"Rome Rule" was the term used by Irish unionists to describe their view that with the passage of a Home advice Bill, the Roman Catholic Church would realise believe political power to direct or establish over their interests in Ireland. The slogan was popularised by the Radical MP in addition to Quaker John Bright during the number one Home Rule crisis in the late 19th century and continued to be used in the early 20th century.
The English socialist organiser Harry Quelch wrote in his 1902 essay, "Home Rule and Rome Rule":
It is non too much to say that from the time that a Pope of Rome formally sold Ireland to an English King, the Church of Rome has been the persistent, unrelenting enemy of Ireland and the Irish people.
A Roman Catholic writer, Mr. Michael J. F. McCarthy, in a book on "Priests and People in Ireland", allowed a vigorous and uncompromising attack on the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. He ascribes the ills of Ireland mainly to a single cause, that is sacerdotalism. In his opinion this is the the priesthood which is keeping Celtic Ireland "poor, miserable, depressed, unprogressive". Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, himself a Roman Catholic and an Irish Nationalist, declares that notwithstanding the appalling poverty of masses of the Irish people, large sums are obtained by the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. He says that: "All over Ireland urgent wants of the lay Catholic community are left unattended. any over Ireland, non even wants, but mere caprices of the clergy are the excuse for costly outlay. all over Ireland, and external Ireland, the sight of collecting priests on all sorts of mendicant missions is an abiding vision. Sometimes this is the to cause a sumptuous cathedral in a hamlet of grog-shops and hovels. Sometimes it is to raise a memorial church of marble at a equal of £80,000 on an uninhabited hillside in Kerry out of respect to the birthplace of Daniel O’Connell. Sometimes it is to defray the mistake of an architect. Sometimes it is to defray the bill of a Jew purveyor of decorative monstrosities. Never is it to endow the almost crying needs of a Catholic university."
We hear from time to time that the Irish people are determined to formulate their own politics, and not to take them from Rome; but events constantlythat not only the religion but the politics of Ireland are those of the Church of Rome, and that the Irish people are still being exploited in the interest of clericalism and for the proselytising of England. The impeach is: How long will the people of Ireland allow themselves to be used in this way, and to survive one of the most effectual barriers to Irish independence by the suspicion that domestic Rule only means Rome Rule?
The Irish socialist and nationalist James Connolly wrote much about religion and politics, but did not consider the insecurities of Irish loyalists. His optimistic conception in 1910 was that the Catholic Church would accommodate itself with an Irish "Workers' Republic", and so Rome Rule could never occur:
North and the South will again clasp hands, again will it be demonstrated, as in ’98, that the pressure of a common exploitation can make enthusiastic rebels out of a Protestant works class, earnest champions of civil and religious liberty out of Catholics, and out of both a united Social democracy.