Irish Catholics

This article is about the cultural group. For the newspaper, see The Irish Catholic. For the church, see Catholic Church in Ireland.

Irish Catholics

File:CelticCross.svg Celtic cross
Total population
4.6 million (Ireland) 55-60 million (notably in Canada and the Eastern and Central United States)
Regions with significant populations
Republic of Ireland	4,000,000
Northern Ireland	750,000
United States	~20,000,000
Canada	5,000,000
United Kingdom	370,000
Australia	7,000,000
Argentina	500,000-1,000,000
New Zealand (especially high concentration in Te Tai Poutini)	600,000
France	15,000
Languages
English (Irish, American, Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealander), Irish (primarily Ireland), Spanish (Argentine and Mexican) and French (Canadian French, Metropolitan French)
Religion
Catholic Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Irish people, Irish diaspora, Irish Travellers, Irish Americans, Irish Canadians, Irish Australians, Irish New Zealanders, Irish Britons, Irish Argentines, Irish Mexicans, Irish French

Irish Catholics (Irish: Caitlicigh na hÉireann) are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. The diaspora and the descendants of Irish Catholics includes millions of Americans, Canadians and Australians. In countries like the United States, Canada and Australia, many Catholics descend from Irish immigrants/migrants who passed down their faith.

Overview and history

Divisions between Irish Roman Catholics and Protestants played a major role in the history of Ireland from the 16th century to the 20th century, especially during Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, Home Rule Crisis and the Troubles. While religion broadly marks the delineation of these divisions, the contentions were primarily political and they were also related to access to power. For example, while the majority of Irish Catholics had an identity which was independent from Britain's identity and were excluded from power because they were Catholic, a number of the instigators of rebellions against British rule were actually Protestant Irish nationalists, although most Irish Protestants opposed separatism. In the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Catholics and Presbyterians, who were not part of the established Church of Ireland, found common cause.

Irish Catholics are found in many countries around the world, especially in the Anglosphere. Emigration exponentially increased due to the Great Famine which lasted from 1845 to 1852. In the United States, anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Catholicism was espoused by the Know Nothing movement of the 1850s and other 19th-century anti-Catholic and anti-Irish organizations. By the 1960s, Irish Catholics were well established in the United States and today they are fully-integrated into mainstream American society with two Irish Catholic Presidents, John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden, having been elected.

See also

• Catholic Church in Ireland
• Celtic Christianity
• Cultural Christians
• Irish Americans
  • Scotch-Irish Americans
• Irish Britons
  • Irish Scots
• Irish Canadians
  • Irish Newfoundlanders
  • Irish Quebecers
• Irish Australians
• Irish New Zealanders
• Irreligion in the Republic of Ireland
• Penal Laws
• Religion in Northern Ireland
• Religion in the Republic of Ireland
• Saint Patrick's Day
• Ulster Protestants
• Ulster Scots people

Further reading

Catholic Irish

• Anbinder, Tyler (2002). Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum. New York: Plume
• Anbinder, Tyler, "Moving beyond 'Rags to Riches': New York's Irish Famine Immigrants and Their Surprising Savings Accounts," Journal of American History 99 (December 2012), 741–70.
• Barr, Colin (2020). Ireland's Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-Speaking World, 1829–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bayor, Ronald; Meagher, Timothy (eds.) (1997) The New York Irish. Baltimore: University of Johns Hopkins Press.
• Blessing, Patrick J. (1992). The Irish in America: A Guide to the Literature and the Manuscript Editions. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.
• Clark, Dennis (1982). The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience (2nd Ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• English, T. J. (2005). Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster. New York: ReganBooks.
• Ebest, Ron. "The Irish Catholic Schooling of James T. Farrell, 1914–23." Éire-Ireland 30.4 (1995): 18-32 excerpt.
• Erie, Steven P. (1988). Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840—1985. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
• Fanning, Charles, and Ellen Skerrett. "James T. Farrell and Washington Park: The Novel as Social History." Chicago History 8 (1979): 80–91.
• French, John. "Irish-American Identity, Memory, and Americanism During the Eras of the Civil War and First World War." (PhD Dissertation, Marquette University, 2012). Online
• Gleeson. David T. The Green and the Gray: The Irish in the Confederate States of America (U of North Carolina Press, 2013); online review
• Ignatiev, Noel (1996). How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge.
• Jensen, Richard. (2002) "'No Irish Need Apply': A Myth of Victimization". Journal of Social History 36.2 pp. 405–429 online Archived 2005-02-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Kenny, Kevin. "Abraham Lincoln and the American Irish." American Journal of Irish Studies (2013): 39–64.
• Kenny, Kevin (2000). The American Irish: A History. New York: Longman, 2000.
• McCaffrey, Lawrence J. (1976). The Irish Diaspora in America. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
• McKelvey, Blake. "The Irish in Rochester An Historical Retrospect." Rochester History 19: 1–16. online, on Rochester New York
• Meagher, Timothy J. (2000). Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity in a New England City, 1880–1928. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Mitchell, Brian C. (2006). The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821–61. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
• Mulrooney, Margaret M. (ed.) (2003). Fleeing the Famine: North America and Irish Refugees, 1845–1851. New York: Praeger Publishers.
• Noble, Dale T. (1986). Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America. Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
• O'Connor, Thomas H. (1995). The Boston Irish: A Political History. Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky.
• O'Donnell, L. A. (1997). Irish Voice and Organized Labor in America: A Biographical Study. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
• Rogers, James Silas and Matthew J O'Brien, eds. After the Flood: Irish America, 1945–1960 (2009), Specialized essays by scholars
• Sim, David. (2013) A Union Forever: The Irish Question and US Foreign Relations in the Victorian Age (Cornell University Press, 2013)
• The Irish Cultural, Political, Social, and Religious Heritages
• Ireland: The Rise of Irish Nationalism, 1801–1850
• Emigrants and Immigrants
• Communities in Conflict: American Nativists and Irish Catholics
• Irish-American Politics
• Irish America and the Course of Irish Nationalism
• From Ghetto to Suburbs: From Someplace to Noplace?
• Endnotes

External links

• Library of Congress Archived 2011-08-18 at the Wayback Machine
• The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America, describes the book
• On Irish Catholics of Australia