Irish Potato Famine - Clergy Apathy?

  • Thread starter Thread starter maximus
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

maximus

Guest
A friend of mine from a Protestant background has brought this up: “That Catholic Clergy during the Irish Potato was living in isolation of the hardships the population was enduring”.

My background is Dominican, so I know little about Irish history. My wife my wife is of Irish background. , from what I understand part of this was caused by the ruling authorities who were Protestant who implemented some “sharia” like laws against Catholics.

What my friend quoted sounds like some anti-Catholic propaganda. If some Irish Catholics out there could shed some knowledge about this topic it would greatly appreciated.

God Bless
 
I may be wrong, but I doubt that the clergy was living in isolation. Since they had to “earn their keep” like everyone else, it would have affected them as well. In this I mean, they had to have some kind of income/asisstance to pay their own bills. No one is imune from that. And I doubt that the clergy had any better luck growing potatoes than the laity.
 
Well you are closer the truth than your friend, I think. The fact is that their WAS a lot of food being produced in Ireland at the time-the Irish just couldn’t afford it. All they could afford was potatoes and when the potatoes failed, a mass population starved. I would say that the ruling authorities had the most to answer for, there are even records in Irish harbours of food aid coming from other countries such as Germany or Turkey and being transported straight onto ships bound for England, to make up any export deficit, for their own growing population. The only thing I’ve heard about the Catholic Church during the famine was that there were some Quaker soup kitchens established for the hungry, and apparently some bishop came out and said that if any of the poor accepted aid from a Quaker establishment they would be excommunicated. I don’t know whether to take this seriously because I saw it in the YouTube comments of a Sinead o Connor song so it could easily have come from an anti-Irish/anti-Catholic source. I doubt if the majority of ordinary clergy fared any better than other ordinary people at that time.
God Bless,
Meadhbh
 
That’s quite rich, coming from a Protestant source! After all, as John Mitchel, an Irish politician, wrote famously: “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine”.
That’s just anti-catholic propaganda which the Protestant Crown spread in order to deflect from its own culpability after it finished its genocide of Irish Catholics. :mad:
Btw, I’m half English and 1/8 Irish, so this in no way is meant in a racist manner!
 
maximus said:
A friend of mine from a Protestant background has brought this up: “That Catholic Clergy during the Irish Potato was living in isolation of the hardships the population was enduring”.

My background is Dominican, so I know little about Irish history. My wife my wife is of Irish background. , from what I understand part of this was caused by the ruling authorities who were Protestant who implemented some “sharia” like laws against Catholics.

What my friend quoted sounds like some anti-Catholic propaganda. If some Irish Catholics out there could shed some knowledge about this topic it would greatly appreciated.

God Bless
Click to expand...
It’s a monsterous lie.
The Catholic Church has historical documentation on it’s side.
Never ceases to amaze me the lengths anti-Catholics will go to, to smear the Church.
 
maximus said:
A friend of mine from a Protestant background has brought this up: “That Catholic Clergy during the Irish Potato was living in isolation of the hardships the population was enduring”.

My background is Dominican, so I know little about Irish history. My wife my wife is of Irish background. , from what I understand part of this was caused by the ruling authorities who were Protestant who implemented some “sharia” like laws against Catholics.

What my friend quoted sounds like some anti-Catholic propaganda. If some Irish Catholics out there could shed some knowledge about this topic it would greatly appreciated.

God Bless
Click to expand...
Ask your friend for the documented, historical source of his/her claim.
 
agnes_therese said:
Ask your friend for the documented, historical source of his/her claim.
Click to expand...
I will now ask him where he got his information. It just sometimes you do not have the proper answer at the top of your head and you get side swiped and you do not have a retort. Because of my background I would have no knowledge in this area, but I smelled something fishy.

God Bless
 
erlembald said:
That’s quite rich, coming from a Protestant source! After all, as John Mitchel, an Irish politician, wrote famously: “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine”.
That’s just anti-catholic propaganda which the Protestant Crown spread in order to deflect from its own culpability after it finished its genocide of Irish Catholics. :mad:
Btw, I’m half English and 1/8 Irish, so this in no way is meant in a racist manner!
Click to expand...
Thank you, for your response it just you come across so much stuff and just when you thought you had heard it all then something like this comes along. As a person of Dominican descend I am not going to be well versed in this topic and my wife family has been in this country since colonial times.

There is a nice beauty in having brothers in the faith through out this world.

God Bless
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top