O’Reilly’s Dublin synod illuminates the tension between religious conviction and political accommodation in Restoration Ireland. Clergy could affirm loyalty to Charles II while resisting Peter Walsh’s Remonstrance, fearing that its language might compromise papal and ecclesiastical authority. The meeting’s permission further suggests a Catholic Church that retained organisational capacity yet operated within limits set by government. Its inconclusive outcome therefore complicates any simple contrast between loyal and disloyal Catholics. How might we understand the failure to secure agreement: as principled theological resistance, rival strategies for safeguarding Catholic communities, or evidence that Restoration toleration depended upon terms clergy could not accept?