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In 1907 a French Catholic called L. Paul-Dubois wrote a 500-page book titled "Contemporary Ireland".
The following is an abridgement of the section of the book titled "The Power of the Clergy: Its Cause".
The complete book is downloadable at Archive.org.
L. Paul-Dubois was an Irish nationalist sympathiser. I disagree with him on various points. What I most value about the paragraphs below is that they strengthen my belief that Unionists and Protestants were correct in their contention that Catholicism was at the heart and soul of the Irish Home Rule and Independence movement.
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No one can visit Ireland without being impressed by the intensity of Catholic belief there, and by the fervour of its outward manifestations. Watch the enormous crowds of people who fill the churches in the towns, the men as numerous as the women; see them all kneeling on the flagstones, without a sound or gesture, as though petrified in prayer! Go to early Mass on Sundays in Dublin and watch three or four priests simultaneously giving the Sacrament to throngs of communicants too great for the size of the churches. Observe in the country, above all in the West, the regular recitation of the Rosary in the family, the frequent practice of fasting two days before Communion, the "stations" held at Easter and Christmas in every hamlet. How can we fail to admire a piety so ardent and so simple? Let us at least recognise that of all European peoples Ireland is the most fundamentally religious, and that to her may most justly be applied, if ever it may be applied, the Divine saying : "Go, thy faith hath made thee whole!"
Loving his religion, the Irish person loves his Church. His Church is the spiritual authority to whom he owes respect and obedience; the jewel which England has not been able to snatch from him, the only permanent organisation, the only national expression of present and of past Ireland. Here are reasons enough for love! Nothing could be more touching to see than the attachment which still exists, the respect, the confidence, the intimacy, between the priest and his parishioners. The parish priest, as one meets him in the small towns, with his high hat and sombre garb, his great, strong frame, and ruddy face, leaves a striking image in the mind. As he walks by, with his grave and keen-faced young curate, every hat is lifted, but he answers only with an amiable word addressed to each, for if he returned salutes his hat would very soon be worn out. He seems to be a king in his kingdom, affable, courteous, tolerant with non-Catholics, familiar with his flock, above all "popular". He is in truth the father of his people, and no doubt an authoritative enough father. He is the arbiter of their quarrels, the confidant of their secrets. To him they turn for advice. In return the people are ready to do him any service and to render him any homage. Of the priests there is no stiff haughtiness, no wall of stone separating them from their flock; they make themselves loved by their good grace, and their ruggedness at need. Withal they are generous, and full of life and spirit.
Their strength lies in the faith and piety of Ireland, in that a whole nation believes, and practices its beliefs. Today that living and fervent Catholic faith, which is so different from the cold observance by the Anglo-Saxon, would seem, in truth, to have become a part of the race and of the nationality, so that the one cannot be distinguished from the other. Religion is in the blood of the nation of Ireland. It is a second nature, a hereditary and traditional instinct, which has no need to be reasoned in order to be profound. It has not, in fact, as a rule, reduced itself to reason, nor sought out a philosophical basis, as is indeed natural in a country in which education is behindhand and culture and the philosophic spirit are rare.
Religion in Ireland has a close connection with the national life; the atmosphere of public opinion is charged with it; it intervenes in all social and political affairs. Ireland has always shown herself able to distinguish politics from religion, but, nonetheless, it is true that in no country is the moral ascendancy of the clergy so great. In religion and in morals their authority is indisputable and undisputed. In the matter of education they are sometimes criticised, but always obeyed. The Irish priest is not merely the spiritual shepherd, he is the guide and counsellor in temporal affairs. The temporal power of the Irish clergy may be traced to two principal causes, namely the essentially religious character of the nation, and the historical fact that the priest has been for centuries the sole guide of the Irish people. Three centuries of persecution have but attached Ireland more deeply to the Catholic faith, and her fidelity to it is all the more meritorious, if indeed we may not say heroic, for the fact. The facts of history have made the priest a leader, and often the sole leader, of the people. The Irish nation could have had, like others, its national aristocracy, its cultivated middle class, if the English conquest had not checked the natural course of development of the country. In the eighteenth century, when the perfecting of the conquest was followed by the organisation of oppression, the nation of Ireland had no longer either an aristocracy (for the land was in the hands of English and Protestant landlords) nor a middle class (for the middle class had been anihilated or had fled). The only leaders left, endowed at once with education and with the confidence of the people, were the clergy.
Consider the situation even to-day as it is in the country districts. In the West the priest is usually the only person in the village who has any education. He is, in the four provinces, the only capable counsellor, the only leader who is obeyed. The sizeable farmers and the village shopkeepers lack education and authority. As for the politicians the people make use of them, but appraise them at what they are worth. The landlord? More often than not he has not a common sentiment with the people, even if he be a Catholic. In the towns the situation is a little different, but the same historical causes give the clergy an exceptional influence: the near absence of a middle class possessed of the training, independence, and culture necessary to fit it for its intellectual and social role. A new bourgeoisie is no doubt beginning to form itself on the ruins of the old, but secondary education is so inadequate and behindhand, and higher education still so cruelly defective, that among the Catholics of Ireland, even among the liberal classes, there are but few to be found who possess any real culture. We find, on the contrary, a certain form of intellectual apathy very widespread, a distaste for mental effort, a certain absence of the critical sense, a lack of individual judgment. But the "Papists"are beginning to claim their rights, and to make themselves and their religion respected. Education is improving; the middle class is growing, and with it the liberal and cultured nucleus. As these forces become stronger, the causes of the temporal supremacy of the clergy will decrease.
Generally speaking, we may call the influence of the clergy during the nineteenth century a conservative and a moderating influence, apter to restrain evil than to forward good, apter to check the feet of their flock on the downward rather than to urge them along the upward path. A conservative power does not easily become a worker in the cause of progress. If the Irish clergy have succeeded admirably in preserving the virtue and piety of their people, they have not had as much success in that other task, with its difficulties of quite another kind, the intellectual and social regeneration of Ireland. The great Irish Seminary of Maynooth has always sent out very saintly priests. A priest left the seminary with an excellent ecclesiastical education, but his general knowledge was narrow and incomplete. He was deficient in those qualities which are developed by a good classical and scientific education, and lacked that indefinable thing which, according to the Bishop of Limerick, is "not knowledge but culture." Once installed and isolated in his country presbytery, the priest often showed very little intellectual activity and little taste for study, his library was poor and his pen unfruitful, and he had little success in the training of mind and character of himself or of his flock. But here we should testify also to the progress which Maynooth has realised during the last twenty years, in the way of classical and scientific study, the results of which must in the end have an influence on the Irish clergy in the sphere of social action. The standard of study has been raised and the number of professors increased. Will the new generation of clergy succeed in their work, and will they be able to restore to Ireland, after the bankruptcy of Protestantism, and so to the greater glory of Catholicism, something of that splendour which the monks had lent to her civilisation in the sixth and seventh centuries? In the answer to that question lies the secret of the future.
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Originally Posted by Catalpa
