existed in Ireland since the 5th century and arrived from Roman Britain, forming what is today known as Gaelic Christianity. It gradually gained ground and replaced the old pagan traditions. The Catholic Church in Ireland cites its origin to this period and considers Palladius as the first bishop sent to the Gaels by Pope Celestine I. However, during the 12th century a stricter uniformity in the Western Church was enforced, with the diocesan structure introduced with the Synod of Ráth Breasail in 1111 and culminating with the Gregorian Reform which coincided with the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.
After the Tudor conquest of Ireland, the English Crown attempted to import the Protestant Reformation into Ireland. The Catholic Church was outlawed and adherents endured oppression and severe legal penalties for refusing to conform to the religion established by law — the Church of Ireland. By the 16th century, Irish national identity coalesced around Irish Catholicism. For several centuries, the Irish Catholic majority were suppressed. In the 19th century, the church and the British Empire came to a rapprochement. Funding for Maynooth College was agreed as was Catholic emancipation to ward off revolutionary republicanism. Following the Easter Rising of 1916 and the creation of the Irish Free State, the church gained significant social and political influence. During the late 20th century, a number of sexual abuse scandals involving clerics emerged.
History
Gaels and early Christianity
During classical antiquity, the Roman Empire conquered most of Western Europe but never reached Ireland. So when the Edict of Milan in 313 AD allowed tolerance for the Palestinian-originated religion of Christianity and then the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD enforced it as the state religion of the Empire, the indigenous Indo-European pagan traditions of the Gaels in Ireland remained normative. Aside from this independence, Gaelic Ireland was a highly decentralised tribal society, so mass conversion to a new system would prove a drawn-out process when the Christian religion began to gradually move into the island.There is no tradition of a New Testament figure visiting the island. Joseph of Arimathea traditionally came to Britain, and Mary Magdalene, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany to France, but none were reputed to have seen Ireland itself. Nevertheless, medieval Gaelic historians - in works such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn - attempted to link the historical narrative of their people to Moses in Egypt. Furthermore, according to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the lifetime of Jesus Christ was synchronous with the reigns of Eterscél, Nuadu Necht and Conaire Mór as High Kings of Ireland. In medieval accounts, Conchobar mac Nessa, a King of Ulster, was born in the same hour as Christ. Later in life, upon seeing an unexplained "darkening of the skies", Conchobar mac Nessa found out from a that Christ had been crucified, leading to the conversion of Conchobar. However, after hearing the story of the crucifixion, Conchobar became distraught and died. Some accounts claim Conchobar "was the first pagan who went to Heaven in Ireland", as the blood that dripped from his head upon his death baptised him.
Regardless, the earliest known stages of Christianity in Ireland, generally dated to the 5th century, remain somewhat obscure. Native Christian "pre-Patrician" figures, however, including Ailbe, Abbán, Ciarán and Declán, later venerated as saints, are known. These figures typically operated in Leinster and Munster. The early stories of these people mention journeys to Roman Britain, to Roman Gaul and even to Rome itself. Indeed, Pope Celestine I is held to have sent Palladius to evangelise the Gaels in 431, though success was limited. Apart from these, the figure most associated with the Christianisation of Ireland is Patrick, a Romano-British nobleman, who was captured by the Gaels during a raid at a time when the Roman rule in Britain was in decline. Patrick contested with the, targeted the local royalty for conversion, and re-orientated Irish Christianity to having Armagh, an ancient royal site associated with the goddess Macha, as the preeminent seat of power. Much of what is known about Patrick comes from the two Latin works attributed to him: Confessio and Epistola ad Coroticum. The two earliest lives of Ireland's patron saint emerged in the 7th century, authored by Tírechán and Muirchú. Both of these are contained within the Book of Armagh.
From its inception in the Early Middle Ages, the Gaelic Church centred around powerful local monasteries, a system which suggests early links with the Coptic Church in Egypt.
The lands on which monasteries were based were known as lands; they held a special tax-exempt status and were places of sanctuary. The spiritual heirs and successors of the saintly founders of these monasteries were known as Coarbs, and held the right to provide abbots. For example: the Abbot of Armagh was the, the Abbot of Iona was the, the Abbot of Clonmacnoise was the, the Abbot of Glendalough was the, and so on. The larger monasteries had various subordinate monasteries within a particular "family". The position of Coarb, like others in Gaelic culture, was hereditary, held by a particular ecclesiastical with the same paternal bloodline and elected from within a family through tanistry. This was the same system used for the selection of kings, standard-bearers, bardic poets and other hereditary roles. Erenagh were the hereditary stewards of the lands of a monastery. Monks also founded monasteries on smaller islands around Ireland, for instance Finnian at Skellig Michael, Senán at Inis Cathaigh and Columba at Iona. As well as this, Brendan was known for his offshore "voyage" journeys and the mysterious Saint Brendan's Island.
File:KellsFol032vChristEnthroned.jpg|thumb|left|200px|"Christ Enthroned" from the Book of Kells. Created at a Columban monastery, it was at the Abbey of Kells for many centuries.
The influence of the Irish Church spread back across the Irish Sea to Great Britain. Dál Riata in what is now Argyll in Scotland was geopolitically continuous with Ireland, and Iona held an important place in Irish Christianity, with Columban monastic activities either side of the North Channel. From here, Irish missionaries converted the pagan northern Picts of Fortriu. They were also esteemed at the court of the premier Angle-kingdom of the time, Northumbria, with Aidan from Iona founding a monastery at Lindisfarne in 634, converting Northumbrians to Christianity. Surviving artifacts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, share the same insular art-style with the Stowe Missal and Book of Kells. By the 7th century, rivalries between Hibernocentric-Lindisfarne and Kentish-Canterbury emerged within the Heptarchy, with the latter established by the mission of Roman-born Augustine of Canterbury in 597. Customs of the Irish Church which differed, such as the calculation of the date of Easter and the Gaelic monks' manner of tonsure were highlighted. The discrepancies were resolved in southern Ireland with Clonfert replying to Pope Honorius I with the Letter of Cumméne Fota, around 626-628. After a separate dialogue with Rome, Armagh followed in 692. The Columbans of Iona proved the most resistant of the Irish, holding out until the early 700s, though their satellite Lindisfarne was pressured into changing at the Synod of Whitby in 664, partly due to an internal political struggle. The longest holdouts were the Cornish Britons of Dumnonia, as part of their conflict with Wessex. Indeed, the Cornish had been converted by Irish missionaries: the Cornish patron saint Piran and a nun, princess Ia, who gave her name to St. Ives, were foremost. As well as Ia, there were also female saints in Ireland during the early period, such as Brigid of Kildare and Íte of Killeedy.
File:Skellig Michael - panoramio - el ui.jpg|thumb|250px|Monastic cells on Skellig Michael, off the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel. Irish monasticism was known for its asceticism.
The oldest surviving Irish Christian liturgical text is the Antiphonary of Bangor from the 7th century. Indeed, at Bangor, a saint by the name of Columbanus developed his Rule of St. Columbanus. Strongly penetential in nature, this Rule played a seminal role in the formalisation of the Sacrament of Confession in the Catholic Church. The zeal and piety of the Church in Ireland during the 6th and 7th centuries was such that many monks, including Columbanus and his companions, went as missionaries to Continental Europe, especially to the Merovingian and Carolingian Frankish Empire. Notable establishments founded by the Irish Christians included Luxeuil Abbey in Burgundy, Bobbio Abbey in Lombardy, the Abbey of Saint Gall in present-day Switzerland and Disibodenberg Abbey near Odernheim am Glan. These Columbanian monasteries were great places of learning, with substantial libraries; these became centres of resistance to the heresy of Arianism. Later, the Rule of St. Columbanus was supplanted by the "softer" Rule of St. Benedict. The ascetic nature of Gaelic monasticism has been linked to the Desert Fathers of Egypt.
Martin of Tours and John Cassian were significant influences.