Three broad phases can be discerned in the Catholic Church’s relations with the state. During the Irish Revolution (1916–21), it faced the conundrum of obeying the legally constituted government while supporting nationalist political aspirations to supplant the imperial state. In independent Ireland, the church played a significant role in the state-building project. In return, its predominance in education, health, and welfare remained undisturbed until the 1960s. A combination of domestic socio-economic transformation and the impact of the Second Vatican Council altered the context of church-state relations from the mid 1960s and led to the dismantling of legislative and constitutional support for a Catholic ethos. One manifestation of this was the symbolic removal of the special position accorded to the Catholic Church in the constitution in 1972. Another was the acknowledgement by the hierarchy in 1973, for the first time, that the state should not be the guardian of private morality.