Edwardian Ireland was a religiously apartheid island

Irish politicians and jurists effectively enshrined Roman Catholic canon law into Irish statute and jurisprudence

Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote in his famous book, 'States of Ireland' (p. 109):

"After my father's death, the pressure on my mother to withdraw me from this school must have been strong. Another widow, in a similar position, had withdrawn her boy not long from Sandford. She had been told that by keeping the boy at a Protestant school she was prolonging her late hushand's suffering in purgatory."

The Protestantisation of Southern Ireland

COI Dean Victor Griffin who opposed the Protestant ascendency in the North and the Catholic ascendancy in the South, was the first public representative of new-look Protestantism in Ireland said Roy Foster

Ian D'Alton wrote that the Irish Free State "was rescued by Catholics becoming Protestants." This was a formulation most prominently articulated by the recently deceased Eddie Holt - The Protestantisation of the South's middle class. Coincidentally I wrote in 2015 that 'The Calvinist Ulsterman is more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised.' The religious proclivities of the North and the South have inverted.