scholarly journals Why did Pope John Paul II visit Ireland? The 1979 papal visit in context

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-485
Author(s):  
Daithí Ó Corráin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
Leadership Challenges ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Institutional Influence ◽  
Irish Catholics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic Tradition

Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979 was an iconic moment in the history of twentieth-century Irish Catholicism. It has, however, received little detailed historical scrutiny. Based on state archival and hitherto unavailable diocesan material, this article contextualizes the visit by explaining the pastoral and leadership challenges that confronted the Irish hierarchy. Second, this article discusses how close the pope came to visiting Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. This was of concern not just to the hierarchy but to the Irish and British governments. Third, the organization of the visit, which was closely tied to the pastoral concerns of the Irish bishops, is surveyed. Lastly, the pastoral impact of the visit is considered. If the Catholic hierarchy hoped that the papal visit might arrest the declining institutional influence of the Catholic Church, reverse a quiet but growing faith crisis, or hasten a cessation of violence in Northern Ireland, then those expectations were misplaced. Ultimately, the pastoral impulse of the 1979 papal visit to Ireland was to preserve rather than renew the Irish Catholic tradition at a time when Irish Catholics were fixed on future material advancement rather than fidelity to their spiritual past.

The Northern Ireland Conflict: New Wine in Old Bottles?

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-322
Author(s):  
Sabine Wichert
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
History Of

James Loughlin, The Ulster Question since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1998), 151 pp., £10.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–60616–7.David Harkness, Ireland in the Twentieth Century. Divided Island (London: Macmillan, 1996), 190 pp., £9.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–56796–X.Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 347 pp., £12.99 (pb), £40.00 (hb), ISBN 0–333–73162–X.Brian A. Follis, A State Under Siege. The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920–1925 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 250 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–198–20305–5.Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzel, eds., Northern Ireland and the Politics of reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 256 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–521–44430–6.William Crotty and David Schmitt, eds., Ireland and the Politics of Change (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 264 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–32894–2.David Miller, ed., Rethinking Northern Ireland. Culture, Ideology and Colonialism. (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 344 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–30287–0.Anthony D. Buckley and Mary Catherine Kenney, Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Identity in Northern Ireland (Washington: Smithonian Institution Press, 1996), 270 pp., £34.75 (hb), ISBN 1–560–98520–8.John D. Brewer, with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600–1998: the mote and the beam (London: Macmillan, 1998), 248 pp., £16.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–74635–X.During the last three decades, and accompanying the ‘troubles’, the literature on Northern Ireland has mushroomed. Within the last ten years two surveys have attempted to summarise and categorise the major interpretations. John Whyte's Interpreting Northern Ireland covered the 1970s and 1980s and came to the conclusion that traditional Unionist and nationalist interpretations, with their emphasis on external, that is British and Irish, forces as the cause for the problem, had begun to lose out to ‘internal conflict’ interpretations. He felt, however, that this approach, too, was coming to the end of its usefulness, and he expected the emergence of a new paradigm shortly.

scholarly journals “No Pope Here”: Britain, the Vatican, the IRA, and the Papal Visit to Ireland, September 1979

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 603-620
Author(s):  
Martin Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
High Anxiety ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
The Face ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractIt is often assumed, particularly by outsiders, that the conflict in Northern Ireland—known euphemistically as “the Troubles”—in which some 3,600 people lost their lives, was an atavistic throwback to Europe's religious wars of earlier centuries. In 1979, by which time some 2,000 people had already been killed in the Troubles, Pope John Paul II proposed to pay a visit to Ireland and perhaps to cross the border into Ulster's sectarian cockpit. The idea provoked outrage from some Ulster Protestants and high anxiety for the British, concerned that the Pope might inadvertently inflame the situation or embarrass the British by raising difficult issues. But there were hopes, too, that an unequivocal condemnation of violence by the head of the Catholic Church might help to bring the conflict to an end. This article, based on extensive research in diplomatic archives, reveals deep divisions within the Catholic Church on the Irish question and points to the power and limitations of the British diplomatic reach into the Vatican. It reveals also, however, the powerlessness of prayer and pleadings in the face of terrorist violence.

The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968-1998

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Scull
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Community Organizers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Catholic Church

This book evaluates the role of the Catholic Church in mediating conflict situations, with the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ acting as a case study. Until surprisingly recently the only accounts of the Irish Catholic Church during this period were written by Irish priests and bishops and were commemorative, rather than analytical, in intent. During the conflict, these individuals often worked behind the scenes, acting as go-betweens for the British government and republican paramilitaries, with the aim of bringing about a peaceful solution. In addition, this study explores the impact of the English Catholic Church on the conflict and provides a broad analysis of key themes in the history of the Catholic Church during the ‘Troubles’. It argues for an entangled approach to this history, maintaining that we must study the actions of the American, Irish, and English Catholic Churches, as well as that of the Vatican, to uncover the full impact of the Church on the conflict. A critical analysis of previously neglected state documents alongside Irish and English Catholic Church archival material changes our perspective on the role of a religious institution in a modern conflict. Author-conducted interviews with leading priests, women religious, bishops, former paramilitaries, community organizers, and politicians add colour and nuance to the debate.

Power sharing and the Irish dimension: the conundrum for the SDLP in Northern Ireland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Real Challenge ◽  
Lost Opportunity

This chapter traces the ideas that shaped the concept of power-sharing within the SDLP, and subsequently Northern nationalism, highlighting the significance attached to the Irish dimension as a core feature of power-sharing, which caused divisive debates within the party post-Sunningdale. It will also trace how the concept evolved within British and Irish government circles, where much of the talk focussed on ‘government by consent’ as opposed to power-sharing during the rest of the 1970s. The fall of Sunningdale in 1974 has been attributed to many things, and the popular narrative emphasises that it was an agreement too soon, or a lost opportunity. This explanation does not account for the level of intra-party conflict that existed before the executive was even set up or during the negotiations. Further, it overlooks the very real challenge that power-sharing posed (and continues to pose) to democracy and legitimacy. Brian Faulkner, Chief Executive in the 1974 power-sharing Executive, retrospectively questioned the legitimacy of the SDLP sharing power in Northern Ireland: ‘Given the history of the SDLP over the previous years, and particularly their attitude that Northern Ireland had no right to exist, it was natural that unionists should feel strongly against SDLP participation in government’. The mandatory coalition between parties who were at ideologically opposite ends of the spectrum, including a party that had the demise of the state as one of its core aims, further highlighted the undemocratic nature of the agreement that inevitability would have caused problems, had the experiment not failed in 1974. The emphasis the SDLP attached to the Irish dimension as an integral part of power-sharing additionally eroded the democratic complexion of power-sharing. This has very real repercussions for the Northern Ireland Assembly today. While the 1998 Agreement ended the violence (or at least the level of violence) associated with the prior three decades of the ‘troubles’, there is no real commitment to democratic pluralist institutions at Stormont and instead there has been a reinforcing of the historical choices offered to the electorate of selecting candidates or voting on the basis of their shade of orange or green.

Gay Life and Liberation, a Photographic Record of 1970s Belfast

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-162
Author(s):  
Rachel Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Gay Identity ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Going Public ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gay Liberation Movement

In March 2017, the first LGBTQ+ history exhibition to be displayed at a national museum in Northern Ireland debuted at the Ulster Museum. The exhibition, entitled “Gay Life and Liberation: A Photographic Exhibition of 1970s Belfast,” included private photographs captured by Doug Sobey, a founding member of gay liberation organizations in Belfast during the 1970s, and featured excerpts from oral histories with gay and lesbian activists. It portrayed the emergence of the gay liberation movement during the Troubles and how the unique social, political, and religious situation in Northern Ireland fundamentally shaped the establishment of a gay identity and community in the 1970s. By displaying private photographs and personal histories, it revealed the hidden history of the LGBTQ+ community to the museum-going public. The exhibition also enhanced and extended the histories of the Troubles, challenging traditional assumptions and perceptions of the conflict.

scholarly journals PRESERVATION THE TRADITIONS OF UKRAINIAN SPIRITUAL CHOIR CULTURE IN MUSIC SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH BY MYRON FEDORIV

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yatsiv I. V.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ukrainian Catholic

The article is devoted to the evaluation of scientific works of the well - known in the Ukrainian diaspora musicologist and publicist Myron Fedoriv in the context of the preservation of national song traditions outside the ethnic territory. The information on the most important theoretical achievements of the scientist is given, the place and value of activity of the cultural public figure in the history of musical and choral culture of Ukraine and the western diaspora is defined. The author notes that Myron Fedoriv lived most of his life in the United States. He left a large amount of musical material and theoretical works in the history of Ukrainian choral culture, so he stopped the destruction of song traditions and examples of canonical liturgical singing in Ukrainian churches of the diaspora. In his works, Myron Fedoriv wrote that the singing tradition is the basis of the Ukrainian national spiritual culture, and therefore it should be preserved in the Ukrainian Catholic Church in America. As a result, the musicological heritage of Myron Fedoriv is very valuable for the Ukrainian musical culture of the twentieth century. Thus, its activities deserve more detailed study.

scholarly journals Making safe: The dirty history of a bomb disposal robot

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 174-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Lisle
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Collateral Damage ◽  
Irish Republican Army ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Museum Displays ◽  
Central Display ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Operators ◽  
Bomb Disposal

In the Ulster Museum’s new gallery The Troubles and Beyond, the central display showcases a Wheelbarrow bomb disposal robot. This machine was invented by the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1972 and used by officers of the 321 Explosive Ordinance Disposal Squadron (321EOD) to defuse car bombs planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This article offers an alternative history of that machine – a dirtier history – that critically assesses its role during the Troubles. Centrally, the article contests the British Army’s preferred account of this machine as a ‘game-changing’ technological innovation in counterinsurgency, and their understanding of themselves as benign peacekeepers. Rather than figure the Wheelbarrow robot as an unreadable ‘black box’ used instrumentally by the superior human operators of 321EOD, this article seeks to foreground the unruly transfers of agency between the machine and its operators as they tested and experimented in the exceptional colonial laboratory of Northern Ireland. The article further explores the machine’s failures during bomb disposal episodes, the collateral damage that resulted, and the multiple and often unruly reactions of local populations who watched the Wheelbarrow robot at work. Providing a ‘dirty history’ of the Wheelbarrow robot is an effort to demonstrate that war can never be fully cleaned up, either through militarized mythologies of technological innovation or hopeful museum displays.

‘The Axile Tree’

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-259
Author(s):  
Francesca Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Dream Of The Rood ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Poetic Sequences ◽  
The Catholic Church

Chapter 5 asks how Jones’s vision of an early medieval culture in which Welsh and English tradition are equally dominant resonates throughout the poem’s eight poetic sequences in the image of the cross. The chapter traces a history of Jones’s encounters with The Dream of the Rood, the Ruthwell monument, and the history of early medieval Northumbria during the 1930s, and explores how this experience of the landscape and history of Northumberland informed his reading of the Old English Dream of the Rood tradition. Jones’s visual and verbal engagement with the Ruthwell monument at the climax of The Anathemata in ‘Sherthursdaye and Venus Day’ allows for the creation of a new sign of the cross for the twentieth century, a sign which draws together the English and Welsh traditions that have informed the institution of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, as well as the poet’s own Catholicism.

scholarly journals Church Land Reform through a Combination of Examples and Theology of Spatial Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ntandoyenkosi Mlambo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Imbalances ◽  
Catholic Tradition

Land was one of the ways the colonialist venture as well as the apartheid regime used to divide people, as well as being a catalyst for superiority. Over hundreds of years, from the beginning of colonial rule until the end of apartheid in 1994, the indigenous people of South Africa were dispossessed from the land. With the end of the Truth and Reconciliation proceedings, it was clear from suggested actions that there should be restitution in South Africa to begin to correct the spatial and resultant economic imbalances. Churches in South Africa embarked on setting declarations on land reform ecumenically and within their own walls. However, little information is available on final reform measures that churches have taken after several ecumenical meetings in the 1990s. Additionally, there is little development in South African theology circles on a theology of land justice. Moreover, a praxis on land justice for churches has not been openly developed or discussed post-1994. This study aims to look at the history of the land issue in South Africa, particularly from 1948–1994, and will include the history of land ownership in the Roman Catholic tradition. In addition, it will look at examples of land reform in the Roman Catholic Church from 1999 until the present in the Diocese of Mariannhill. Furthermore, the article will consider the emerging praxis of spatial justice based on a hermeneutic view taken from black liberation and contextual theology. The article concludes with a look at how these examples and new praxis can develop the ecumenical church’s quest for a prophetic voice and actions in land South African land reform.

scholarly journals Our Friends Across the Water: Northern Ireland Media Coverage of the Scottish Independence Referendum

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthea Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Sinn Fein ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
Scottish Politics

The chapter opens by noting a degree of closeness of Scottish politics for Northern Irish media and their consumers, also summarizing some historical factors in relation to present circumstances in Northern Ireland: and outlining its dedicated media provision. The chapter defines its concepts for analysis, specifying themes such as volume of coverage and fact vs opinion, as well as focus and position. Both press and broadcast output is considered. Unionist-leaning and nationalist-leaning press were seen to interpret events differently, with more space offered by broadcasting, as distinct from the press, to the view of Sinn Fein. There was a significant if minor tendency to see the participatory and democratic nature of the Scottish referendum favourably in comparison to the history of the Troubles.

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