1916 (52 page)

Much changed within the Catholic church in Ireland in the years between 1914 and 1916. The constitutional solution of home rule, despite its inherent weaknesses, was offered in 1912, and its implementation postponed in 1914. By late summer 1916 it was clear that partition was probable. The Bishop of Raphoe, Patrick O’Donnell, continued to favour the home rule solution, even at the price of partition. He wrote in his usual challenging hand-writing to Michael O’Riordan on 6 November 1916, outlining his ideas. The bishop, who was by then only supported by Bishop Kelly of Ross, argued that:

On general principles we would say that it was inevitable the Irish party, living so much out of Ireland, would make mistakes. In the English actions of recent times I dare say mistakes were made before the war and since…. I myself should have liked that Sinn Féiners and recruiting had been treated differently. I am not at all clear that considering the strength of ‘Ulster’ Mr Redmond could have bargained at the beginning of the war as Birrel suggests. But to me it always seemed a sad mistake to refuse the Lloyd George partition scheme. Certainly under that scheme ‘Ulster’ could stay out as long as it likes: and it is not impossible an ‘Ulster’ more powerful in population and resources than an Australian colony would stay out awhile and probably secure a parliament of its own. But the Irish leaders did not think that it would stay out. They had private assurances from the Ulster leaders that they would work for inclusion; and the presence of two of the protagonists (Carson and Campbell) in the Dublin parliament was to be a token of that. What however moved our men more than anything else, so far as I know, was the dread that at the end of the war, if they waited until then, they would find feeling in England very hostile in regard to the home rule settlement, owing to the rebellion and the cessation of recruiting that it brought about.
¹²⁷

O’Donnell was of the view that the Irish party leaders

certainly would not agree to the scheme if they thought it was going to be permanent and of course it is not easy for politicians to do their work and at the same time show their hand. I myself could never favour a scheme that included Derry city, Tyrone and Fermanagh against their will; and I felt like one tied to the ground until Mr Redmond said at Waterford that no parts of Ulster would be coerced to stay out. Now I think that we are back to the sound policy of home rule for all Ireland; and I consider the party has seen its worst days.

O’Donnell’s optimism was not widely shared on the bench of bishops. No matter how reflective and nuanced his position, the time appeared to have passed for such intellectual refinement. In May 1917 eighteen Catholic and three Protestant bishops were to sign a manifesto protesting against the imminent partitioning of the island.

O’Donnell continued:

I am convinced that the rebellion helped home rule but whether it helped or hindered it, the difficulty about conscription and recruiting in Ireland these days may cause important developments. However, I have seen none of the leaders for many months and I have no special knowledge. Though it may tell against the Irish party, I think it is right to say to you that I am not convinced that there was a breach of faith on the part of the government in respect of the Lloyd George proposals. English politicians are nothing to me more than I[rish] politicians, and I well know how brilliantly leading statesmen can say and unsay. But the whole thing looks to me to have been a concerted arrangement to [force it?] though in some way, with the hope that what was crooked would soon be straightened out.

He concluded by speculating on how the Rising might impact on the quest for home rule:

The remote cause of the Rising which has put us more under the heel of England I take to be want of union between priests and people in certain political work. There was no trouble in Tipperary or in Donegal. As you [recall?] it was the work of a small section, not of the nation. If the nation called, Tipperary would not be backward. Here we have made a parochial collection for those who have suffered by the rebellion, as we did in preceding years for the victims of the war in Belgium and Poland. I have always felt that a ministry, comprising inciters to rebellion, has no equitable right to take the lives of these boys. But I have also felt that the doctrine of the church on the rebellion is the doctrine of liberty. Whatever right of rebellion there is, the cause of liberty requires that it be limited to the nation and not vested in any section or sections of the people, which otherwise might compromise the nation’s chances of freedom and push back the hand of the clock.
¹²⁸

His theology of revolution, as stated in the last lines of his letter, was very much in accord with stated Catholic teaching. Events had determined otherwise, however. The leadership of the 1916 Rising had been transformed into Catholic martyrs. The brutality of repression had elided discussion on the theology of rebellion.

In the end, Michael Curran, writing to Hagan on 15 October 1916, articulated a position more akin to that held by the majority of Irish bishops than O’Donnell’s:

Things are terribly disquieting here and throughout Ireland. This revival of the threat of conscription had done a lot of harm. Most of those engaged in the cry in the country are doing so for purely political nature – to damage home rule and of course they will succeed. But why the government would not see the folly of the other proposal at once and stifle the outcry in England I can’t understand. The country bishops say it is only the dead bodies of our boys they could drag over the half-doors. The same is true of thousands in Dublin. There is a very large quantity of arms yet in the country and sufficient for a definite resistance in Dublin. The intensity of the feeling is unparalleled, though not so manifest. The air of suspicion and uncertainty has now become so ingrained that many, including the bishops of certain districts, fear another rising. Until recently I thought we were now safe, if only conscription were not enforced, but [with?] the growing bitterness between the two countries anything is possible. They say the IRB is spreading in the country. It was already strong in Dublin. Absurdly wild stories of landing of arms, seizure of arms, arrests etc. are in circulation despite denial … At any [rate?] things are very disquieting and will continue until the govt formally renounces conscription in Ireland for ever and abandons the idea of partition.
¹²⁹

Curran, in his privileged position in archbishop’s house, was well situated to interpret the course of events. Ireland faced a period of great political turmoil and an uncertain future where physical force could not be ruled out.

There was an important postscript to the process of multi-faceted alienation which took place during the weeks following the Rising, the executions and the deportations. The Irish party had been very seriously damaged. It had lost credibility as the political leaders of the Irish people. It was no longer even in a position to guarantee the delivery of home rule for all Ireland that was its very
raison d’être
.
Lloyd George had all but destroyed that prospect with discussion about opt outs for the north eastern counties. The parliamentary party leadership had to put a good face on things. But many realised that their popular support had evaporated, as would be illustrated at subsequent by-elections and the general election. That in turn made this leadership very bitter towards the British government. A sense of betrayal was felt by those who had gambled all on support for recruitment in Ireland for the British forces in 1914. There was no turning around in 1916 to face a different political direction. The bitterness and resentment provoked by the executions, the deportations and the public misconduct of British troops in Dublin had alienated many members of the public. The Catholic hierarchy, earlier in the century strongly supportive of a reunited parliamentary party under Redmond, were in the majority hostile to it by the late summer of 1916. The policies of the British government in Dublin had galvanised support for an alternative to the Irish party. That was not support for the IRB or for the 1916 leadership, but there was episcopal and clerical support for those who emerged in the wake of the Rising to lead the emerging Sinn Féin movement. The British policy of repression in Ireland had helped to undermine the alliance of the Irish party and the Catholic hierarchy – which, in any event, was never as solid as has been argued, even in the 1880s.

Despite the thesis of the Red Book to ‘Catholicise’ the Rising, the events of Easter Week 1916 had visited terrible suffering on people. Patrick McKenna, bishop of Clogher, wrote to O’Riordan on 24 November 1916:

There is really no news of any importance. The country is at least on the surface very quiet, but it is in a very suspicious and distrustful mood both as regards the government and our own politicians. It is not in a temper to be trifled with. We are in for a severe winter. The real hardship and sufferings of the war are pressing severely already on people with small fixed incomes and the labour and artisan classes whose wages have not risen in proportion to the rise in prices. But I fear present energies are only a mild foretaste of the trials in store for the poor.
¹³⁰

That growing deprivation and sense of social unrest further stoked the widespread political discontent in the country which saw the return of Count Plunkett as a Sinn Féin candidate in a by-election in Roscommon in 1917.

C
ONCLUSION

This study shows the turmoil into which the leadership of the Irish Catholic church had plummeted after Easter 1916, tracing the growing radicalisation of many members of the clergy and bench of bishops who had first reacted to the Rising as the work of extremists and of the Liberty Hall-led labour left. Many bishops quickly shifted to a more sympathetic position as the groundswell of support for those who had fought honourably and who had behaved in a fashion that distinguished them from the actions of the Crown forces. The dignified behaviour of those who had been executed, dying with the last rites of the church, stood in contrast to the manner in which some sections of the British army had performed.

But why, if it was initially believed by many bishops that the Rising was the work of extremists and of an oath-bound society, was there no joint condemnation of that event by them? If immediate episcopal reaction, as expressed both privately and in public, was overwhelmingly negative, why did that sentiment not take the form of a joint pastoral? The standing committee of the hierarchy met on the Tuesday in the second week after Easter Sunday. It seems that a draft document resulted from that meeting. It was probably sketched out by the Bishop of Raphoe, Patrick O’Donnell, a strong supporter of the Irish party. The draft is lodged in the archives of the Armagh archdiocese. The fact that it was never issued is highly significant. There is a remote chance that Count Plunkett’s audience with Benedict XV may have given members of the hierarchy cause for pause. But that would not explain the collective silence of the hierarchy.

The bishops met annually in June and in October. Certainly, episcopal opinion was by the end of May very far from being conciliatory as this article has shown. This radicalisation may be explained by the swiftness of the pace of events in the wake of the Rising, the brutal manner in which justice was meted out, and the executions that followed. The mass round ups of alleged activists touched every parish and diocese in the country. The deportations helped many people move from a position of passivity
and political indifference to a deep sense of alienation from and resentment towards the British authorities. In prison in England and Wales, the internees were politicised and organised. At home relatives grew more resentful and angry.

By the time the bishops met in June 1916, the bench was divided. A majority were sympathetic with Bishop O’Dwyer of Limerick. That would not have been the case a month earlier. Archbishop Walsh had become more definite in his actions and in his words. Any effort to press for a joint condemnation of the Rising at that point, as might have been the idea of Bishops O’Donnell and Kelly, could only have resulted in a split. The church was caught up in the emotional reaction to the draconian nature of the British repression and the policy of executions which provided scant opportunities to the defendants to make an objective case against capital punishment. While the bishops confronted the moral question of the legitimacy of the use of violence by nationalists, they also witnessed the disproportionate countervailing violence of the British government. On balance, the Rising brought to a head the ambivalence and contradictory sentiments felt by members of the hierarchy towards Britain. The hierarchy’s pact with the Irish party, if there ever was such a thing, was shattered by 1916. Whatever the hierarchy and clergy felt about the morality of revolution, it was obvious that life would never be the same again in Ireland. The Rising, flawed though it may have been, had changed things. Driven as it was perceived to have been by the Irish radical left and the IRB, it had dealt a serous blow to the Irish party, and in the popular trust in the British government to do anything other than procrastinate and temporise. The Irish bishops had a good nose for change. The long revolution was about to enter another, and even more deadly, phase.

A
PPENDIX

Count Plunkett’s letter to Pope Benedict XV. The original is in French and is located in the Vatican Archives, AAEESS, 111 Periodo, Inghilterra, posizione 217, fasc. 120.

Most Holy Father,
I wish to bring this report to the attention of Your Holiness; I regret my inability to write French very fluently.

I have been sent as a delegate to Your Holiness on behalf of the President
and of the Supreme Council of the Irish Volunteers (national troops). The President (Prof. John MacNeill) entrusted me with a document that the particular circumstances of the present moment have forced me to leave in Ireland. Mr John MacNeill comes from an old Ulster family which has suffered a lot because of its loyalty to the Faith. He is a well known scholar and a Professor of the National University of Ireland. Mr MacNeill wishes me to communicate to Your Holiness the expression of his deep devotion to both the Holy See and the person of the Pontiff. On his behalf I am also charged with bringing to Your Holiness the greetings of the Supreme Council, which, by a unanimous vote, has declared its agreement with the principle of the complete liberation of the Holy See and with the restoration of its ancient rights.

I have also been asked, on behalf of the Council, to make Your Holiness aware of the state of affairs in Ireland about which I also can directly testify. Contemporary public events have their origin in the past but (as a Minister said) in Ireland the action of the English Government is marked by continuity.

I am confiding this information as a son to his Father who is so attentive to the interests of his children, and humbly prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness I beg his Paternal blessing for myself, my wife, all my family: and I ask for the prayers of the Head of the Church for my ever faithful country.

[signed]
Count George Noble Plunkett.