Joyce Catholic Church Essay

That we might fully understand the legacy of the Catholic Church in James Joyce’s Ireland, this essay will consider the Church’s use of awe, sacrament, and language within his depictions of Irish life. Although this essay will focus primarily on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, because Joyce’s works are so thoroughly interrelated, and because they so intensely seek to portray the singular vision of his Dublin, such a reading will necessarily incorporate Ulysses and Dubliners where relevant. As I will show, in each text it is the Church’s primary concern to command Irish attention, not devotion (though it certainly covets devotion as well). This way, whether like Stephen’s aunt Dante in Portrait one submit meekly to the Church’s temporal power in Ireland, or like Stephen in the “Circe” episode of Ulysses proudly declare “non serviam,” in each case the Irish worldview necessarily operates around—and subsequently in conjunction with—the Church’s colonial presence in Joyce’s Ireland (541). Indeed, while a label like “colonial” might at first seem hyperbolic, others have noticed the top-down power-structure the Church imposes on Irish life. In his “The Reverend Stephen Dedalus, S.J.: Sacramental Structure in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Kevin Farrell

Thus, it should not surprise us that Joyce’s characters continuously comment—and not merely critically, but often with envy—on the power of the Roman Church to command the attention of the Irish mind, believer and dissenter alike. For example, the young narrator of Dubliners’ opening story, “The Sisters,” ruminates on the seemingly impenetrable nature of the Church’s terrestrial