The catholic church's colonialism

As recent social media activity has shown, Irish republicans see it as crazy that a catholic priest would accept an honour from the British (becoming 'Members of the British Empire'). As exampled above, Andree and Patricia don't see how Catholic priests could associate themselves with the British Empire and imperialism.


Ever since Brexit it’s become routine for Irish media and commentators to express with exasperation incredulity how little the British know about Ireland.

But the comments above from Andree Murphy and Patricia MacBride also shows the glaring ignorance of Irish republicans.

These Irish republicans seem to be very familiar with British imperialism and colonialism, but seem to be totally unaware that the Catholic Church played a central and driving role in the inception of and the whole history of European colonialism.

It would appear that Irish republicans like Andree and Patricia have no concept that the Catholic Church was one and entwined with imperialism. That they are so vehemently against British imperialism, but have no concept of Catholic imperialism is truly remarkable.

The Catholic Church backed and underwrote with a Papal Bull the conquest and plantation of South America, including the extermination of the great majority of the indigenous peoples, see here. All you have to do to familiarize yourself with the reality of Catholic church and colonialism is to read the work of Julian Brave Noisecat, as an example he wrote:

"The Doctrine of Discovery, a series of papal bulls from the 15th century that justified European colonization of newly “discovered” lands. One particular papal bull, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455, authorized Christian nations “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all ... enemies of Christ,” take their land and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." The doctrine played a central role in centuries of colonization the world over and resulted in immense loss of land and life by indigenous peoples across the Americas."

An interesting observation here, Rev Jules Gomes wrote:

"But Middle Easterners or Muslims feel no post-colonial guilt for the Ottoman or Mughal empires. Only Western liberals derive perverse pleasure from the sport of post-colonial masochism. Western liberals are blind to Islamic imperialism (or Soviet or Communist imperialism). I think I know why they are incurably infected with this fake post-colonial guilt. Because they are the real racists!"