Have you ever been in a Protestant church and heard a prayer to preserve the Catholic church? You can in Ireland, mainly due to some confusion regarding religious labels. Let us sort this out a bit ...
Anglican Church - the Church of Ireland.
Armagh - main seat of Christianity in Ireland, home to two Archbishops and their respective Saint Patrick Cathedrals, the older one belonging to the Church of Ireland, the more flamboyant one to the Roman-Catholic Church.
Casey, Bishop Eamon - former bishop who fell from grace when it became known that he fathered a son with his lover.
Celtic Christianity - label for early Christians that still incorporated Celtic traditions and evolved into a specific Irish-Celtic variety of Christianity; lost out to the Roman-Catholic faith favored by the Anglo-Norman invaders.
Christian Brothers - Roman-Catholic order once heavily involved in the Irish education system; its reputation was seriously tarnished by massive cases of abuse.
Church of Ireland (CoI) - former state church and part of the Anglican communion; often labeled as "Protestant" but originally a Catholic church denying the supreme authority of the pope.
Free Presbyterian Church - radical off-shoot of the Presbyterian Church with a fundamentalist basis; declared line-dancing as sinful and identifies the Pope with the Antichrist.
Knock - place of pilgrimage, one of the main Marian shrines in Europe.
Magdalen Sisters - order of nuns caring for "wayward girls"; ran a profitable system of homes based on incarceration and enforced slave labor.
Paisley, Rev. Dr. Ian - founder member and long time outspiken moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church; also heavily involved in Unionist politics.
Presbyterian Church - protestant church relying on elected officials instead of a nominated hierarchy.
Protestants - in common Irish parlance all Christians not adhering to the Roman-Catholic faith.
Roman-Catholic Church - main church in the Republic and still hugely influential; the Irish church is often labeled more conservative than Rome itself.
"That would be an ecumenical matter ..." - all-purpose statement avoiding any further discussion, taken from the seminal "Father Ted" comedy series.
