The Catholic Reformation, Irish-Language Printing and Song

Nowhere is the potential disjunction between popular printed literature and popular or local cultures greater than in the area of religion. Most of the printed devotional or pious literature intended for mass consumption was produced by institutional churches, and reflected the ideals and attitudes of those churches rather than the everyday belief and practice on the part of adherents of those churches. It was frequently produced in forms which facilitated comprehension and use by as wide a public as possible. A case in point is the catechism, probably the most widely possessed religious text in both Protestant and Catholic countries, whose content summarised the minimum of doctrine necessary for an individual believer, whose form, question and answer, was appropriate to a culture which was still largely oral, and whose distribution aimed at standardising belief over as wide an area as possible. Catechisms printed in Ireland, even those of Irish origin, consequently differed little from those printed elsewhere.

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