ABSTRACT
The Catholicism and nationalism of the 1916 leaders fitted neatly together, and avoided any nagging doubts and ambiguities about the pedigree and identity of the Irish nation. Any remaining sources of friction between nationalism and religion were weakened by the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s muted response to the rising. This was an important new departure; but it is doubtful if Ireland would have made any significant contribution to socialist thought, and to the relationship between socialism and nationalism, had it not been for the intervention of James Connolly, who was active in working class politics in Edinburgh before coming to Ireland in 1896 as organizer of the Dublin Socialist Club. Irish socialism had to reconcile its internationalist aspirations with the political realities in Ireland, a country with a long and firmly rooted nationalist tradition, a tradition in which Roman Catholicism played a key, if not a central, role.
