Protestant Community in Southern Ireland since 1922

The Irish Free State was born in a period of great political and community turbulence, but when it had been legally constituted in 1922, Archbishop Gregg of Dublin urged his church to obey the laws of the new state and to work for its peace and prosperity. Some Protestants with a conspicuous unionist record, or closely identified with the British armed services and other agencies of the Crown, suffered violence to their persons and property, and many felt themselves to be in a vulnerable position as members of the former landed ascendancy class. While physical violence against Protestants was not endemic, many felt pain in adjusting to the new regime in which their cultural heritage was to be relegated to second place in favor of a Gaelic Ireland, and society regulated according to Vatican precepts. Many of those who could do so emigrated to Britain or migrated to Northern Ireland, thus accelerating the decline in the Protestant population that had affected in particular the western and southern counties long before partition. The withdrawal from Ireland of military personnel, many of whom had been Protestant, together with casualties in World War I, contributed to the demographic decline. The "mixed marriage" regulations of the Roman Catholic Church, whereby the partners promised that all children of the marriage would be brought up in the Catholic tradition, also had an impact. Eventually Protestants constituted less than 5 percent of the population. Consequently the Protestant community endeavored to provide separate educational and recreational opportunities for its youth that would minimize social contact with Catholics; this policy, when seen in the context of a popular view that Protestants belonged to an ascendancy class, caused them sometimes to be regarded as aloof and disdainful of the Catholic community, which indeed some of them were.

Southern Irish Protestants, while law-abiding citizens of the new state, found much that was alien to them in the early decades of independence. The unique status given to Irish in the educational system was uncongenial to many—if not most—Protestants, who felt little sympathy with the compulsion used to restore the language. Social legislation, particularly in the areas of divorce, family planning, and censorship of publications, reflected Vatican teaching, and claims by unionist leaders in Northern Ireland that they had a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people were matched by public statements by some southern politicians equating Irish Catholics with the Irish people.

However, Protestants did not readily surrender their claim to Irish identity, conscious that the leaders of Irish political and cultural nationalism included Protestant names such as Theobold Wolfe Tone, Thomas Russell, Robert Emmet, the Sheares brothers, Napper Tandy, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Charles Stewart Parnell, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, and W.B. Yeats. The view that to be truly Irish one also must be Catholic was impossible to sustain in the case of President Douglas Hyde, son of a Church of Ireland rector and a cofounder of the Gaelic League, which was dedicated to the revival of the Irish language. Protestants could therefore have confidence in their Irish credentials. This sense of confidence was enhanced by a secure position in Irish intellectual, professional, and commercial life, and by an awareness that despite evidence that there was a confessional character to much public policy, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, their contribution to Irish life was valued.

The late twentieth century saw radical changes in both Protestant attitudes and attitudes toward Protestants. They welcomed liberalizing changes in public policy, largely supported by public opinion. Protestants claimed to have played some part in achieving these changes, not least through the opening up of political and social discourse by such erstwhile Protestant and unionist fastnesses as Trinity College, Dublin, and the Irish Times. An increasingly independent broadcasting environment played its part: television audiences were thrilled by public discussion of issues, moral and theological, previously regarded as the exclusive preserve of the ecclesiastical authorities, while both television and radio conveyed the excitement of Vatican II to the people of the Republic (as the Free State had become in 1949) at a time of greatly improved economic development and enhanced educational opportunity. Vatican II, which created unease in some conservative circles north and south, was a major catalyst in the emergence of a society in which Protestants have felt increasingly comfortable.

SEE ALSO Church of Ireland: Since 1690; Ecumenism and Interchurch Relations; Eucharistic Congress; Gaelic Catholic State, Making of; Jewish Community; Protestant Ascendancy: Decline, 1800 to 1930; Politics: Independent Ireland since 1922; Religion: Since 1690

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Kenneth Milne