Establishment , which may have been produced at
Iona Abbey, around 800 Christianity may have been introduced to what is now Scotland by soldiers of the
Roman Legions stationed in the far north of the province of
Britannia. Even after the 383 withdrawal of the Roman garrisons by
Magnus Maximus, it is well documented in sources about
Saint Mungo, St
Ninian, and in locally composed works of early
Welsh-language literature, like
Y Gododdin, the
Book of Taliesin, and the
Book of Aneirin, that Christianity survived among the Proto-Welsh-speaking kingdoms in Scotland, which are still referred to in
Modern Welsh as the
Hen Ogledd (lit. "the Old North"). Like it's faithful, however, Christianity was slowly driven westward with
refugees from the
Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. The
Picts, Anglo-Saxons, and
Gaels of modern Scotland, who were traditionally tribal peoples, were mainly evangelized and converted between the fifth and seventh centuries by Irish missionaries such as Sts
Columba and
Baithéne, the founders and first two abbots of
Iona Abbey,
St Donnán of
Eigg, and St
Máel Ruba, a monk from
Bangor Abbey who became the founder of
Applecross Abbey in
Wester Ross. These missionaries tended to found
monastic institutions, which expanded to include schools, libraries, and collegiate churches whose priests both evangelized and served large areas. Partly as a result of these factors, some scholars have identified a distinctive
Celtic Church, to which Catholics, Protestants,
Miaphysite Orthodox, and
Eastern Orthodox, have all claimed in historical debates to be the only legitimate heirs. In the Celtic Church, attitudes towards
clerical celibacy were more relaxed, a differing form of monastic
tonsure was used, the use of
prayer beads known as the
Pater Noster cord as a means of "prayer without ceasing" preceded the invention of the
rosary by
St Dominic, and the lunar method was used for
calculating the date of Easter. During the 1960s,
Frank O'Connor explained that the reason why, on both sides of the
Irish Sea,
abbots were often more significant than bishops is because a Church governed by an
Episcopal polity, "in a tribal society was a contradiction in terms. No tribe, however small or weak, would accept the authority of a bishop from another tribe; but with a monastic organisation, each tribe could have its own monastery, and the larger ones could have as many as they wished." Also, despite a shared belief in the
Real Presence in the
Eucharist, the veneration of the
Blessed Virgin, and shared use of the
Ecclesiastical Latin liturgical language, as is documented by
primary sources such as the
Stowe Missal, there were often significant differences between the
Celtic Rite and the mainstream
Roman Rite and evidence of a distinctive form of
Celtic chant in Latin, which is most closely related to
Gallican chant, also survives in liturgical music manuscripts dating from the period. The
Culdees, an
eremitical order from
Gaelic Ireland, also spread to Scotland, where their presence continued at least into the 11th-century. In his life of
Saint Margaret of Scotland,
Turgot of Durham,
Bishop of St Andrews, wrote of the Culdees, "At that time in the Kingdom of the Scots there were many living, shut up in cells in places set apart, by a life of great strictness, in the flesh but not according to the flesh, communing, indeed, with angels upon earth." At the same time, the
erenagh system in
Gaelic Ireland of hereditary lay administration of
Church lands by family branches deliberately appointed from within the
derbhfine of local
Irish clan chiefs led to notorious abuses; like monasteries warring against each other and the infamous Irish "royal-abbot" of Cork and
Clonfert Abbeys,
Fedelmid mac Crimthainn, who personally led armies into battle against other
Irish clans and abbeys and routinely
sacked and
burned other monasteries. Due to the close ties between the Church in both countries, the erenagh system also spread to
Gaelic Scotland, with at least some similar results. For example, during the 11th-century reign of the Scottish High King
Macbeth, which
was later fictionalized by
William Shakespeare, the High King's greatest domestic foe by far proved to be his own uncle,
Crínán of Dunkeld, the warrior-abbot of
Dunkeld Abbey,
Mormaer of Atholl, the legitimately married father of the late High King
Duncan I, the grandfather of King
Malcolm III of Scotland, and progenitor of the Scottish Royal
House of Dunkeld. Despite the ongoing
religious persecution and expulsion from their monasteries and convents of "Romanists" like
St Mo Chota, who opposed how much the Celtic Church had been, "absorbed by the tribal system" and lost its independence from
control by local secular rulers, at least some of these issues had been resolved on both sides of the Irish Sea by the mid-seventh century. After the conversion, successful war for political independence from
Norway, and increasing
Gaelicisation of
Scandinavian Scotland and the
Isle of Man under
Somerled and
his heirs, the Roman Rite
Diocese of the Isles under bishops appointed by the
Holy See became the dominant religion.
Medieval era and Renaissance ; detail of a mural by
Victorian era artist
William Hole During the reign of King Malcolm III, the Scottish church underwent a series of reforms and transformations. Through the influence of his
Hungarian-born wife,
St Margaret of Scotland, a clearly defined hierarchy of diocesan bishops and parochial structure for local churches, in line with the queen's experiences in Continental Europe, was developed. Following the 1286 extinction of the Royal
House of Dunkeld and the subsequent invasion of Scotland by
Edward Longshanks, the
political purge of Scottish clergy from the hierarchy, religious orders, and parishes, and their replacement by English clergy was one of the root causes of the
Scottish Wars of Independence and is part of why so many of the Scottish clergy defied the pro-English policy of
Pope John XXII and signed the
Declaration of Arbroath. Following the
Battle of Bannockburn, large numbers of new foundations, which introduced Continental European forms of reformed monasticism, began to predominate as the Scottish church re-established its independence from England and developed a clearer diocesan structure, becoming a "special daughter of the see of Rome" but lacking leadership in the form of archbishops. During the
Late Middle Ages, similar to in other European countries, the
Investiture Controversy and the
Great Schism of the West allowed the Scottish Crown, like
Scottish clan chiefs using the
erenagh system during the time of the
Celtic Church, to
gain greater influence over senior appointments to the hierarchy and two archbishoprics had accordingly been established by the end of the fifteenth century. While some historians have discerned a decline of monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, the
mendicant orders of
friars grew, particularly in the expanding
burghs, to meet the spiritual needs of the population. New saints and cults of religious devotion also proliferated. Despite problems over the number and quality of clergy after the
Black Death in the fourteenth century, and the efforts of
Hussite emissary
Pavel Kravař to spread doctrines considered
heresy; the
Renaissance in Scotland also saw wider availability of books, including the
Classics and newer works of
early modern Scottish literature, due to
Androw Myllar and
Walter Chepman's
introduction of the
Gutenberg Revolution to Scotland in 1507. The
printing press also helped spread the "
New Learning" known as
Renaissance humanism, which was also embraced and spread by many Catholic clergy. The tradition of Crown-appointed "lay abbots" was reintroduced during the reign of
James III of Scotland, with similar results to the time of the Celtic Church. King
James V even appointed five of his illegitimate sons, with the assent of the
Holy See, to the wealthiest abbacies in the Kingdom. According to
George Scott-Moncrieff, "Such men were naturally opposed to administrative reform and as naturally enthusiastic for a revolution that would make them absolute possessors of property to which otherwise they would only claim the life-rent..." For this and similar reasons, many Scottish Catholic priests and monks who were also Renaissance humanists, such as Archbishop
Andrew Forman,
Quintin Kennedy, and
Ninian Winzet, "felt bitterly the failure of their fellow clergy to live the life they proclaimed", and called for an internal restoration of
Christian morality, that would later be dubbed the
Counter-Reformation. Similar critiques and calls also appear in the
Middle Scots poetry of
Makars
William Dunbar and
Robert Henryson. Therefore, the Church in Scotland remained relatively strong and stable until the
Scottish Reformation in the sixteenth century. Other similar cases had very similar results. Despite also facing considerable popular opposition, the
Scottish Reformation was effectively completed when the
Scottish Parliament broke with the papacy and
established a
Calvinist confession by law in 1560. At that point, the offering or attending of the
Mass was outlawed. The subsequent
suppression of monasteries, ban on
religious orders, and, most particular, the
iconoclasm and
book burnings at
monastic libraries that often accompanied them has recently been criticised, even by non-Catholic historians, as the destruction of Scotland's
cultural inheritance. Although illegal under the
Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560 and other similar legislation, Scotland did not become "a
theocratic state on the model of
Calvin's
Geneva", and an underground Catholic Church continued to survive and command the loyalty of at least half the population in Scotland. According to historian
George Scott-Moncrieff, "The collapse of the secular clergy, many of whom renounced their vows and
married, while three bishops apostatised and the rest retired in confusion, left only a few who travelled through the country disguised as laymen trying to succour whom they could." In 1565, for example,
John Knox relates that for one hour and four hours on two separate days underground priest Sir James Tarbet was tied to the
Mercat Cross, Edinburgh and pelted with eggs after being caught saying the
Tridentine Mass, which had been criminalised five years previously.
James VI and his heirs, however, had intended for the
Church of Scotland ("The Kirk") to embrace the
Elizabethan religious settlement,
High Church Anglicanism,
Royal Supremacy, and
episcopal polity. This led to long-term internal battles between Episcopalian and Presbyterian factions over control of the Kirk, the religious persecution of whichever faction had fallen from power, and the ultimate formation of a separate
Scottish Episcopal Church. Persecution of Catholics, however, continued under both Episcopalian and Presbyterian governance. in Notre Dame de Finistere Church,
Brussels, which was hidden by the
Marquess of Huntley in
Huntly Castle and eventually smuggled to the
Spanish Netherlands for protection from desecration following the Scottish Reformation. Even so, the remaining domestic clergy played a relatively small role and the initiative was often left to lay leaders. Wherever
noble families, local
lairds, or
Scottish clan chiefs illegally offered
religious toleration Catholicism continued to thrive covertly, as under
Clan Donald in
Lochaber,
Eigg, and
South Uist, under
Clan MacNeil in
Barra, under the
Chisholms and
Frasers of
Strathglass, or in the north-east under
Clan Gordon. In these areas Catholic sacraments were administered by disguised and outlawed priests, but with relative openness. For example, in his efforts to enforce the King's
religious settlement as
Bishop of the Isles John Leslie sometimes ran into opposition from the local
Scottish nobility (). This was particularly true during the Bishop's efforts to shut down the illegal and underground pastoral work in his Diocese by
Franciscan missionaries dispatched from the similarly underground
Catholic Church in Ireland during the 1620s and '30s. Upon 9 September 1630, Fr. Patrick Hegarty, OFM, was arrested upon
South Uist by a posse of
priest hunters commanded in person by Bishop Leslie, but before the Bishop could deliver Fr. Hegarty for trial, however, ''Raghnall Mac Ailein 'ic Iain'' (Ranald MacDonald of
Benbecula), the uncle of the then
Chief of
Clan MacDonald of Clanranald and great-great-grandfather to Scottish Gaelic
national poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, intervened and relieved the Bishop and his posse of their captive. The incident infuriated
King Charles I, who sent a furious letter about it to
Privy Council of Scotland on 10 December 1630 and was followed by unsuccessful efforts to summon the Highland nobleman to
Inverary for criminal prosecution. In most of Scotland, Catholicism became an underground faith in private households and secret parish communities, connected by ties of kinship. This reliance on the household meant that Scottish laywomen often became vitally important as the upholders and transmitters of the faith, such as in the case of Lady Fernihurst in the Borders. They transformed their households into centres of religious activity and created safe houses and secret chapels for
priests. After the
reformed kirk took over the existing structures and assets of the Church,
the 1567 overthrow of
Mary, Queen of Scots, and the
defeat of the armies seeking her restoration during the 1570s, the Vatican reclassified Scotland as a missionary territory and therefore subject to the
Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith. The leading
religious orders of the
Counter-Reformation, the
Dominicans and the newly founded
Jesuits, initially took relatively little interest in Scotland as a target of missionary work and their effectiveness was at first severely damaged by Vatican
bureaucracy and, especially by territorial rivalries against each other, secular priests, and other religious orders. The initiative was taken by a small group of Scots connected with the
Crichton family, who had supplied the bishops of
Dunkeld. They joined the Jesuit order and returned to attempt conversions. Their focus at first was mainly on evangelising the nobility and courtiers, which led them into involvement in seeking to end the religious persecution of the Church through a series of complex
regime change plots and political entanglements, which were covertly opposed from London by
Lord Burghley and Sir
Francis Walsingham. The majority of surviving Scottish laity, however, were long ignored. Ogilvie, who was canonised by
Pope Paul VI on 17 October 1976, is often assumed to be the only Scottish Catholic martyr of the Reformation era. Nevertheless, the longevity of the Catholic Church's illegal status had a devastating impact on the numbers of the laity. Even so, a significantly large Catholic population, served by outlawed "heather priests", continued to exist. This was especially the case in the
Doric-speaking Northeast and the more remote
Gàidhealtachd areas of the
Hebrides, the
Northwest Highlands, and in
Galloway.
Decline from the 17th century in July 2007 Numbers probably reduced in the seventeenth century and organisation deteriorated. The Pope appointed
Thomas Nicolson as the first
Vicar Apostolic over the mission in 1694. The country was organised into districts and by 1703 there were thirty-three Catholic clergy. Beyond Scalan there were six attempts to found a seminary in the Highlands between 1732 and 1838, all suffering both financially and due to Catholicism's illegal status. Even though many Presbyterians and Episcopalians also fought as Jacobites, aftermath of the
Jacobite rising of 1745 further increased the persecution faced by Catholics in Scotland. that followed the defeat of the
Jacobite Army at the
Battle of Culloden. According to Bishop
John Geddes, "Immediately after the
Battle of Culloden, orders were issued for the
demolishing all the Catholic chapels and for
apprehending the priests." Historian John Watts confirms that this policy was followed by government troops and that, "In doing so, they appear to have been acting on official orders." "Heather priest" Fr
Alexander Cameron's biographer Thomas Wynne alleges that these official orders actually
preceded Culloden, "A proclamation was on 6th December 1745, putting into operation certain laws which were more or less obsolete - the Act of
Queen Elizabeth,
cap. 27, and of
James VI,
cap. 3, against Jesuits and Catholic priests. A reward of £100 was offered every such person, after conviction, within
London,
Westminster,
Southwark, and within ten miles of these places." The Hanoverian atrocities that followed were motivated by what
American Civil War historian Thomas Lowry has termed "the European tradition … that to victors belong the spoils - the losers could expect
pillage and
plunder", and that enemy civilians are "grist for the mills of more hardheaded conquerors such as
Genghis Khan,
Tamerlane, and
Ivan the Terrible." Also according to Bishop John Geddes, "Early in the spring of 1746, some ships of war came to the coast of the isle of
Barra and landed some men, who threatened they would lay desolate the whole island if the priest was not delivered up to them. Father
James Grant, who was missionary then, and afterward Bishop, being informed of the threats in a safe retreat in which he was in a little island, surrendered himself, and was carried prisoner to
Mingarry Castle on the Western coast (i.e.
Ardnamurchan) where he was detained for some weeks." After long and cruel imprisonment with other Catholic priests at
Inverness Gaol and in a
prison hulk anchored in the
River Thames, Grant was deported to the
Netherlands and warned never to return to the
British Isles. Like the other priests deported with him, Fr. Grant returned to Scotland almost immediately. His fellow prisoner, Father
Alexander Cameron, an outlawed "heather priest" to
Clan Fraser of Lovat and
Clan Chisholm, former
military chaplain, and the younger brother to
Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the
Chief of
Clan Cameron, was less fortunate. Fr. Cameron died aboard the prison hulk due to the hardship of his imprisonment on 19 October 1746. During the 21st century, the
Knights of St. Columba at the
University of Glasgow launched a campaign to
canonize Fr. Cameron, "with the hope that he will become a great saint for Scotland and that our nation will merit from his intercession." According to historian Daniel Szechi, however, the government's post-Culloden backlash focused upon the Catholic clergy and laity of the Highland District, while leaving the much larger and better organized Lowland District reasonably unscathed. According to Marcus Tanner, "As the
Reformed Church faltered in the urban and increasingly industrialised Lowlands,
Presbyterianism made its great breakthrough among the Gaelic Highlanders, virtually snapping cultural bonds that had linked them to Ireland since the lordship of
Dalriada. The Highlands, outside tiny Catholic enclaves like in
South Uist and
Barra, took on the contours they have since preserved - a region marked by a strong tradition of
sabbatarianism and a puritanical distaste for instrumental music and dancing, which have only recently regained popular acceptance". The pioneering
Victorian era folklorist and
Celticist John Francis Campbell of
Islay () and his many assistant collectors had very different reasons for criticising what they saw as the unnecessary excesses of the Calvinisation of the
Highlands and Islands. At the beginning of his groundbreaking collection
Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Campbell and his helpers complained at length that, due to the fear of displeasing the local ministers, elders, and parish school-masters, it had become almost impossible to collect
Scottish mythology or folklore from the
seanchaidhs in Gaelic-speaking regions that had recently converted to
Presbyterianism from Catholicism or the
Scottish Episcopal Church. Exact numbers of communicants are uncertain, given the illegal status of Catholicism. In 1755 it was estimated that there were some 16,500 communicants, mainly in the north and west. In 1764, "the total Catholic population in Scotland would have been about 33,000 or 2.6% of the total population. Of these 23,000 were in the Highlands." Another estimate for 1764 is of 13,166 Catholics in the Highlands, perhaps a quarter of whom had emigrated by 1790, and another source estimates Catholics as perhaps 10% of the population.
Impact of the Clearances from 1755 is a Catholic clandestine church located at the
Enzie While most of the landlords responsible for the
Highland Clearances did not target people for ethnic or religious reasons, there is evidence of
anti-Catholicism among some of them. In particular, large numbers of Catholics emigrated from the Western Highlands in the period 1770 to 1810 and there is evidence that anti Catholic sentiment (along with famine, poverty, and
rackrenting) was a contributory factor in that period. In an April 1787 letter from
Moidart to the
Congregation for Propaganda in Rome, Fr. Austin MacDonald wrote, "On account of the emigration of the people of
Knoydart to Canada, along with their priest; it fell to me in the autumn to attend to those who were left behind, and during the winter to the people of Moydart (sic) as well. Although not less than 600 Catholics went to America, still I administered the Sacraments to over 500 souls who remained. The overpopulation of these districts, together with the oppression of the landlords, are the principal causes of the departure of so many, not only among the Catholics, but also among the Protestants." In
Glengarry County,
Upper Canada, a
Canadian Gaelic-speaking pioneer settlement was established for Scottish Catholics through the efforts of
British Army military chaplain and future Catholic bishop
Alexander Macdonnell. The settlement's inhabitants consisted of members of the
Glengarry Fencibles, a disbanded Catholic unit of the
Highland Fencible Corps, and their families. In addition to Bishop MacDonnell, there were many other "heather priests", such as
William Fraser,
Angus Bernard MacEachern, and Ranald Rankin, the composer of the famous Gaelic
Christmas carol Tàladh Chrìosda, who similarly followed their evicted and voluntary émigré parishioners into the
Scottish diaspora during the Clearances. In 1879, a visitor from Scotland enthusiastically declared that the
Glengarry dialect of Scottish Gaelic was better preserved, "with the most perfect accent, and with scarcely any, if any, admixture of English", in
Glengarry County and in
Cornwall, Ontario than in
Lochaber itself. For very similar reasons, Odo Blundell commented ruefully in 1909 that the language, customs, and
oral tradition of once densely populated and overwhelmingly Catholic
Strathglass were better preserved in
Nova Scotia than in Scotland. After receiving his post following the 1878 Restoration of the Hierarchy and during the last decade of the Clearances, Bishop
Angus MacDonald of the
Diocese of Argyll and the Isles led by example during the height of the
Highland Land League agitation. The Bishop and his priests became leading and formidable activists for
tenant's rights, reasonable rents,
security of tenure,
free elections, and against the
political bossism, excessive rents, and
religious discrimination that were keeping a majority of the Catholic and Protestant population of the Highlands and Islands critically impoverished. According to Roger Hutchinson, the hostility of Bishop MacDonald and his priests to the absolute power granted to the landlords under
Scots property law at the time, which Hutchinson inaccurately labels as
Liberation Theology rather than
Distributism, was fueled by a deep sense of outrage over the decimation of the Catholic population of the Scottish Gaeldom by the
Highland Clearances. A further influence was the knowledge that the roots of the Clearances lay in the
Classical Liberalism preached in
Adam Smith's
The Wealth of Nations during the
Scottish Enlightenment and in that ideology's
hostility to, "bigotry and superstition"; which were, in 18th- and 19th-century Scotland, routinely used as shorthand for
Roman Catholicism. Roger Hutchinson further writes that Bishop MacDonald's choice to assign Gaelic-speaking priests from the Scottish mainland to parishes in the
Hebrides was accordingly no accident. About that time, when the Bishop and his priests were the leaders of
direct action,
rent strikes, and other acts of resistance to the
Anglo-Scottish landlords, Fr. Michael MacDonald has since commented, "I think that one of the things that may have influenced the boldness of the priests at that time was simply that they had no relations on the islands who could have been got at by the estate
Factor or others."
Large-scale Catholic immigration During the 19th century,
Irish immigration substantially increased the number of Catholics in the country, especially in
Glasgow and its vicinity, and other industrial communities in the Lowlands of Scotland, but also in many rural communities, where Irish migrants worked as
navvies and farm labourers (see
Potato Labour Scandal 1971). Initially, clergymen from the
recusant districts of North-East Scotland played an important part in providing support. The same community saw regular outbreaks of violence in the pubs on the paydays of local Irish navvies and the first of many serious
anti-Irish riots that negatively affected Dumbarton's reputation after Protestant
shipwrights listened to a sermon by visiting
anti-Catholic preacher and
polemicist John Sayers Orr in October 1855. A very similar riot had previously been incited by Orr, whom Tim Pat Coogan has compared to the Rev.
Ian Paisley, in Greenock on
12 July 1851. When Orr was thrown into prison, his followers
also rioted. Attempts were also made to convert Irish migrants to
Presbyterianism by recruiting missionaries like Rev. Patrick MacMenemy, a native speaker of
Ulster Irish from the
Glens of Antrim, but whose ministerial reputation collapsed following allegations of womanizing in 1885. The
Catholic hierarchy was re-established in 1878 by
Pope Leo XIII and six new dioceses were created: five of them were organised into a single province with the
Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh as metropolitan; the Diocese of Glasgow remained separate and directly subject to the Apostolic See. As the Catholic presence in the Lowlands increased and revived, however, there were regular cases of conflict between Highland migrants and Irish immigrants over both cultural differences and control of Catholic parishes, schools, and neighbourhoods. Irish Catholics often complained to the
Holy See, particularly after the restoration of the Scottish Hierarchy in the 1878, that Irish priests were only used to organize parishes and schools and then immediately replaced by the bishops with
Doric-speaking pastors from
Banffshire and other recusant districts in the Northeast of Scotland. Even though this was intended to assimilate Highland and Irish Catholics into Lowland
Scottish culture as quickly as possible, the Hierarchy's success in this policy ultimately proved mixed. The urban centers of the Lowlands continue to have branches of
Conradh na Gaeilge and remain centers of the
Irish language outside Ireland. Also, since the recent
Scottish Gaelic Renaissance and increasing spread of
language immersion schools, for new and emerging dialects like
Glasgow Gaelic. Furthermore, in 1928 the
Legion of Mary, a
Marian movement recently organized for voluntary service by
Frank Duff in
Dublin, established its first foreign
praesidium (branch) in Scotland. In the wake of Irish Catholic migration to Scotland, native Scottish Catholics, such as the
recusants, supported efforts in education to "denationalise" the Irish, while Scottish-born Catholic clergy also engaged in efforts to suppress Irish radicalism. Other native Scots, such as converts and the Scottish
ultramontanes worked to foster a "more prosperous, productive and respectable
British Catholic Body." Later Italian,
Polish, and Lithuanian immigrants further reinforced the numbers. The post-
World War II arrival of large numbers of
Ukrainian displaced persons resulted in the first Scottish parish of the
Eastern Catholic Churches being founded in 1965:
St Andrew's Ukrainian Catholic Church in
Leith,
Edinburgh.
Sectarian tensions Mass immigration to Scotland saw the emergence of sectarian tensions. Although the interwar Catholic community in Scotland was overwhelmingly working-class and endangered by poverty and economic crises, it was able to cope with the
Great Depression. This relative immunity was caused by the
Education (Scotland) Act 1918, which made Catholic schools fully state-funded. Michael John Rosie argues that in addition to state-funded education, it was the nature of Scottish Catholicism that "made it less vulnerable to economic dislocation": {{Blockquote|text=Arguably, the Catholic Church was the best-equipped denomination in tackling the adverse effects of economic depression, and does not seem to have suffered serious losses arising from recessionary periods. The Catholic faith is often seen as being invigorated by the combined effects of poverty and discrimination; priests tended to be drawn from the working classes and to relate well to economic hardship amongst their parishioners. Though Catholics moved increasingly during this period into skilled and white-collar jobs, the Catholic community retained a homogeneity which prevented a major social divide emerging between a practising Catholic bourgeoisie and a lapsed proletariat. ,
Scotland (
12 of July 2008) This relative economic stability allowed the Catholic community to enter the political and social life of Scotland, sparking outrage among anti-Catholic and unionist circles, most notably the
Orange Order's
Grand Lodge.
Sectarian violence in Scotland reached its peak in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Catholic
religious processions were frequently attacked by anti-Catholic and
Orange mobs. The Orange Order also frequently and deliberately staged
provocative marches through Catholic neighbourhoods. The escalating violence and skirmishes, particularly between pro- and anti-Catholic
Glasgow razor gangs, had a profound effect on Scotland as a whole; Rosie remarked that "the level and scale of the violence exhibited between 1931 and 1935 of a much more serious and concerted nature than of any period since the reintroduction of Orange parades in the 1870s". Sectarian violence was so severe that it caused higher policing costs, and local councils were tempted to ban all "religious and pseudo-religious processions" outright. While eventually no such ban took place, tightening restrictions were introduced in order to minimise anti-Catholic violence. In 1923, the
Church of Scotland produced a (since repudiated) report, entitled
The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality, accusing the largely immigrant Catholic population of subverting Presbyterian values and of spreading drunkenness, crime, and financial imprudence. Rev.
John White, a senior member of the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at the time, called for a "racially pure" Scotland, declaring "Today there is a movement throughout the world towards the rejection of non-native constituents and the crystallization of national life from native elements." Such officially hostile attitudes started to wane considerably from the 1930s and 1940s onwards, especially as the leadership of the Church of Scotland learned of what was happening in
eugenics-conscious
Nazi Germany and of what the
dangers of creating a "racially pure"
national church looked like in actual practice; particularly, after
German people who were of even partially Slavic,
Roma, or
Jewish ancestry or who were adherents of the traditionalist Protestant
Confessing Church ceased being considered "true" members of the
Volksgemeinschaft. The era's level of sectarian violence was not to be seen again until the
Glasgow pub bombings, a spillover from
the Troubles in
Northern Ireland, were carried out by the
Ulster Volunteer Force against pubs frequented by Catholics on 17 February 1979. The Glasgow-based UVF active service unit responsible for the bombings were arrested, convicted and incarcerated. Experts now believe that only the
Provisional Irish Republican Army leadership's veto on bombing operations in Scotland, which were considered counterproductive to many other useful covert operations there, prevented the Troubles from continuing to spill over and further escalating.
Social change and communal divisions In 1986, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland expressly repudiated the sections of the
Westminster Confession directly attacking the Catholic Church. In 1990, both the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church were founding members of the ecumenical bodies
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and
Action of Churches Together in Scotland; relations between denominational leaders are now very cordial. Unlike the relationship between the hierarchies of the different churches, however, some communal tensions remain. The association between football and displays of sectarian behaviour by some fans has been a source of embarrassment and concern to the management of certain clubs. The bitter rivalry between
Celtic and
Rangers in Glasgow, known as the
Old Firm, is known worldwide for its sectarian dimension. Celtic was founded by
Irish Catholic immigrants and Rangers has traditionally been supported by
Unionists and Protestants. Sectarian tensions can still be very real, though perhaps diminished compared with past decades. Perhaps the greatest psychological breakthrough was when Rangers signed
Mo Johnston (a Catholic) in 1989. Celtic, on the other hand, have never had a policy of not signing players due to their religion, and some of the club's greatest figures have been Protestants. '', upon
South Uist, in the
Outer Hebrides. From the 1980s the UK government passed several acts that had provisions concerning sectarian violence. These included the
Public Order Act 1986, which introduced offences relating to the incitement of racial hatred, and the
Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which introduced offences of pursuing a racially aggravated course of conduct that amounts to harassment of a person. The 1998 Act also required courts to take into account where offences are racially motivated, when determining sentence. In the twenty-first century the
Scottish Parliament legislated against sectarianism. This included provision for religiously aggravated offences in the
Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003. The
Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 strengthened statutory aggravations for both racially and religiously motivated
hate crimes. The
Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, criminalised behaviour which is threatening, hateful, or otherwise offensive at a regulated football match including offensive singing or chanting. It also criminalised the communication of threats of serious violence and threats intended to incite religious hatred. 57% of the Catholic community belong to the manual
working-class. Though structural disadvantage had largely eroded by the 1980s, Scottish Catholics are more likely to experience poverty and deprivation than their Protestant counterparts. Many more Catholics can now be found in what were called the professions, with some occupying posts in the judiciary or in national politics. In 1999, the Rt Hon
John Reid MP became the first Catholic to hold the office of
Secretary of State for Scotland. His succession by the Rt Hon
Helen Liddell MP in 2001 attracted considerably more media comment that she was the first woman to hold the post than that she was the second Catholic. Also notable was the appointment of
Louise Richardson to the
University of St. Andrews as its principal and vice-chancellor. St Andrews is the third oldest university in the
Anglosphere. Richardson, a Catholic, was born in Ireland and is a naturalised United States citizen. She is the first woman to hold that office and first Catholic to hold it since the Scottish Reformation. The Catholic Church recognises the separate identities of Scotland and
England and Wales. The church in Scotland is governed by its own hierarchy and bishops' conference, not under the control of English bishops. In more recent years, for example, there have been times when it was especially the Scottish bishops who took the floor in the United Kingdom to argue for Catholic social and moral teaching. The presidents of the bishops' conferences of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland meet formally to discuss "mutual concerns", though they are separate national entities. "Closer cooperation between the presidents can only help the Church's work", a spokesman noted. Scottish Catholics strongly supported the
Labour Party in the past, and Labour politicians openly courted Catholic voters and accused their opponents such as the
Scottish National Party of opposing the existence of
Catholic schools. Although ancestrally indigenous Catholics remained deeply committed to the Scottish nation within the British state, Scottish Catholics are also more likely to be in favour of Scottish independence and to support SNP than non-religious voters. == Organisation ==