In Europe, Ireland is an exception. A colony surrounded by the world’s foremost colonial powers, its culture has long been distinct from its neighbors. This was just as much the case when it came to Irish socialism as for any other pursuit. While European contemporaries were committed to secular approaches by the turn of the twentieth century, religion continued to play a defining role in shaping socialism in Ireland.

Catholicism, the majority faith, had long been subject to repression under British colonial rule, and it was never viewed in the same way that it had been in France or Spain. The church had, in James Connolly’s words, “denounced every Irish revolutionary movement in its day of activity,” but it had also been wily enough that it had “allowed its priests to deliver speeches in eulogy  . . . of those movements a generation afterwards.” For all but a handful of radicals, it was considered a source of resistance to British domination.