This book focuses, from a legal perspective, on a series of events which make up some of the principal episodes in the legal history of religion in Ireland: the anti-Catholic penal laws of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century; the shift towards the removal of disabilities from Catholics and dissenters; the dis-establishment of the Church of Ireland; and the place of religion, and the Catholic Church, under the Constitutions of 1922 and 1937.
Religion features prominently in Irish history and politics. Its peculiar legal status represents one of the distinctive features of the Irish constitutional tradition. The 1937 Constitution accords religion a central position as an anchoring point of Ireland's national identity, yet also includes ostensibly strong guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion, and of equality on religious grounds, that are typical of liberal-democratic constitutional systems. It synthesizes competing theories and models, tentatively affirming religion's public status, yet committing it to the private sphere for most purposes. For the most part, the historically close relationship between the State and the Catholic Church found no clear mandate in the constitutional text, which, contrary to prevailing perceptions, imposes a limited form of Church-State separation - although the exact boundaries it imposes remain unclear. More specifically, the legal principles and doctrines relating to religious practice are ambiguous and underdeveloped, particularly in issues surrounding religious freedom and denominational autonomy. The extent to which the Constitution protects religious activity from State interference has never been decisively resolved; additionally, constitutional considerations underlie resurgent contemporary controversies in the field of Church and State - particularly in the recent public debate on the role of religion in schools. Accordingly, Religion, Law and the Irish State examines the constitutional framework governing State and religion in the broader context of the history, politics, and theory of the Church-State relationship. From a lawyer's perspective, the book provides an account of the case law and doctrine in specific areas, including religious freedom, religious equality, denominational autonomy, and Church-State separation, while also giving these subjects a comparative and theoretical treatment. For those approaching Church and State from different perspectives - including historians, political scientists, sociologists, and theologians - it offers an accessible and contextual account of the constitutional dimensions of the State-religion relationship. It explores the constitutional provisions as an expression of, but also a potential fetter upon, the evolving social and political role of religion.
Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this convenient resource provides systematic information on how Ireland deals with the role religion plays or can play in society, the legal status of religious communities and institutions, and the legal interaction among religion, culture, education, and media. After a general introduction describing the social and historical background, the book goes on to explain the legal framework in which religion is approached. Coverage proceeds from the principle of religious freedom through the rights and contractual obligations of religious communities; international, transnational, and regional law effects; and the legal parameters affecting the influence of religion in politics and public life. Also covered are legal positions on religion in such specific fields as church financing, labour and employment, and matrimonial and family law. A clear and comprehensive overview of relevant legislation and legal doctrine make the book an invaluable reference source and very useful guide. Succinct and practical, this book will prove to be of great value to practitioners in the myriad instances where a law-related religious interest arises in Ireland. Academics and researchers will appreciate its value as a thorough but concise treatment of the legal aspects of diversity and multiculturalism in which religion plays such an important part.
This is a study of religion, politics, and society in a period of great significance in modern Irish history. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the consolidation of the power of the Protestant landed class, the enactment of penal laws against Catholics, and constitutional conflicts that forced Irish Protestants to redefine their ideas of national identity. S. J. Connolly's scholarly and wide-ranging study examines these developments and sets them in their historical context. The Ireland that emerges from his lucid and penetrating analysis was essentially a part of ancien r--eacute--;gime Europe: a pre-industrialized society, in which social order depended less on a ramshackle apparatus of coercion than on complex structures of deference and mutual accommodation, along with the absence of credible challengers to the dominance of a landed --eacute--;lite; in which the ties of patronage and clientship were often more important than horizontal bonds of shared economic or social position; and in which religion remained a central part of personal and political motivation. - ;Abbreviations; Introduction; I. A NEW IRELAND; 1. December 1659: `A Nation Born in a Day'; 2. Settlement and Explanation; 3. A Foreign Jurisdiction; 4. Papists and Fanatics; 5. Counter-Revolution Defeated; II. AN ELITE AND ITS WORLD; 6. Uneven Development; 7. Gentlement and Others; 8. Manners; III. THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICS; 9. A Company of Madmen: The Politics of Party 1691-1714; 10. `Little Employments...Smiles, Good Dinners'; 11. Politics and the People; IV. RELATIONSHIPS; 12. Kingdoms; 13. Nations; 14. Communities; 15. Orders; V. THE INVENTIONS OF MEN IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD: RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES; 16. Numbers; 17. Catholics; 18. Dissenters; 19. Churchmen; 20. Christians; VI. LAW AND THE MAINTENANCE OF ORDER; 21. Resources; 22. The Limits of Order; 23. The Rule of Law; 24. Views from Below: Disaffection and the Threat of Rebellion; 25; Views from Above: Perceptions of the Catholic Threat; VII. `REASONABLE INCONVENIENCES: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE PENAL LAWS'; 26. `Raw Head and Bloody Bones': Parliamentary Management and Penal Legislation; 27. Debate; 28. The Conversion of the Natives; 29. Protestant Ascendancy? The Consequences of the Penal Laws; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index. -
Irish history is often past and furious and nowhere more contentiously than when discussing religion. This book is designed to be read with equal profit by those who know a little and those who know a lot about the role of religion in Irish history. It moves at a fast pace, it is extensively illustrated with fresh images and maps, it draws on diverse evidence in multiple languages and it uses examples drawn from every county in Ireland. The volume covers commentators writing in Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latin and Spanish. The focus is on the lived experience of real people in real places in real time, rather than on the abstractions of nationality, class and race. Because religion played such a decisive role in Irish life, the book is also an oblique-angle version of Irish history, conveying a sense of how we got to be where we are, even as we leave it behind.
This book combines historical, sociological and ethnographic research methods to provide a rich and multi-faceted study of the Muslim presence in Ireland in its historical and contemporary dimensions.
This practical guide summarizes the principles of working with dying patients and their families as influenced by the commoner world religions and secular philosophies. It also outlines the main legal requirements to be followed by those who care for the dying following the death of the patient. The first part of the book provides a reflective introduction to the general influences of world religions on matters to do with dying, death and grief. It considers the sometimes conflicting relationships between ethics, religion, culture and personal philosophies and how these differences impact on individual cases of dying, death and loss. The second part describes the general customs and beliefs of the major religions that are encountered in hospitals, hospices, care homes and home care settings. It also includes discussion of non-religious spirituality, humanism, agnosticism and atheism. The final part outlines key socio-legal aspects of death across the UK. Death, Religion and Law provides key knowledge, discussion and reflection for dealing with the diversity of the everyday care of dying and death in different religious, secular and cultural contexts. It is an important reference for practitioners working with dying patients, their families and the bereaved.
Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In Ireland, he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, Ireland remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted. In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds. This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine. A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.
Beggars and begging were ubiquitous features of pre-Famine Irish society, yet have gone largely unexamined by historians. This book explores at length for the first time the complex cultures of mendicancy, as well as how wider societal perceptions of and responses to begging were framed by social class, gender and religion. The study breaks new ground in exploring the challenges inherent in defining and measuring begging and alms-giving in pre-Famine Ireland, as well as the disparate ways in which mendicants were perceived by contemporaries. A discussion of the evolving role of parish vestries in the life of pre-Famine communities facilitates an examination of corporate responses to beggary, while a comprehensive analysis of the mendicity society movement, which flourished throughout Ireland in the three decades following 1815, highlights the significance of charitable societies and associational culture in responding to the perceived threat of mendicancy. The instance of the mendicity societies illustrates the extent to which Irish commentators and social reformers were influenced by prevailing theories and practices in the transatlantic world regarding the management of the poor and deviant. Drawing on a wide range of sources previously unused for the study of poverty and welfare, this book makes an important contribution to modern Irish social and ecclesiastical history. An Open Access edition of this work is available on the OAPEN Library.
