I think there were always people defying various decrees, but whether they were able to stay living in a community that was shunning them had a lot to do with their social kudos. Basically, far easier if you were wealthy and/or professional middle class, or if you didn’t need Church approval to make a living.
So John McGahern, teaching in a parish national school that required the approval of the diocese, was drummed out of town when his first novels were banned, but Una Troy, who also wrote banned novels and plays, was able to stay living and writing in Clonmel because she was middle-class and married to a coroner who had been powerful locally as an IRA physician in the war of independence. His position made her less vulnerable.
Whereas Bill’s position, as the child of an unmarried mother who narrowly escaped incarceration in a laundry herself, and whose business depends on the goodwill of local businesses and individuals, and who has a large family of girls who need education and jobs and marriages in a smalltown environment where reputation is all,, is very vulnerable. It’s perfectly possible he is permanently wrecking, not only his own life but the lives of his wife and daughters, by this act.