Ireland is a Catholic majority country. Yet all the Americans I know who identify as Irish are Protestant. Why is that?
2026-05-06 16:02 UTC
Replies (8)
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@Fondots@lemmy.world 2026-05-06 17:18
>Appalachia That's going to give you a big selection bias. A lot of Appalachians are "Scotch-Irish" (also called "Scots-Irish") who came from Northern Ireland, which is more heavily Protestant than the rest of Ireland. Before that, their ancestors were from Scotland and northern England before immigrating to Ireland. In the UK and Ireland I believe people with similar ancestry are usually called Ulster Scots (for the Ulster region of Ireland, if that wasn't obvious) And in addition to that, there were probably a lot of Catholic people/families who converted along the way after arriving here since the US is overall mostly protestant of one flavor or another, and they just sort of assimilated into that or wanted to avoid anti-catholic discrimination (which has been a thing at different times and places around the US, the KKK for example has historically been very anti-catholic, and even as recently as JFK there was a decent amount of people concerned that since he was a Catholic that he'd be taking orders from the Pope or something) In other parts of the country you'll probably find more Catholics of Irish ancestry. Anecdotally, growing up in the Philly suburbs, myself being partially of Irish Catholic descent, I only *remember* one protestant Irish family being in school with me, but plenty of Irish Catholics (there may have been others, but I only remember them, we didn't exactly go around discussing religion all that often)
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@jwiggler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-06 16:10
I think prob a regional thing. Lotta irish catholics up in new england
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@NathanDerWeise@feddit.org 2026-05-06 16:36
How many Catholics do you know in general? This is more of a rhetorical question. I live in/near the southern Appalachians, and there are very few Catholics here of any ethnic background.
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@nocturne@slrpnk.net 2026-05-06 16:18
My great grandmother was from Ireland, she was Catholic.
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@msokiovt@lemmy.today 2026-05-06 16:14
In Irish history, the people there kicked out the Jesuits, the Earth Beast of Revelation 13. Why was this? The Irish Catholics knew the Jesuits' dirty deeds. The Irish who identify as Protestant likely understand that Popery is not correct, and had actually figured out how evil Catholicism is. Catholicism is the Mark of the Beast after all.
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@yesman@lemmy.world 2026-05-06 17:23
> we were not considered white until the twentieth century. That's a myth. While the Irish were certainly looked down upon by other Europeans, they were still European Christians and therefore white. The Irish are set apart in Western Europe due to her anti-colonial struggles. And they were absolutely subjected to ethnic abuse at home and as immigrants. But the Irish colonial project wasn't underpinned by race-science the way African and American projects were. It was just regular imperialism: original recipe. This is similar to people in Eastern Europe. The word Slav sounds like slave and that's not a coincidence.
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@XeroxCool@lemmy.world 2026-05-08 00:45
With or without the word, it was the same mentality elsewhere, too. Many Irish diasporas align with Italians. They clashed with each other because they arrived at the same time at the same place. They put each other down to try to climb up. Then as they clowly rose neck and neck, dispersing into better neighborhoods, they freed space for the next bottom rung to move in. So naturally, the bitter rivals became best friends and, together, shit on the next diaspora. The cycle repeats.
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@MehBlah@lemmy.world 2026-05-06 16:08
To fit in mainly. After all we were not considered white until the twentieth century.