Joyce expressed his negative view on the Irish church in his writings. Not only did he regard the Irish church as an effective instrument of colonial rule and an economic institution, not a holy, spiritual one, but tried to undermine the authority and sanctity of Catholicism. Particularly his view on the religious rites revealed his subversive attitude towards Catholicism. Joyce investigated the religious rites such as communion, conversion, confession, and sermon through the eyes and experiences of an apostate Stephen and a heterodox Bloom who has experienced baptism three times. Joyce considered religious rites powerful, threatening weapons with which the church controlled believers and kept the organization in motion. Stephen who had committed the sexual sin came back to his previous mechanical religious life after listening to the powerful and sadistic sermon in the religious retreat in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce also decolored the holiness of communion and conversion, comparing the one to opium-eating and the other to military conquest or secular dealings. Bloom in `Lotus Eaters`, conscious of the futility of religious conversion, does not set up any rigid hierarchy between creeds. Furthermore, he detects the principle of commercialism hidden in missionary works. In addition, his free consciousness erases the strict borderline between sacredness and earthliness. In conclusion, Joyce subverted the authority of Catholicism through Stephen`s experience and Bloom`s view on the religious rites.