The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (14 page)

3.
Irish Independent
, 7 January 1931, p.7.

4.
Connaught Tribune
, 3 January 1931, p.5.

5.
Mayo News
, 24 January 1931, p.7.

6.
Roscommon Herald
, 14 February 1931, p.3.

7.
The Connaught Telegraph
, 10 January 1931, p.7.

8.
Mayo News
, 17 January 1931, p.8.

9.
Western People
, 17 January 1931, p.12.

10.
Irish Independent
, 24 January 1931, p.4.

11.
Western People
, 24 January 1931, p.6.

12.
Irish Independent
, 26 February 1931, p.4.

13.
Catholic Bulletin
, vol. xxi, no. 4, 1931, p.323.

14.
Paul Blanshard,
The Irish and Catholic Power,
pp.100-112.

15.
Charles Arthur Boycott,
Boycott
.

16.
In 1957 a dispute arose in Fethard-on-Sea, a small village in County Wexford over two children from a mixed marriage. A Catholic farmer had married a Protestant woman. The couple later disagreed over whether their children should be raised as Catholics or Protestants. This led to the boycotting of the local minority Protestant population by their Catholic neighbours.

17.
Western People
, 24 January 1931, p.3.

Realising at last that they were in for a long battle, the Cumann na nGaedheal government decided to concentrate their efforts on the Catholic hierarchy. If they could come up with a solution that would satisfy the bishops, it was felt that they would be able to sway public opinion in Mayo and that Fianna Fáil's opposition would then wither away. The conservative Catholic press's response to the Mayo controversy was frenzied. In January 1931, the
Catholic Bulletin
issued an editorial headlined ‘The Mayo Librarianship Thundered'.

‘Whether her name be Miss Dunbar or Miss Harrison or something else,' it wrote, ‘she is in no sense personally in question. What is in question arises entirely because of the character and aims of her college and university, of Trinity College Dublin … Trinity College – a tainted source … were Miss Dunbar far more qualified than she is thought to be by the Local Appointments Commissioners the basic obstacles to her appointment as county librarian for Mayo would be intensified instead of being diminished … [This] applies in full measure even to that essential knowledge of Irish which she does not possess.'
1

As was its approach in most circumstances, the
Catholic Bulletin
regarded Trinity College as the villain of the piece, crediting it with enormous power and influence within the Free State.

A month later and the
Catholic Bulletin
had not calmed down. Its February lead editorial, headlined ‘Well Done Mayo'
,
directed most of its ire at the Minister for Local Government. It referred to Richard Mulcahy as ‘a politico-military bully … indulging his splenetic spirit of bullying despotism … The mind of Mayo has from the start been set solidly on the vital Catholic position in this question.'

The journal was vehemently against the Local Appointments system. ‘Any and every County Council in Ireland,' it wrote, ‘is as intelligent and is a good deal more honest than this thoroughly unworthy monopoly system. It was devised and set up in that nest of ascendancy men and their tame toadies, the Local Government Board.'
2

The Catholic Standard
was only slightly more moderate in its opinions. It asked if the dissolution of Mayo Council meant ‘that a Catholic people's demand, expressed by its authoritative representatives, to possess a Catholic system of education, may be followed by a suppression of its liberties?' In an editorial headlined ‘Naked Secularism',
The Catholic Standard
was critical of the reasons given by Fianna Fáil for rejecting Miss Dunbar Harrison. ‘These secularists,' it argued, ‘opposed Miss Dunbar's appointment on the linguistic grounds.'
3
They were castigated for doing the ‘right' thing but for the ‘wrong' reason.

The Nation
responded to criticisms in the Catholic press of the republican stance of Fianna Fáil's Mayo TDs, Mr Ruttledge and Mr Walsh. ‘In our view,' it wrote, ‘the issue is simply one of justice. The Fianna Fáil deputies refused to accept Miss Dunbar because she was not qualified in this essential particular but they had the manliness and courage to disassociate themselves from the prejudices which found expression at the library committee meeting.'
4

In January 1931 the other radical periodical
The Catholic Mind
(incorporating
The Catholic Pictorial
) carried an editorial headlined ‘The Mayo Library Case'. The editorial stated that ‘tolerance is not in itself a virtue … We regret exceedingly that the Mayo library committee did not take its stand boldly on the Catholic issue. There was no mention of that issue in the resolution they passed. It was a nationalist resolution.'
5

There was intense competition between the Catholic papers over which of them could be the most outspoken. This led to some inter-journal sniping.
The Catholic Mind
attacked
The Catholic Standard
for not being sufficiently strong-minded. ‘We detest hysteria; “naked secularism” and that sort of stuff,' it wrote. ‘We do not mind good, honest slaughter. Gore-grimed tomahawks do not disturb us. In fact we delight in the profusion of scalps which adorns our wigwam.'
6

Richard Mulcahy, as Minister for Local Government, still held a firm line publicly. President Cosgrave gave him strong backing, as did the cabinet. However, in private they were attempting to reach a compromise. Informal feelers were sent out to gauge the attitude of the Catholic hierarchy. The matter was complicated somewhat in that there were already difficulties over the appointment of dispensary doctors, an issue generally perceived to be even more sensitive.

Sir Joseph Glynn was put forward as the Cumann na nGaedheal government's emissary to the Catholic hierarchy, a sort of semi-official ambassador. Joseph Glynn was born in 1869 and educated at Blackrock College. He studied law at UCD and was also the first chairman of the National Health Insurance Commission 1912-1940. A Dublin businessman, he was heavily involved in charitable works. For a time he was president of the St Vincent de Paul Society and the Catholic Truth Society. In 1913 he was elected president of Blackrock College's Past Pupils' Union. He was honoured with a papal knighthood. In later life he wrote a biography of Matt Talbot. In short he was the kind of eminently respectable Catholic that could act as a go-between for the government and the hierarchy.

The intention was for Joseph Glynn to meet with the Archbishop of Tuam, Thomas Gilmartin, the senior member of the hierarchy in the area. The County of Mayo consisted of a number of dioceses of which Tuam was the most important. As early as 8 February, Sir Joseph met up with the vicar general of the Tuam archdiocese, Monsignor Walsh, who was also president of St Jarlaths in Tuam, for exploratory discussions. President Cosgrave had given him, ‘for transmission to His Grace the archbishop of Tuam', the Local Appointments Commissioners' report on the Mayo librarian appointment. He passed these details on to Monsignor Walsh.

To modern ears there is a certain careful tone to President Cosgrave's attitude to the bishops. President Cosgrave may have been the leader of a sovereign government, but he was very wary of offending the Catholic hierarchy in any way. At times he almost seemed to be going cap-in-hand to them, as this note from President Cosgrave to Archbishop Gilmartin shows, ‘I am very grateful for Your Grace's help in our effort to prevent a situation arising in which the good relations happily existing between the church and state may be endangered. We are most anxious to avoid any such development.'
7

The government explored a number of possible solutions to the general librarian problem rather than the specific case. But the hierarchy was intractably adamant; they would not tolerate Miss Dunbar Harrison being left in the post in Mayo. In many ways the bishops were more relaxed about the dispute, secure in the knowledge that they held the stronger hand. Archbishop Gilmartin remarked to Sir Joseph Glynn ‘that it was inevitable in a “neutral state” that the church might put forward a case to which the government of the state would be unable to accede.'
8
President Cosgrave felt that some of the criticism was unwarranted. There is a hurt tone to the Cumann na nGaedheal government's remarks, as in this memo circulated to the Catholic hierarchy:

In general it is unfair, and not conducive to good government, to order, or the interests of the church, for the bishops to attack the government on every occasion where they may differ from them, without first having laid their views before the government, and heard the government's reply. The bishops may have been misinformed, they may not see that their demands are impracticable, that they are asking what the government cannot grant … Friendly co-operation between church and state will smooth away much misunderstanding and make peaceful government easier. The bishops will find the government most accommodating, willing and even anxious to meet their Lordship's wishes as far as it is possible.
9

Evidently, Cumann na nGaedheal had been so long in power that they identified any attack on their party or their policies as an attack on the state itself, an occupational hazard of any party in power too long.

In general we suggest that the bishops make representations to the government directly when they have cause of complaint or any suggestions to offer. It is embarrassing to the government to learn the bishops' views through a condemnatory pastoral letter or a chance conversation between a bishop and a minister. The government feels it has a grievance here.
10

The government's immediate short-term aim had been to persuade the local bishops not to mention the Mayo controversy in their Lenten letters. The reason they gave was that it would be more difficult to reach a compromise if the bishops went public with their opposition as they [the government] could not be seen to be buckling under clerical pressure. In this convoluted and slightly cynical argument they were not successful. Archbishop Gilmartin referred directly to the Mayo controversy in his message to his flock. ‘Such being the influence of printed matter,' he said, ‘and the difficulty of discriminating between what is good and what is bad, it is gratifying to see how the representatives of our Catholic people are unwilling to subsidise libraries not under Catholic control. Not to speak of those who are alien to our faith, it is not every Catholic who is fit to have charge of a public library for Catholic readers. Such an onerous position should be assigned to an educated Catholic who would be as remarkable for his loyalty to his religion as for his literary and intellectual attainments.'
11
By this argument public libraries were to come under Catholic control, and not any old Catholic either, only ‘educated' Catholics, who were as loyal to religion as to literature, were to be trusted with such a fundamental job.

This was the problem facing President William T. Cosgrave. He had invited the bishops into the debate, hoping to solve the particular Mayo problem and also to come up with a more general long-term solution while they were at it. Now that they had been consulted on their views, President Cosgrave could hardly have been surprised by their stance. Cumann na nGaedheal's self-image was as the socially conservative ‘respectable party' and they were upset to find their position as defenders of the faith usurped by the so-called Republican Party. In many ways Fianna Fáil was still seen as a ‘slightly constitutional' organisation at this stage in its development, and it would have been regarded as much less close to the Catholic hierarchy. Fianna Fáil was also seen as much more radical, slightly revolutionary and ever-so-slightly untrustworthy. During the Civil War the Catholic hierarchy had threatened excommunication on the republican anti-Treaty side. Residual distrust lingered between them.

President Cosgrave was, as one biographer put it, ‘a conservative Catholic, a friend of the clergy and a frequent visitor to Rome.'
12
In 1925 he had been made a papal knight of the Grand Cross, First Class, of the Order of Pope Pius IX. Although he had close ties to the church, as leader of the government he felt he had to stand up for certain secular values so as not to alarm the substantial Protestant minority in the Free State.

Eamon de Valera was at least as religiously conservative as William T. Cosgrave was. He must have seen the Mayo dispute as a great opportunity to re-position his party, to rid itself of some of the disreputable taint of anti-clerical republicanism, even if it would require some fancy political footwork to avoid the accusation of sectarianism.

If Cumann na nGaedheal was bothered by the criticism it received from the priests of Mayo, it was even more sensitive to the onslaughts from the resurgent right-wing Catholic press, in particular the attacks by the
Catholic Bulletin
. President Cosgrave went so far as to raise this in a letter to Cardinal MacRory of Armagh. Cosgrave deplored ‘the attitude of certain periodicals, which by their titles, lead the general public to believe that they are authorised exponents of Catholic doctrine. Though we are aware that these papers have no official sanction, we are also aware that many pious Catholics are misled by the titles of these publications whose comments on government policy, and on government departments, often inaccurate and at times so intemperate as to be violently abusive, have done considerable damage, not merely to the political party associated with government, and have resulted in weakening the respect for authority.'
13

As one historian describes it, the
Catholic Bulletin
was ‘a remarkable monthly publication … in no way under official ecclesiastical supervision. It may indeed have been a standing embarrassment to the higher echelons of the church in Ireland.'
14

The
Catholic Bulletin
seemed to be very well connected. Its unsigned editorials often hit a nerve with the increasingly sensitive Cumann na nGaedheal leadership. It was generally believed that many of these anonymous tirades were written by Fr Timothy Corcoran, SJ, who was professor of education at UCD. He was undeniably the dominant influence on the views of the
Catholic Bulletin
at this time,
15
and was also the unofficial leader of the Sinn Féin caucus at the university. He was close to de Valera and was a mentor of John Charles McQuaid, who would later become archbishop of Dublin.
16
Like his fellow Jesuit, Fr Stephen Brown, Fr Timothy Corcoran was not an Irish speaker, despite his strong advocacy of the Irish language.
17

It would perhaps be unwise to accept the views of the more extreme of the religious journals as typical of public opinion at the time. Certainly, some of the bishops took a much more robust view of the wilder realms of the Catholic press than did the beleaguered government. The Minister for Education, Professor John Marcus O'Sullivan, reported back to Cosgrave that in conversation with Archbishop Harty of Cashel, he had been told that the archbishop ‘didn't pay much attention to criticisms of us [the government] by the
Catholic Bulletin
. And that the government “ought to know enough about politics not to mind them.”'
18