The Catholics of Ulster: a History.
Johnson, Dale A.
By Marianne Elliott. London: Penguin, 2000. xliv + 642 pp.; 11
maps, 29 photographs or illustrations. $35.00 cloth.
Elliott's canvas is huge, from prehistoric times to the
present. Her agenda is complex, nothing less than shattering myth,
exposing stereotypes, and trying to get Catholic readers to acknowledge
their own history in the region and readers on both sides to see that
the present chasm does not have long historic roots. Even her title is
controversial, as she notes on the first page of the Prologue, for most
Catholics in Northern Ireland would refuse to admit to an
"Ulster" identity. But understanding herself as an Ulster
Catholic, and having lived in England for a number of years, Elliott
believes that "it is surely high time for Ulster Catholics to
re-assert their regional identity and challenge the view that
`Ulster' necessarily means Protestant" (xxxiv). Thus her
massive and remarkably interesting book. Eighty pages of notes
illustrate both the range and depth of the research.
The present Ulster is comprised of six of the original nine
counties of Northern Ireland (Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone, and
Fermanagh, Derry or Londonderry--for the latter, the name is contested;
the others are Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal, each of which had Catholic
majorities at the time of partition). Catholics were a small majority as
late as the second half of the nineteenth century. By 1920, with the
establishment of an independent Ireland, they accounted for 43.7 per
cent in the partitioned north, a figure that has declined only slightly
over the course of the twentieth century. The Catholic characterization
of Protestants as "planters," not really Irish, and the
Protestant characterization of Catholics as "rebels" or
"disloyalists" are examples of the polarization that developed
after 1920 and was exacerbated with "the Troubles" that began
in the late 1960s.
Every part of the long historical narrative contributes to the
overall argument regarding Elliott's challenge to myth and
stereotype. Some examples supporting the larger point will help to
illustrate the range and subtlety of the book. Catholicism was not
"the ancestral religion" of Ireland, nor was national
consciousness a feature of late medieval or early modern Ulster. Gaelic
culture and identity were particularly characteristic of Ulster until
the seventeenth century, dominated by territorial lordships and pagan
survivals that served as popular pilgrimage sites down to the present.
Its early Catholic character was due more to support for mendicant and
monastic orders, functioning much like Gaelic territorial lords, than to
the establishment of institutional structures of the Church. At the same
time, clerical leaders complained well into the nineteenth century of
popular superstition and poorly educated clergy. The influx of English
and Scots, known as the Ulster Plantation, in the seventeenth century
represented a major transformation in land ownership, reducing the
status of Catholic gentry in the social hierarchy, but was not widely
resisted. From this point, priests tended to replace Catholic landlords
as social leaders, and poets became an important resource for
"remembering" the past. The presence of English and Scottish
Catholics among the immigrants and the realities of intermarriage complicated religion and cultural identity, which produced corresponding
fluidity of religious affiliation. Religious persecution was not nearly
so vigorous or extensive as popular memory would have it, although
political and social discrimination against Catholics changed the power
relationships in the region by the end of the seventeenth century. In
the nineteenth century there was significant religious cooperation in
ministering to sufferers of famine as well as common interests between
Protestant and Catholic tenants against Anglican landlords, much of
which has been neglected in the dual mythmaking regarding Ulster's
past.
As Elliott takes the story up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998,
there is more need to discuss the contributions of bishops and priests
and the role of the Church in the context of the larger canvas of
Irish-British relationships. She utilizes Emmet Larkin's language
of "devotional revolution," for example, to point to the
institutional and sacramental transformation of Catholic devotional
practice in the mid-nineteenth century, despite continuing examples of
folk customs. But the focus is still not so much on the institution as
on the people, as the book's title reflects--class allegiances,
pieties, political affiliations and rebellions, the development of
secret societies, the construction of anti-Protestant attitudes, and the
like. Elliott's attention to folklore and to regional literature as
historical resources in this regard is especially worth noting.
Connection to dimensions of the other side, especially to the emergence
of the Orange Order but also to more moderate Protestant positions, is
important for the shaping of Catholic identity--the strong
denominational divisions within electoral politics, the increasingly
denominational focus to primary and secondary education (Protestants in
state schools and Catholics in Catholic schools), and the gradual
emergence of housing segregation by religion in the larger cities (even
the swapping of houses to avoid local harassments). As the polarizations
became sharper, issues of identity became more important, which has led
to what Elliott calls "the successful transformation of a religion
into an all-encompassing culture" (478-79), the linking of
Catholicism, Irish culture, and political nationalism.
One consequence of such a transformation has been the occasional
contemporary judgment that religion is not central to the divisions
within Ulster. Elliott's work stands not only as a refutation of
that judgment, but even more as a challenge to the people of Ulster to
take mutual responsibility for their past and to develop a sense of
belonging without resentment. Irrespective of the audacity of the
challenge, one can at least hope that many, whether near to the
situation or far from it, will read and ponder the message.
Dale A. Johnson
Vanderbilt University
