is Mcintyre a protestant or catholic surname?

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 25 Jul 2006 06:43 PDT

The name McIntyre can be traced to Scottish origin and comes from the
Gaelic ?Mac an tSaoir?, or ?son of the Carpenter?. This site can give
you a good overview of the origin of the surname:

?The bishop of Clogher who held the sea from 1268-1287 was Michael Mac
An tSaoir and the famous St. Kieran, who flourished seven centuries
earlier, was called Mac an tSaoir. MacAteer, or MacIntyre, is one of
those names which had been subjected to anglicization by translation.?
GOIRLAND
http://www.goireland.com/Genealogy/scripts/Family.asp?FamilyID=395

Given these earliest known associations with the Bishop of Clogher and
St. Kieran (born February 24, 515 C.E), as much as a name ?can? be
associated with a religious belief, it would seem the name would
likely be traced to a Catholic origin.

BISHOP OF CLOGHER
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Clogher

BIOGRAPHY OF ST. KIERAN
http://www.stkieranchurch.org/Biography_of_St_Kieran.html

KIERAN OF CLONMACNOIS 
http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/ids/medieval/clonmacnois/clon.shtml

Does this meet your expectations of an answer as well as possible
under the circumstances?

Tutuzdad-ga

Well, until about 1500, there were no protestants really.

Here is a website reporting on Scottish Catholic immigrants to PEI in
the late 18th century  (Prince Edward Island, Canada), mentioning
McIntyres.

Apparently the most prominant person of that name in the field of
philosophy and ethics at present is Alasdair McIntyre, who is called a
"prominant Catholic intellectual" on one site.

This site lists McI.s von the Canadian 1891 census: they seem to be
mostly protestants of one church or another; towards the end, there
are some RCs, making me wonder if I misread the PEI article.