ABSTRACT
Religious divide and antagonism, and not interdenominational reconciliation or peace, has been the outstanding characteristic of modern Irish history. By showing that the government, the churches, and the public were almost unanimously in favor of nonseparation between the Catholics and the Protestants as far as the question of burial was concerned. This chapter attempts to shed light on a new dimension of the interdenominational relationships of early nineteenth-century Ireland. It attempts to add another dimension to the discussion of "how 'normal' trans-confessional and even trans-religious interaction was produced in a context of highly intensified and always present reflectivity of religious differences." The right of Catholics to perform burial services in Protestant churchyards first became the subject of public controversy in Ireland in the autumn of 1823. The root of the question lay in the Reformation, when the newly established Protestant state church (Church of Ireland) seized the churches formerly belonging to the Roman Catholic Church throughout Ireland.
