analysis
THE MASS IN IRELAND today’s trials in light of past persecutions
by L I A M G I B S O N
O
n hillsides and in stony pastures, in wooded glens and ruined shacks – the Mass Rocks that dot the landscape of rural Ireland are the beads on the unbroken chain that Irish Catholics clung to through the grinding years of often bloody persecution. Many overgrown, neglected, anonymous, and unknown, others venerated and preserved, these monuments are an outward symbol of the indelible mark that centuries of persecution have left on the identity of the church in Ireland.1 With recent legislation by the Dublin government making religious services in public virtually impossible, many have invoked the image of the Penal Days when the Mass was legally suppressed. While Catholics in Ireland today face none of the physical dangers endured by their ancestors, the witness to the faith of those who suffered is still relevant. It was the Mass for which they died and it was the Mass that sustained them. This is a story of heroic fealty and of a people who risked the loss of everything rather than be separated from the sacrifice of the Mass.
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ECCLESIA INTER HIBERNOS Long before Henry Tudor (1509-1547) broke with Rome, there were two distinct churches in Ireland. One native and Gaelic-speaking – the ecclesia inter Hibernos – and the other an off-shoot of the church in England, controlled by the English crown.2 Efforts to end irregular habits and customs which had taken hold in the native church (such as the hereditary appointment of bishops and the use of a wooden table for Mass rather than a stone altar) had already begun before the arrival of Norman lords but the Anglo-Irish church soon became the primary vehicle to implement the reforms Rome required. Ironically, however, when England became Protestant, it was the insular character of the Gaelic-speaking church that meant that most Catholics, both native and Norman, remained loyal to the pope. The antipathy which the Anglo-Irish hierarchy had always shown to the native church soon gave way to enmity and persecution. Bishops loyal to
CAL X M ARI AE
