Status
The Archbishop of Armagh's leading status is based on the belief that his See was founded by St. Patrick, the city of Armagh thus being the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland. On the other hand, Dublin is the political, cultural, social, economic and secular centre of Ireland, and has been for many centuries, thus making the Archbishop of Dublin someone of considerable influence, with a high national profile.
Dispute has "flared up" on a number of occasions, such as during the time in office of Saint Oliver Plunkett and in the late 18th century.
Since the 1870s one or other of the Catholic archbishops of Armagh and Dublin has been a member of the College of Cardinals. Due to Ireland's small size, two Irish reigning diocesan cardinals are unlikely to be created. An apparent dominance of Dublin over Armagh was shown in the 1850s when the then Archbishop of Armagh, Paul Cullen was transferred from Armagh to the nominally inferior see of Dublin, where he became the most high-profile Catholic prelate in Ireland. Some years after the First Vatican Council, in which he played a central role in the proclamation of Papal Infallibility, he was made Ireland's first cardinal, ahead of the nominally superior Archbishop of Armagh. Cullen's successor in Dublin, Archbishop Edward MacCabe was also made a cardinal. But after that, the cardinal's red hat went invariably to the Archbishop of Armagh, until Pope John Paul II awarded the red hat not to the low-key pastoral Seán Brady of Armagh, but to the higher-profile, more intellectual, and clearly conservative, Desmond Connell of Dublin. But in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI decided to give the honour again to the See of Patrick, creating Brady a cardinal rather than the reigning Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, previously a high-profile Vatican official.
Read more about this topic: Primacy Of Ireland
Famous quotes containing the word status:
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
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“The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
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—C. John Sommerville (20th century)