Historians are predisposed to view the counter-reformation as a uniform ideology. This is clear from the descriptive canon that has been adopted generally. The counter-reformation is vigorous, rigorous and aggressive: a coherent ideology propagated with missionary fervour by a cadre of disciplined ascetic scholars spearheading the new world order. We are less inclined to view it as a complex and nuanced episode in the development of Catholicism from universal world church to denomination. This was a journey littered with internal controversy and dispute, and was characterised by a denial of an increasingly sectarian profile.

Catholic Europe may have been diverted from the realities of rejection and confessional diversity at home by the successful propagation of the faith among the native peoples of the American and Asian colonies. However, by focusing on the success of the counter-reformation as mission, historians have effectively turned their backs on the counter-reformation church as institution, and on the internal tensions and jurisdictional conflicts that are at the heart of any institution. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this tension.

The subject matter is a local dispute between the vicar general of Armagh and ordinary of Drogheda and the Franciscans based in that town. The dispute is well known and the documentation detailed. It gives us a glimpse of Catholic life in Drogheda in the period 1618–25. Although unapologetically local, the dispute has a general significance for Irish Catholicism.