Irish republican nationalism drew on Catholic myths of sacrifice though it was formally creed-blind.

Evidence

Both the imperial and the anti-imperialist forms of Irish nationalism have been influenced throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the growth of Catholicism, in the shape of a formidable and centralized Church, on the one hand, and a potent melange of popular beliefs and practice, on the other. Irish Republican nationalism appealed for the support of all Irish people regardless of creed in the struggle for national self-determination. In practice, however, the rhetoric of the 1916 insurrection, and more recently the 1980–81 Hunger Strikers, drew on the cultural repertoire of Catholicism, with its myths of sacrifice, victimhood, and redemption. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 2226