Catholic and Irish?

If so, you'd have some problems in 18th century Ireland.
At this time, around 3/4th of Irish people were Catholic, despite attempts on the behalf of England to convert them to Protestantism. These attemps first took the form of the establishment of the Church of Ireland, but after disappointing results, the mother country turned to force. In the 18th century, if you were Catholic in Ireland and under the rule of England, you could not:
-hold office or practice law
-bear arms or serve as an officer in any armed forces
-buy land
-serve an appreticeship
-attend school
-go abroad to study
-make woollen cloth
-export glassware
(The last two were obviously tied to efforts to strengthen England economically, much like the Navigation Acts.)

As further enticement to convert, any land owned (I'm not sure how this works with the "not buying land" thing) would be divided equally between any male heirs upon death. If, however, one son then decided to convert to Protestantism, then the land would automatically default to him.

These laws, though perhaps not enforced as stringently as they could have been, nonetheless contributed to the strong animosity between Ireland and England rooted in religious discrimination. As this book puts it, "Any hope of Irish subjects becoming reconciled to English rule had been soured by religious discrimination and the Roman Catholic Church had become identified in the minds of many people with the oppressed Irish nation."

Source: Percival, John. The Great Famine: Ireland's Potato Famine 1845-51. Viewer Books. New York, New York. 1995.

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