The Constitution of the Church of Ireland in Action: Ritualist Litigation in a Disestablished Church, 1871–1937

This chapter examines how the Church of Ireland as an unincorporated body maintained the liturgical discipline of its clergy in the seventy years following disestablishment, during which it had no constitutional recognition. In doing so, the structures of the constitution adopted in 1870 become clear. The liturgical tensions between the dominant low-church majority and a small high-church minority gave rise to litigation in the church courts and also in the high court of the Irish Free State. The intolerance which led to this litigation was at its most bitter in the Maturin case of 1872 and most prolonged in the Colquhoun cases of the 1930s. Throughout, the general synod refused to reopen the low-church liturgical canons adopted in 1871 that were unique to Irish Anglicanism.