[Campion]

They enjoyed Christianity for a long time before Catholicism took over the island.

Reality check: Ireland was converted by St. Patrick, who went to Ireland with a papal commission to preach the Gospel to the Irish.

[RoadTest]

They enjoyed Christianity for a long time before Catholicism took over the island.
Reality check: Ireland was converted by St. Patrick, who went to Ireland with a papal commission to preach the Gospel to the Irish.

Right. But he was not Catholic, nor did he preach Roman Catholic doctrine. That is not true that he went by papal commission.

[redgolum]

Very true. But as Bede recorded, the Church in Ireland was not the same as the latter church in England.

There was an old thread that suggested that the original Irish church was much more like an Eastern Orthodox church than (for lack of a better term) a western Roman Catholic church. The style of monk's hair cut, calculation of Easter (Pascha), and some of their views on original sin were much closer to what the Orthodox believed than the Roman Catholics.

But, as with all things from that period, we are dealing non sympathetic records from over a thousand years ago. The wars were more than likely fought for secular reasons, and given a religious sheen later, and the English were never known to be very sympathetic to Irish concerns.