Irish House Mass

In the years before the English crown gained influence over the island, the spirit of the

Irish was in their Catholic faith. This oil on canvas painting by the Irish landscape artist Aloyisius O’Kelly now held in Dublin’s National Gallery captures the Catholic

condition in Ireland from the 16th to the 19th century. The priest gives a blessing at a “station mass,” which was an underground Catholic Mass quickly set up and always changing location out of fear of being exposed. 

In 1883, when O’Kelly painted the “Mass in a Connemara Cabin,” Irish Catholics were at the tail end of years of oppression from the United Kingdom. England had been involved in Irish affairs since after the Anglo-Norman invasion and had held direct or at least indirect control of Ireland since 1169 AD. Ireland practiced its Catholicism unimpeded from the English at the beginning. However, when the Pope rejected Henry VIII’s annulment for his marriage, the Church of England became Protestant in 1534.

Hostility towards the Catholic nation began to rise. In 1613, Catholics lost the majority in the Irish Parliament due to the wealth and influence of the English and started to lose their rights to openly practice. In the following years, Britain would become annoyed by the conflicting religions and acted upon their frustration to centralize authority for good under one crown and belief practice. English politician and soldier Oliver Cromwell led the Tudor Conquest of Ireland

lasting from 1649 until 1653. With this invasion and the coming of a potato famine happening simultaneously, Ireland lost 10% of its population. But passion for their faith remained.

To continue their control over the Irish Catholics, the British Parliament enacted a series of penal laws against this opposition in 1695. Catholics were not able to vote, own firearms, hold public office, practice law, teach, or attend universities. Catholic churches could not be built of stone and had to be established a certain distance away from main roads. 

The British saw this as an opportunity to crush the Catholics once and for all and imposed laws which allowed the crown to take land from Irish Catholics, both domestic and monastic lands, and gift that land to English and Scottish Protestants. England now saw Ireland as a vessel to spread its reformation through its newly acquired lands. Soon Catholicism was outlawed and the Protestant Church of England became the official religion of Ireland. In 1641, when the country was about 80% Catholic, Catholics held 59% of the land. Control of land by Catholics dropped to 22% in 1688, 14% in 1703, and 5% in the late 1700s once the penal laws began to relax. Catholic relief efforts to repeal the penal laws finally pushed through and ended the 134 years of oppression with the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829.

The tradition of station masses continued even after the revocation of the penal laws. This was because the reconstruction of the Catholic churches took a long time. There was something to be said about these kinds of masses. They took weeks to schedule and prepare with wall papering, painting, cleaning, and set up. The masses were hospitable, intimate, and created a foundation of trust where communities grew dramatically in their Catholicism. Imagine practicing your faith among your neighbors, friends, and family members with a priest you knew very well while all in the perpetual fear of capture, or worse. Though the thought of arrest left the equation, the memories, closeness, and tensions of their ancestors still remained.