Catholic Church in Scotland the eastern suburbs of Glasgow, especially around Coatbridge, populated mostly by the descendants of Irish immigrants. According to the 2011 census, Catholics comprise 16% of the overall population, making it the second largest church after the Church of Scotland (32%). In recent years the Catholic Church in Scotland has suffered from poor publicity connected to attacks made against secular and liberal values by senior clergy. Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell, came under fire after describing the "gay lobby" as "the opposition" who were responsible for mounting "a giant conspiracy" to shape public policy. Criticism has also been levelled at perceived
Scotland in the early modern period suggests that this probably expanded in the first half of the sixteenth century, levelling off after the famine of 1595, as prices were relatively stable in the early seventeenth century. Calculations based on Hearth Tax returns for 1691 indicate a population of 1,234,575. This level may have been seriously effected by the famines of the 1690s. The first reliable information available on national population is from the census conducted by the Reverend Alexander Webster in 1755, which showed the inhabitants of Scotland as 1,265,380 persons. Compared with the situation after the redistribution of population in the later clearances and the