Roman Catholic Irish

When I was a boy, growing up in the Bronx,  Irish Catholicism was quite conservative.  Whatever the pope said or Rome did, we went along.  We memorized, rather than theologized, which would have meant some thinking for ourselves.  Why was this.  The Irish Potato Famine.  My people came from County Mayo which is the western part of Ireland.  It has few if any roads. The British had destroyed any kind of possible fishing industry though there were great quantities of fish off the western shores. The Irish were to grow food and pay rents to support the landlords and the British stomach.  Travel not necessary.   The Church pretty much neglected this part of the world as well.  Gaelic was spoken and schools were few.  How would one get there anyway?  Then the famine.  Then the Protestant Evangelicals came along with their soup kitchens and aid, if you "souped up," that is joined their church.  This got the attention of the Catholic hierarchy and they started paying more attention to Mayo and other neglected western counties of Ireland.  Rome sent in a bishop who was very Roman.  He was "ultra-montane."  He brought Roman ways over the mountains of the Alps to western Ireland.  Just do what Rome says.  Forget the Bible.  That is for the Prods.  Devotions, novenas that were popular in Rome became the Irish staple.  So it was in the Bronx in the 1950s.  I think that my big sister, Maureen, might have read the bible and done some thinking for herself.  That would have been very Protestant, and we good Roman Irish Catholics know that road led to perdition.  I kept my brain unsullied by not using it much in theologizing.  I was a very good memorizer.  I knew the altar boy Latin prayers by heart.  My sister never had that chance.  We were Roman.  Altar Girls?  Be still my heart.