Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
ALMOST TWO CENTURIES ago, a major American city exploded into arson and murder, in a shocking episode of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigotry.
Although virtually forgotten now on both sides of the Atlantic, the Philadelphia Nativist Riots of 1844 had significant consequences for political and religious life in the United States, and bear an uncanny resemblance to events taking place in 2016.
This is the explosive, lost story of when hatred and fear of Irish Catholics set fire to an American city, and what we can learn from it today, 172 years later.
Background
The whole thing started with a row over the Bible. Or rather, a Bible.
Philadelphia in the 1840s was a city in transition. The first capital of the United States until 40 years prior, it was the second-most populous city in America, after New York.
Like other north-eastern cities, it had seen a massive influx of immigrants from Germany and Ireland in the decades leading up to 1844.
Immigrants like the Clark family, Dubliners of Cavan origins, who came to Philadelphia en masse in the 1810s.
(This 1850 census entry shows 16 of them, from three generations, living in two adjacent houses in Philadelphia).
One of their four children, Hugh, was a weaver and manufacturer, who established himself as a leader in the Irish community, but worked within the overwhelmingly Protestant mainstream of Philadelphia society and commerce.
He learned German, to help forge professional bonds, and worked his way up to Alderman and director of the public schools system, rare positions of political power and influence for an Irish Catholic at that time.
In 1828, he and his brother Patrick bought property on the corner of Master and Fourth Streets, in the burgeoning Irish community of Kensington, in north Philadelphia.
The seller was Turner Camac, the Anglican Irishman after whom the Camac river (and bridge) on the south side of Dublin, are named.
At the same time as the Clark family embedded themselves in the lower-middle class neighbourhood of Kensington, another Dubliner was establishing himself in the city.
Francis Kenrick was born on 3 December 1797, at 16 Chancery Lane, near St Patrick’s Cathedral.
According to his biography, he was a pious young man, an excellent student, and fiercely proud of his religion and nationality.
At 18, he was selected to study at the Vatican, and went on to become a missionary priest and lecturer at a seminary in Kentucky. In 1830, he was sent to Philadelphia, and became Bishop of the Diocese by 1842.
He inherited a rapidly growing Irish community, and found himself caught in the middle of a seemingly trivial, innocuous dispute that exploded into violence in the spring of 1844.
In the Philadelphia public school system at that time, all children were required to be taught from the Protestant King James Bible.
In his first year as Bishop, Kenrick formally asked the city’s school board to allow Catholic (overwhelmingly Irish) children to read the Catholic Douay Bible.
In response, the authorities excused Catholic children from studying the Protestant Bible, but made it complicated for them read their scripture of choice.
Of course, Kenrick never asked for the removal of the King James Bible from Philadelphia schools.
However, that lie was energetically spread throughout the city by leaders from an emerging anti-immigrant movement who somewhat strangely called themselves “native Americans.”
In February 1844, Louisa Bedford, the principal of a girl’s school in Kensington, was having trouble coordinating Bible lessons in her classroom, given the messy instructions handed down for Catholic and Protestant children.
For advice, she turned to the director of the city’s school system, the Dubliner Hugh Clark.
He suggested to her that, given the confusion, it might be easier for her to gradually and quietly phase out all Bible lessons.
By the teacher’s own account, Clark never ordered her to throw out the Protestant Bible, or replace it with the Catholic version.
However, once again, this lie was spread by an increasingly organised Nativist movement in Philadelphia.
First, a foreign Catholic bishop had tried to remove the true word of God from the education of their children. And now, a foreign bureaucrat was ordering a helpless, female school teacher to do the same.
This propaganda was all the ammunition that the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant American Republican party needed in order to whip up fear and hatred among ordinary Philadelphians.
And two months later, that powder keg exploded.
Friday, 3 May – ‘The missiles and shouts of the Irish’
In the heart of the mostly-Irish Kensington neighbourhood, an outdoor gathering of the local, anti-immigrant American Republican party took place.
We don’t know what was said, if anything, during the meeting at the Nanny Goat Market, on the corner of 2nd and Master streets.
It seems likely it was triumphalist in tone, and inflammatory in its location, however.
Local historian Kenneth Milano likens it to a “Ku Klux Klan rally in the middle of an African-American neighbourhood.”
A month earlier, the American Republicans, or “Native Americans,” had swept to success in elections in New York City.
The Philadelphia branch held a celebration in response, in which they expressed their “gratification”, sang patriotic songs and revelled in “martial music till a late hour in the evening,” according to one report.
In any case, here’s how one contemporary account describes that Friday evening:
The meeting had organised, and one of the speakers was addressing the crowd, when all at once, a rush from a concourse of Irish people, residing in that immediate vicinity, and who had surrounded the meeting, took place.
The native Americans, so fiercely were they assailed by an overpowering force, were driven from the staging they had erected, and fled in all directions, pursued by the missiles and shouts of the Irish.
Monday, 6 May – ‘A fearful disturbance and loss of life’
Incensed by the break-up of their gathering, and no doubt fuelled by rumours that the Irish had stolen an American flag and destroyed it, the natives planned another rally for Monday, 4 pm.
It was held at the same corner as Friday’s meeting, and it didn’t take long for it to explode into violence.
The group’s leader, Lewis Levin, was discussing the perils of “Popish interference” in American democracy, via “their minions of the poor degraded slaves of the church,” when a sudden rain storm forced them to move to the nearby market.
Then, as contemporary local writer John Perry reported:
A commotion occurred from some cause or other, and some 12 or 15 persons ran out of the market, on the west side, pursued by about an equal number.
A scuffle ensued: two desperate fellows clinched each other, one armed with a brick, and the other with a club, and exchanged a dozen blows, any one of which seemed severe enough to kill an ordinary man.
There was a flurry of stones thrown, along with some pistol shots, as the next day’s Philadelphia Inquirer recounted:
The scene for a time was appalling. One or two thousand persons must have been in the immediate vicinity, and as may well be imagined, most of them in a state of high excitement.
Amid an exchange of rocks, the Americans were sent running by “two or three discharges of a musket carried by a grey-headed Irishman who wore a seal-skin cap.”
In the chaos, a 19-year-old tanner named George Shifler was shot and killed. The first casualty of the riots, he became a martyr for the nativist cause, as this widely-circulated print shows.
The natives then went on a rampage throughout the Irish neighbourhood, attacking residents and ransacking their homes.
They destroyed the houses of Irish families like the Develins, Bradys, Quinns, Lavertys, Browns and Reillys, and many others were forced to flee their homes.
But the worst was still to come.
Tuesday, 7 May – ‘Avoid all occasion of excitement’
With tribal tensions beginning to boil over in Philadelphia, Bishop Kenrick did his best to calm things down.
He posted placards throughout the city, imploring Catholics to show some sympathy with the riot’s victims and their families, and not to make things worse.
I earnestly conjure all to avoid all occasion of excitement, and to shun public places of assemblage, and to do nothing that in any way can exasperate.
According to several accounts, though, the nativists tore up the posters on their way to a heated gathering in the centre of Philadelphia, at the site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Whipped up into a frenzy by speeches there, between 2,000 and 4,000 men set out once again, for Ground Zero of all that week’s trouble – the corner of Second and Master streets in the heart of Catholic Philadelphia.
They set fire to 60 Irish homes, a Catholic named Joseph Rice was shot dead, and they also targeted the Hibernian Hose House, an Irish-run fire station and important symbol of the Irish community in that part of Philadelphia.
By this time, around a dozen Americans, and an unknown number of Irish, had been killed in the riots.
Wednesday, 8 May – ‘A heap of ashes’
Terence Donaghoe, born in Aughnacloy, Co Tyrone in 1795, came to Philadelphia as a Catholic missionary in 1823.
During the deadly cholera outbreak of 1831/1832, Donaghoe is said to have ridden his horse throughout the city, bringing vulnerable victims of the epidemic back to the house of Fr Michael Hurley, and caring for hundreds, very few of them Catholic.
In the decade before the riots, he helped build St Michael’s church and a convent for the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM), close to the site of the first night’s disturbances.
He did this, coincidentally, with the help of another Aughnacloy man, Fr John Hughes – whose aggressive defence of Irish Catholics earned him the nickname “Dagger John”, and who went on to become the first Archbishop of New York.
But in May 1844, all their work was left in a heap of ashes, as this account describes:
At half-past two on Wednesday afternoon, May 8, 1844, St Michael’s Church, although under the protection of the military, was set on fire together with Fr Donaghoe’s house.
While the church was burning, a shouting mob surrounded the building, and when the cross fell from the roof, three vociferous cheers were given, the streets rang with shouts of derision, and the fife and drum corps played The Boyne Water.
These particular arsonists, it appears, weren’t of English extraction, like many of the nativists, but rather Irish Protestants.
By this time, Philadelphia Sheriff Morton McMichael had gathered posses, and was putting together a somewhat belated protection of Irish properties in Kensington, along with the head of the Pennsylvania state militia, General George Cadwalader.
A slow response, and jurisdictional wrangling were later blamed for much of the death and destruction caused by the riots.
However, the local military had been able to ghost Fr Donaghoe out of his house on Second Street, before St Michael’s Church burned to the ground, 90 minutes after the start of the fire.
The Sisters of Charity BVM had started out on North Ann Street in Dublin, but came to Philadelphia en masse in 1833, specifically to help and educate the surging wave of Irish immigrants in the city, whose “souls were in peril.”
After meeting Fr Donaghoe, they operated a school and convent in Kensington for 10 years, but packed up once again and headed to Iowa, where their headquarters remain today.
In May 1844, however, there were still three women left in the convent on the corner of 2nd and Phoenix St (now Thompson St) – two Irish girls, Elizabeth Sullivan and Jane O’Reilly, and an “intrepid little English lady” named Mary Baker.
It was surrounded by a furious mob, clamouring for the destruction of the “Irish nuns.”
The miscreants first set fire to a high board fence surrounding the enclosure, then burning brands were thrown through the windows.
The three young women were terrified at the sight of the fire within and without.
Mary Baker opened the front door to confront the assailants, demanding to know whether they were “brutal enough to burn to death three helpless women.”
She was met with a brick fired directly at her head, fell unconscious, and was dragged back inside.
Soon afterwards, a “band of stalwart Irishmen” broke up the mob and rushed the women through the garden and into a safe house set up for Fr Donaghoe.
Moments later, the convent was a “heap of ashes.”
At 6pm, according to Perry’s account, the Nativists targeted the Clarks, burning to the ground Hugh and Patrick’s homes, where three generations of the Irish family lived.
[They] have entirely gutted it out. The windows have been demolished, the furniture thrown out of the windows, the beds cut open and the feathers scattered about in the wind.
…The corner house was occupied by his brother, Patrick Clark, as a tavern and dwelling, and his furniture has also been destroyed.
Later that night, the mob turned their attention (and their torches) to St Augustine’s Church, already a landmark in Catholic America, after its opening in 1801.
The church had been conceived and built by Fr John Rossiter, from New Ross, and Fr Matthew Carr, who had run the Augustinian Centre on John’s Lane in Dublin, before emigrating to Philadelphia in 1795.
Among those who provided initial funding for the project were Wexford man Commodore John Barry – a Revolutionary War hero and “Father of the American Navy” – and George Washington himself.
The country’s first President personally invested $50 in the building of the church, located just half a mile from where he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
On the evening of 8 May, rumours were rife that gangs of nativists were out to destroy as many Catholic churches as they could, and by 6.30 pm a large crowd had gathered outside St Augustine’s.
The mayor, John Scott, issued an order for “all good citizens” to “resist all invasions of property, and to preserve the public peace.”
The request fell on deaf ears, and at around 9.50 pm, a 14-year-old boy is said to have started a fire in the vestibule of St Augustine’s.
By 10.20, the cross had fallen from the steeple, to loud cheers, and by 10.30 the steeple itself collapsed onto the street.
The heat, during the height of the fire, was so intense that persons could hardly look at the flames…
As the blaze subsided into the early hours of the morning, a mob of nativists ransacked the parochial residence, which contained an enormous, irreplaceable library, and piled hundreds of books on the streets, setting fire to them all.
Amid the chaos, an urn containing the ashes of Fr Michael Hurley, who had made his home a hospital for 367 mostly non-Catholic cholera victims in 1832, was destroyed.
Aftermath
John B Perry’s (hardly pro-Irish) account describes a “truly sickening” scene across the burnt out Irish community of Philadelphia, immediately after the attacks.
Men with their wives, and often six or seven children, trudging fearfully through the streets, with small bundles, seeking a refuge they knew not where.
Mothers with infants in their arms, and little ones following after them, carrying away from their homes whatever they could pick up at the instant, passing along with fearful tread, not knowing where to turn.
Within two days, Bishop Kenrick had taken the unprecedented step of calling off all church services for that Sunday, 12 May.
And as the military finally began to take control of the streets of the city, there was a period of relative calm.
There are several accounts of priests disguising themselves in civilian clothing, or going into hiding, and Irish residents of the city displaying American flags outside their homes and businesses, for fear of further violence.
In July, arms were stockpiled at the St Philip of Neri Catholic church in South Philadelphia, after rumours of an imminent nativist attack.
The nativists, in turn, saw an armed church as a threat, and an Independence Day celebration gave way to a mob assailing the church.
A four-day stand-off between “native Americans” and the military, ended relatively peacefully, and the destruction of yet another catholic church was avoided when the weapons were removed from the church.
The violent episode prompted Bishop Kenrick to give up any hope of integrating Catholics into the Philadelphia education system, and led to the establishment of the city’s Catholic schools.
The Nativist movement, a precursor to the more famous Know Nothings of the 19th Century, enjoyed a boost in popularity from the riots.
But in the long term, the lawlessness and violence seen in Philadelphia that spring only undermined their cause.
Despite an official inquiry into the riots, a grand jury found the Irish community in Kensington responsible for death and destruction.
However, dozens of Irish residents, including Hugh Clark’s 64-year-old mother Bridget, originally from Co Cavan, sued the authorities for damages.
Dozens, if not hundreds of houses were burned to the ground, destroyed, or damaged. The names of their owners paint a clear picture:
Hugh and Patrick Clark from Dublin, Joseph Corr, Owen (John) Daly, John McAleer, Barney Rice from Tyrone, Francis McCreedy, Patrick Magee, James Loy, John Lavary, John Carroll, Patrick Murray, Thomas Sheridan, Michael Keenan, John Lafferty, Patrick McKee, John Taggert, John Dougherty, and others.
The number of Irish casualties is harder to estimate.
Newspaper accounts from the time, heavily biased against the Catholic community, were scrupulous in listing the names of dead Americans, their occupations, and the location and manner of their deaths.
When it came to the Irish, however, only two were identified – Joseph Rice, and a man named only as Johnson.
Perry’s account, which carefully detailed the deaths of nativists, and named their suspected Irish killers, downplayed the damage done by the rioters, but admitted “a number [of Irish] were seen to fall.”
The extent of their loss could not be ascertained, as it was impossible to approach them without being in danger of being fired upon.
Philadelphia historian Kenneth Milano, who wrote a definitive account of the riots, told TheJournal.ie that he estimates “around 23 or 24 were killed in total.”
There were about 14 or 15 other Irish Catholics who were said to have been killed – either shot or burned to death, but their names are not known.
As his book, The Philadelphia Nativist Riots, describes:
The casualties are low estimates, particularly for the Irish wounded, as Philadelphia officials and newspapers at that time were not keeping track of Irish Catholics wounded, nor were the Irish reporting them.
As a fairly new immigrant community, they were somewhat insulated from the Protestant society at large.
Days after the riots ended, authorities were still pulling bodies from the burned Irish Catholic homes.
History repeating itself
The fear and hatred shown to Irish Catholics in Philadelphia in 1844 has manifested itself again and again over the last 172 years of American history.
In 1928, Al Smith – the Democrat Governor of New York and grandson of the Mulvihills from Westmeath – became the first ever Catholic candidate for President.
Although his eventual defeat cannot solely be attributed to religious prejudice, Smith was was viciously targeted for his Catholicism, especially in the largely Anglo-Saxon Protestant South.
The Ku Klux Klan ran a relentless propaganda campaign against him, and cartoons like this one appeared, repeating the fear that Catholic politicians, if elected, would be under the control of Vatican hierarchy:
And in an attack that could easily have emerged from Philadelphia in 1844, the school board of the city of Daytona Beach, Florida sent every parent a letter, warning:
We must prevent the election of Alfred E. Smith to the Presidency. If he is elected President, you will not be allowed to have or read a Bible.
Many of these fears were revived in 1960, when John F Kennedy ran for the White House.
Although he would eventually win, of course, he was forced to explain the role of his Catholicism, in a now-landmark speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he famously said:
…Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.
I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.
And in the last year, the Know Nothing nativism that set fire to Philadelphia in 1844, has once again come to the fore, in the Republican presidential primary.
Frontrunner Donald Trump has drawn countless comparisons to the xenophobia of that movement, with his inflammatory claims about Mexico sending rapists and murderers into the United States, and his call for a complete ban on Muslim immigration after the San Bernardino massacre, last month.
(In an uncanny twist of fate, the Al-Aqsa mosque in Philadelphia, where a severed pig’s head was left in December, after Trump’s announcement, is right in the heart of the old Irish neighbourhood of Kensington – just yards from St Michael’s church.)
As Laura Reston wrote in the New Republic:
The rise of the Know Nothings, an episode in American history often brushed under the rug or simply forgotten, demonstrates that Trump is a part of a tradition dating to the earliest days of the Republican Party.
The fear of immigrants has long driven American politics, bringing together coalitions that have propelled even the most unlikely candidates to the halls of American political power.
If nativist sentiment continues to rise, just as it did in 1854 when the Know Nothings swept Congress, Trump could be a candidate to be reckoned with.
However, here’s a historical footnote worth mentioning.
Two years after that election, 12 years after they murdered Irish Catholics, burned them out of their homes, and destroyed their places of worship in Philadelphia, the nativist surge came to a head with the candidacy of Millard Fillmore for president.
He lost every single state, bar one, and the Know Nothings entered a rapid political decline that they still haven’t emerged from.
In May 1844, it took the Irish Catholics of Kensington just four days to rebuild St Michael’s Church.
And 172 years later, it’s still standing. The parish priest, Fr Arturo Chagala, is from Mexico. Mass in Spanish is every Sunday, at 11.30 am.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The so called ‘Native Americans’ were descendents of colonist who came over on the mayflower and damn near wiped out the actual Native Americans and they had the gall to bitch about European immigrants
Funnt that isn’t it, how natives who are celebrated for their acts of humanitarianism and charity through Thanksgiving, can be almost virtually wiped out by the immigrants whose lives they saved
“Native Americans’ as in several different tribes who were constantly killing one another in tribal war fare.
‘Native Americans’ as in the original inhabitants of the US who were violently massacred, raped and had their land stolen off them by colonists it doesn’t matter if they were engaged in tribal warfare or not it doesn’t excuse the brutality and genocide of the colonists
Harry don’t forget the use of biological warfare against the Natives when the colonists gave the Natives blankets that were deliberately infected with smallpox.
Even the original Native Americans came from elsewhere – they were not conjured out of the soil.
They civilization with the bigger club, faster spear, larger sword won the day. Unfortunately for the native tribes it was the Europeans.
That’s how evolution works within a species. In human terms success is down to, amongst other things, social organisation, the ability to adapt quickly to varied environments, resources, and technology. It’s brutally objective, but a fact nonetheless. Many people who suffer post-colonial, or white, guilt don’t like to hear this.
Harry the Spanish played a big part in wiping out the natives and they ‘the spanish’ were Catholic
A right good read . Well done author
Thanks a lot, Tony!
Second that!
Excellent piece. .still lots of anti catholic bias in the states today too
Great read.
Well done author Dan MacGuill, you’re not as stupid as I thought you were……
Really? There’s no anti-Catholic bias where I live in New York. Are you referring to Fundamentalists? They are biased in their pulpits, but have little power elsewhere.
Really? There’s no anti-Catholic bias where I live in New York. Are you referring to Fundamentalists? They are biased in their pulpits, but have little power elsewhere.
‘Fear and hatred of Irish Catholics’?
This should definitely be of interest to the Journal.ie readership.
Especially women and children,the things that church did to them.
So which CLASS of the journal. ie you fall into…free speech and all of that.oran.
Kinda like every Summer up in the North of Ireland then….
God is a hoax.
looks like bedtime reading this
Ha ha Paddy your nearly right,it’s not much shorter than Tim Pat Coogans book Wherever Green is Worn.
The story is much too long. There was always a great fear of Catholics in the us of the 44 presidents just one was Catholic jfk and they shot him dead in his third year in office
Is it just me or is this article very one sided? All the attacks seem to be the ‘native Americans’ against the Irish. We’re there no retaliatory attacks to balance out the story? The Irish seem to be entirely innocent based on this account.
The reason I ask is because I picked up a book recently about Irish Immigrants to America from the 1700s on thinking I was going to read a heart warming story about plucky unfortunate immigrants who built America but instead I got a whole book about racist drunks who fought constantly with every other race, didn’t assimilate, took over sections of cities and didn’t allow anyone but Irish in. Then they rose through American society cheating and favouring the Irish through police, judicial and political systems. Many who rose through the classes then looked down on the Irish. And because the Irish were formed clicks, they limited themselves greatly as they tended to stay in the same jobs generation after generation (police, construction, firefighters) as nepotism was rife. It was really eye opening and changed my rose tinted view of Irish emigrants.
So this article seems very one sided as the Irish seem to have done nothing wrong.
This was the book, by the way: http://www.amazon.com/The-Irish-Americans-A-History/dp/B004G0947U
If they were all that bad then every 2nd yank wouldn’t be coming out claiming to be Irish.
Spot on John, but then that’s Irish Nationalism to a tee “Nothing’s ever our fault, we’re victims of oppression, etc.”
No time for factual reporting there’s an agenda to push!
Who would begrudge the Irish any retaliatory attacks?
A few cracked skulls for the fundamentalist “natives” would round the story out just nicely,and certainly wouldn’t put the Irish in a negative light.
What does it have to do with Irish Nationalism? Kindly switch on your brain.
How doesn’t it? Nationalism bangs on about the Irish as a distinct racial/cultural group different from everybody else, subject to disproportionate discrimination and oppression from all quarters, whose actions are always absolved of any blame as it was “just cause”. An interesting read, but as the original comment suggested, maybe one sided.
I’m sensing a bit of whingeing about the IRA creeping through here.
You only need to hear one side,Bernard. Unless you think the religious fundamentalist Nativists had just cause on this,or any other occasion during that era of American history?
What next? The ISIS Paris attacks were a bit one sided,maybe you like to get their side of the story?
That comment doesn’t make a lot of sense. The IRA were never mentioned. But what you’re saying is because it’s Irish, one needs only hear that side of the story? The ISIS reference I don’t get, but they, like the IRA, are terrorists.
The Nativists were an organisation of hysterical religious bigots.Who wants to give people like that a voice? Throughout the mid 19th century they were intent on using violence,intimidation and murder to achieve political aims.See also the Louisville riots of 1855.
People like that are today known as terrorists.For some bizarre reason, you want to hear their side of the story.I can only see one aggressor in this situation.Maybe you resent the Irish standing up for themselves,is that it?
In your response I think you’ve proved John Smith and my point very well. Thanks!
Well no,not even you can prove your own point by the looks of it.You can’t exactly argue on behalf of the religious fundies and terrorists so now you’ve reached the sorry conclusion that the only way to bow out of here with any dignity is by being a smart arse.Very English I must say…
Then the Irish integrated and persecuted the Italians. Then the Italians integrated and hated the Poles. Now people hate hispanics and Muslims. Nothing ever changes.
@James Xenophon,
The Muslims will NEVER integrate.
That’s what they used to say about the Jews, Eamon.
@James Xenophon,
I don’t recall Jewish refugees doing massacres like the Bataclan or San Bernardino.
Ah well, at least “Irish” Protestants have have moved on from those dark days of religious bigotry,hysteria and paranoia.Laugh Out Loud.
Especially the ones up north
Only up north.No problems with the southern variety.
The resident xenophobic trolls should take stock of this.
It is not that long ago that masses of Irish emigrants were subjected to racism and bigotry at the hands of people who perceived themselves to be better than the Irish.
Lost interest after reading this gem
“We don’t know what was said, if anything, during the meeting at the Nanny Goat Market, on the corner of 2nd and Master streets.
It seems likely it was triumphalist in tone, and inflammatory in its location, however.”
Ahhhh Bernard we were victims of oppression. I mean what else would you call it?
No more than anyone else, yet some have a habit of portraying the Irish as The Most Oppressed People On Earth then continually harping on about it. It’s an unattractive characteristic.
A bit longwinded, that religion has a lot to answer for is very evident, however,in the context of the genocide perpetrated against native American Indians throughout the Americas, this was a bit like Puck Fair after midnight.
You see,you and I know that,but modern day Catholics love to play the persecution card,or what might be better known as,whinging because the people they enjoyed oppressing are being treated as equals in society now.
So Richard you believe in equality for all except those who believe in God?
Your viewpoint is a common misconception Jane,you see,believing in a god is a choice (a dumb one,but a choice nonetheless),equality is about treating people who cannot change their circumstances as equals,not about facilitating people with delusions.
So only equality for those who choose what you agree with? Double standards.
Except that’s not what I said,read this nice and slowly…equality for those who cannot change their circumstances,comprendé?
Kinda is Richie.
No jane,it’s not,I think the years of indoctrination have affected how you process information.
Jane – no, he was quite clear. Catholics in Ireland are claiming to be persecuted because their privileges of discriminating against others is being removed.
What “others” if you’re talking about gay people fair enough. But i think you’ll until find alot of the Baptist and Presbyterian flock STILL hold onto homophobic views. And if you mean the Catholics discrimination of other races in this country… I’d say that up until the 90′s you could count on one hand how many immigrants were coming in to the country and even then I doubt you’d hear many priests on the pulpit demonising immigrants.
First time in a long time I’ve stood up for the Catholic Church… I hope you’re happy.
Out of interest Richard I really would like to know who the Catholics oppressed?
Richard. The Irish in Philadelphia were the oppressed in this situation! Purely because of their nationality and religion. Are you completely myopic?
@Eoin. I doubt he was talking about the catholics discrimination of other races in this country, it’s catholic discrimination against persons with other belief systems in this country i believe he was saying.. For example, school enrollment, illegitimate children ect ect
Panti matter,correct,thanks for helping the others along!
Who did the Catholic Church oppress?
HMMMMM. Let’s think hard here. First, they allowed their staff i.e. priests to rape and assault children. No matter what scale you use, and even their own “Bible”, provides that this is the most heinous crime save murder. What could be worse than an institution that controlled through sexual abuse?
Then there were the Industrial Schools and the Laundries. I need not go into details, but suffice to say, horrific abuse occurred under their “cross”. The genocide of babies, tossed in large pits. Kinda reminds one of the same humanity of the Nazis.
Women also suffered under the patriarchy system of the church.
Sure, some things have changed and the abuse is not rampant as it once was. And this is because the customers removed themselves from the benches, not because the church cleaned up its act.
@West cork lad. Will you stop posting facts,the Faithfull have no time for that carry on. Wheter it’s turn the other cheek or turn a blind eye, either way, you will get the usual rethoric from the apopogists………it was only a minority that were abusers. Jesus wept !
Your welcome Richard, they do understand but just don’t like either accepting or admitting the sickening crimes of their church.
Thanks for this article!
The , King James Bible is the earliest translated Bible from aicent hebrew.The Catholic Bible as you quoted (the one True God) is in fact a lie.Rome has added books and changed sentences , from the ( one True God ) bible , the Only hebrew One bible there is . The Catholic Church has adoped tge holy family from the Bible ,,in order to win favour of families , esp Mothers who will produce more recurits for there order, this giving them power money because of power an greed over people.St Partrick wasnt a Roman Catholic , he was trained in whales . Thats why it was Patrick who told ireland there was a father son holy spirit and his followers after him were banned from teaching The bible feeding the poor and housing the homless.these saints got free land an food of irish kings for the people.When 3 Roman Bishops sawhow the cream the money was given to these irish saints , they wrote to the pope an had them banned from from there duties .Stealing there jobs free land an homes , now Rome got it .The war may appear about Religion , but its really about ,power and greed ,( money) .
Of course it is Joan. Its for the same reason priests were ordered to remain celabite. It wasn’t until the year 1139 when the second lateral council made the decision. Imagine the priest dying and the church having to allow his widow and children take possession of the property which was his residence. As Ray Croc, the founder and CEO of McDonald’s stated, the only other organisation with more property than McDonald’s was and is the Catholic Church..
Lateran
Pricictive text Michael but you got my drift and thanks.
Just a simple question,who told the tortoise what time the BOAT was leaving.and how long it would take him to get there…
The tortoise surely doesn’t care how long it would take. He’s in no féckîn hurry.
The reason the Churches set up their own denominational schools was and is to protect their religious ethos. Looks like our present Labour Education Minister wants to maintain an American Nativist stance where schools run under religious patronage is concerned. The British administration in Ireland tried the non-denominational route in the 1860s to 1880s by trying to have Catholic schools “hide” any signs of being Catholic. This was unsuccessful. Is our native government today trying to “peacefully” do here what the American Nativists failed to do and the British Administration failed to do here? The solution in Ireland before our independence was that each denomination set up schools in accordance with their own denomination with a local clergyman acting for the local diocese bishop as patron. It worked and the local population raised the one third local contribution towards the building of the schools. The local contribution continued up to relatively recent times at 10% with the patron having to provide a free site. Right from its inception the State ( be it British or Irish) paid the staff through the patron’s representative. The Board of Management structure is recent (1975) but the ethos of the Patron or Patron Body is paramount as it should be.
“…our native government today trying to “peacefully” do here what the American Nativists failed to do…”
This self evidently isn’t the case as 95% of the schools in Ireland are Catholic, yet the population is only about 50% practicing Catholics so, if you want your children to attend a school in the locality where you live then you have to go through the hypocrisy of having your children baptised as Catholic.
Worse though if you are Atheist, you have virtually no chance of your children going to a school where they are not indoctrinated into the superstitious nonsense of religion.
The sooner there are genuine secular schools in Ireland the better. Education and religion should be completely separated, if you want to brainwash your own children then that it is your choice, do it on a Sunday at Sunday school or the like, but teaching young, impressionable children 2,000 year old fairy tales is what has held back integration for so long.
This is especially the case in the North where divisive religious teaching has even less place in the education system. For peace to have a chance there, all schools need to be completely secular and have a mixed intake. But I appreciate that people will not want this, that they will probably want to hold on to their tribalism, such a shame.
Good luck to Ireland’s educational reforms, unfortunately they won’t come in time for my children,but I live in hope that common sense will prevail for the benefit of future generations of children.
That Bishop is the cut of Vincent Browne.
A really interesting read. Very well written. Thanks Dan
now that’s what I call a really good read well done
Fascinating piece of history. Well done author. More of these please.
Interesting subject overfilled with so much detail. I gave up the will to live. Too badly structured.
Christians! Pftttt!
Had ‘Dubliner’ Hugh Clark not been so dismissive as to suggest to phase out ALL Bible lessons, a lot of lives could have been saved. Not to mention the usual inability of the Irish to organise any kind of resistance or produce a leader.
So if we get the bible back in public schools (other than comparative religion classes where it belongs) just think of the grand mal fights we can have over which bible to use. Look what happened to Philly.
Actually John, the riots happened because Hugh Clark wanted to get rid of all Bibles, denying the right of religion.
have your say