Mea culpa

I first became interested in church history at school, a couple of generations ago, and followed it up as a secondary interest at university. 

However, I am embarrassed that it has only been over the last few days that I realised how uncritical I have been. I've always, I guess, preferred story over analysis. Whether that was instilled by my education or retained out of complacency I suppose is now unimportant.

The story I've been looking to write recently is an account of instances of burning Bibles in Ireland in the nineteenth century.  In brief: the Authorised, King James, version so loved by Anglicans was heresy to Roman Catholics. Should a copy find its way into the hands of a Catholic Priest it was to be destroyed by burning. (I propose to explore this in more detail later.)   

However, in searching for instances of bible-burning, what came to light was something of the nature of English colonialism in Ireland, its self-deceptions, and my own scotosis.

Simplistically, Catholics in southern Ireland were regarded as sub-human (or, at best, sub-citizen) and Catholic priests as barely educated peasants. Simultaneously (and this contrariness is not untypical of a colonising power) the people were feared for their potential to rebel, and priests were regarded as a continuous potential threat. Such fears peaked when times were troubled, and especially when Britain was at war with the Catholic powers of France and Spain.

Consequently the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society in providing Bibles - King James' Bibles - to the poor in Ireland, and of the London Hibernian Society in providing education to impoverished children in Ireland, were (I believe) motivated by the best of motives when viewed through English and imperial eyes. In practice both were voluntary extensions of the British State. They sought to ameliorate, respectively, a lack of scripture and of education, and both wholly avoided a critical understanding of the issues. 

(The London Hibernian Society was proud of providing education on the cheap: "scarcely more than two shillings and sixpence per annum." for 2355 schools and 135,933 pupils, a brochure for potential supporters declared in 1837 [google books].)