Abstract
Ireland, both North and South, remains one of the most religious countries in Western Europe (Mitchell 2006, 25). When civil war broke out in Northern Ireland in 1968, 95 percent of Catholics went to mass every week, and 45 percent of Protestants attended weekly church-figures far higher than the rest of the mostly Protestant United Kingdom. The figure for Catholic attendance in the Republic of Ireland in the same year was 94 percent. Even today, a survey in 2007 revealed that there are significantly more current regular churchgoers than average in Northern Ireland-the highest at 45 percent than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, with 81 percent professing to be Christians and only 0.4 percent belong to other religions.1 Religious membership in Northern Ireland is almost synonymous with political persuasion, particularly on the part of Protestants. In a survey carried out in 1995 by the Northern Ireland Social Attitudes Survey, 90 percent of Protestants opted to remain part of the United Kingdom, compared to just 24 percent of Catholics, while 60 percent of Catholics were in favor of the reunification of North and South Ireland. Such division is part of the heritage of the island of Ireland, whose divisions reflect the history of Christendom itself. Following the arrival of Saint Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the early to mid-fifth century AD, Christianity became the major religion and by the sixth century had completely subsumed the indigenous pagan religion. The Norman/English invasions and settlements in Ireland began in 1169, and millions of acres of land were given to English soldiers who had served in wars against Ireland. These earlier occupiersettlers integrated relatively easily into the native population-becoming "more Irish than the Irish themselves" (Níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil iad féin). They located themselves within Irish social and cultural society, spoke the Irish language, and intermarried with the Irish. They integrated so well that the British decided that the later settlements, which happened mainly in the northern part of the island, needed to be designed to ensure the separation of settlers and the natives to maintain orderly governance by the British. This separation tactic was assisted by the religious divisions of the sixteenth-century Reformation, which meant that most of the settlers were Protestant while most of the indigenous remained Catholic and loyal to Rome. Unlike the earlier plantations, therefore, the later influxes of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century settlers led to an extremely divided society in Northern Ireland. Many of those divisions have remained in place until today.