The Roman, not the Sassenach, was for him the tyrant of the islanders; and so deeply had the tyranny eaten into all souls that the intelligence, first overborne so arrogantly, was no eager to prove that arrogance its friend. The watchcry was Faith and Fatherland, a sacred word in that world of cleverly inflammable enthusiasm. …. the multitude of preachers ensured them that high honours were on the way … and in reward for several centuries of obscure fidelity the Pope’s Holiness had presented a tardy cardinal to an island which was for him, perhaps, only the afterthought of Europe. [52]

As Stephen looked at the big awkward block of masonry [i.e., the Seminary] [h]e recognised at once the martial mind of the Irish Church in the style of this ecclesiastical barracks. He looked in vain at the faces and figures which passed him for a token of moral elevation: all were cowed without being humble, modish without being simple-mannered … [72]

[His] wanderings filled him with a deep-seated anger and whenever he encountered a burly black-vested priest taking a stroll of pleasant inspection through these warrens full of swarming and cringing believers he cursed the farce of Irish Catholicism: an island [whereof] the inhabitants of which entrusted their wills and mind to other that they might ensure for themselves a life of spiritual paralysis, an island in which all the power and riches are in the keeping of those whose kingdom is not of this world, an island in which Caesar [professes] confesses Christ and Christ confesses Caesar that together they may wax fat upon a starveling rabblement which is bidden ironically to take to iself this consolation in hardship ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’. [132]

The idea that the power of an empire is weakest at its borders requires some modification … in many cases the government of an empire is strongest at its borders and is invariably so when its power at the centre is on the wane … it will perhaps be a considerable time before Ireland will be able to understand that the Papacy is no longer going through a period of anabolism … [133] … the persistence of Catholic power in Ireland must intensify very greatly the loneliness of the Irish Catholic who voluntarily outlaws himself out of so strong and intricate a tyranny may often be sufficient to place him beyond the region of reattraction. [134]

The spirit of patriotic and religious enthusiasts seemed to him fit to inhabit the fraudulent circles where hidden in hives of immaculate ice they might work their bodies into the due pitch of frenzy. The spirits of the tame sodalists … he would petrify amid a ring of Jesuits in the circle of foolish and grotesque virginities … [143]

In a stupor of powerlessness he reviewed the plague of Catholic[ism] … the vermin begotten in the catacombs issuing forth upon the plains and mountains of Europe. Like the plague of locusts described in Callista they seemed to choke the rivers adn fill the valleys up. They obscured the sun. Contempt of [the body] human nature, weakness, nervous tremblings, fear of day and joy, distrust of man and life, hemiplegia of the will, beset the body burdened and disaffected in its members by its black tyrannous lice. He at least … would live his own life according to what he recognised as the voice of a new humanity, active, unafraid and unashamed. [174]

The Roman Catholic notion that a man should be unswervingly continent from his boyhood and then be permitted to achieve his male nature, having first satisfied the Church as to his orthodoxy, financial condition, [and] prospects and general intentions, and having sworn before witnesses to love his wife forever whether he loved her or not and to beget children for the kingdom of heaven in such manner as the Church approved of — this notion seemed to him by no means satisfactory. [182]