Politics, interdenominational relations and education in the public ministry of James Doyle, O.S.A., Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819-1934

McGrath, Thomas Gerard

Abstract

[Preface:]
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the public ministry of James Doyle, O.S.A., Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819-1834. Bishop Doyle perceived his involvement in political life which in his time was dominated by Catholic issues as part of the public profession of his ministry. In 1825 in justification of his pronounced public role he wrote: 'In every nation a clergyman is separated from society only that he may labour the more efficiently for his fellow-man, and his duty of administering to their temporal wants is not less pressing than that of devoting himself to their spiritual concerns'. In his era Doyle was widely regarded as the outstanding member of the Irish Catholic hierarchy and his profile was such that he enjoyed an international reputation. Yet apart from the work of the present writer on Doyle's pastoral ministry, which latter was exceptionally impressive, he has not been studied at length in the twentieth century.
James Doyle was born near New Ross, County Wexford, in the diocese of Ferns In 1786. He was educated locally and by the Augustinians in New Ross. He entered the Augustinian novitiate in 1805 and pursued his studies at the University of Coimbra, 1806-1808, until these were interrupted by the opening exchanges of the Peninsular War. He was ordained priest in County Wexford in 1809 and attached to the Augustinian friary in New Ross until he was appointed to the Chair of Rhetoric in Carlow College in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin in 1813. The following year he competed successfully for the Chair of Theology and Sacred Scripture in the Carlow seminary. In November 1819, at the age of thirty-three, he was consecrated Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin.
This thesis studies the totality of Doyle's public life by examining the inter-related themes of politics, interdenominational relations and education. During Doyle's early years the penal laws against Catholics had been substantially removed from the statute book though the great and fundamental issue of Catholic Emancipation or principally Catholic membership of parliament remained outstanding despite having been promised about the time of the Act of Union, 1801. The government of Ireland from the Act of Union to the period when Doyle became bishop was predominantly Orange. Ireland was managed in the Protestant interest with an accepted bias against the Catholics, who were excluded from virtually all administration and civil service positions of consequence. While most of the penal laws had been struck down de jure. Catholics remained de facto second-class citizens. The whole spirit of Irish government and administration was hostile to Catholics and Catholicism even if the letter of punitive legislation had been largely removed. Catholic politics in the same period was characterised by divisive splits over how to secure Emancipation - the Principal question being what concessions, if any, should be made by the Catholics in return for Emancipation.Doyle entered the Irish episcopacy and public life almost at the beginning of the decade which saw the issue of Catholic Emancipation dominate Irish and English politics. This is the subject of the first chapter of this thesis. Chapter two deals with the period from the achievement of Emancipation in 1829 until Doyle's death in 1834 when the cause of the Repeal of the Union, promulgated by O'Connell, was the dominant Irish political issue,
perhaps to the detriment of possible legislative gains through piecemeal reform.
The 1820s also witnessed the beginnings of an evangelical crusade in Ireland known as the New Reformation. The Protestant archbishop of Dublin declared before a parliamentary body in 1825 that 'In truth, with respect to Ireland, the Reformation may, strictly speaking, be said only now to have begun'. Inter-church relations and the tithe war are examined in the third chapter in the context of the debate at national level in which Doyle was crucially important and also in relation to what was happening in his diocese. In Kildare and Leighlin the ratio of Protestants to Catholics was variously estimated by Bishop Doyle at one Protestant for every eight to ten Catholics. For representations of the diocese see maps i-iii.
In the early nineteenth century education controlled by the state through the Established Church had only a marginal impact on the vast majority of the population which was Catholic. Education among the poor Catholics in pay or hedge schools was almost completely unregulated apart from the occasional intervention of the Catholic parochial clergy to ensure that catechesis took place or to deal with notoriously disreputable teachers. The state feared that politically disaffected teachers, without any proper or formal training, using unsuitable tracts, were teaching subversion in these schools. A parliamentary report of 1812 urged the government to support the interdenominational education of Catholics and Protestants without any hint of proselytism. The government more or less by default entrusted this task to the Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland (more usually known from its place of residence as the Kildare-street or the Kildare Place Society) which had been founded in 1811 by a group of Dublin middle-class Protestants on the principle of non-interference with children's religious beliefs. Chapter four of this thesis examines why Bishop Doyle and the Catholic Church had difficulties with the Kildare Place Society and also explores the divisive politics of education in the 1820s leading to the foundation of the Irish national system of education in 1831.
Within the major themes of this thesis, as adumbrated above, the issues are treated in a narrative chronological framework indicating the often-subtle changes of day-to-day Irish politics. The writer has assumed a certain familiarity with the basic issues on the part of his readership and has been concerned to make extensive use of the primary sources which allow us a detailed insight into the public and private faces of Bishop Doyle. This thesis then is a new and comprehensive study of Doyle's politics and his public career.

Citation

McGrath, T. G. (1992). Politics, interdenominational relations and education in the public ministry of James Doyle, O.S.A., Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819-1934. (Thesis). University of Hull. Retrieved from https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4223942

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Feb 11, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 24, 2023
• Keywords: Education
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4223942
• Additional Information: Department of Education Studies, The University of Hull
• Award Date: Sep 1, 1992