Greg DalyThe Church’s attitude to the Rising was far more complex than newspaper reports suggested at the time, Greg Daly discovers
To judge by The Irish Catholic in the Rising’s immediate aftermath, Dublin’s ashes had barely cooled before Ireland’s bishops took to their pulpits en masse to condemn the rebellion.
For Cashel and Emly’s Bishop John Harty, eventual chair of the committee that would organise the 1932 Eucharistic Congress and the man after whom the Munster schools hurling trophy is named, the people of his diocese and especially Tipperary town, were to be congratulated for not joining in the rebellion against Ireland’s interests.
“We all know,” this newspaper reported, “that the people of Ireland at large do not want any revolutionary measures. We are perfectly well aware that the people of Ireland believe that by constitutional means they can gain substantial redress of the grievances. The history of the past has shown that all revolutionary measures are doomed to failure.
“The people of this archdiocese and of this town realise that to the fullest extent,” he continued, “and hence, during the last sorrowful fortnight they kept calm, showing that now, as always, they are true, patriotic Irishmen.”
Commissions
Cork and Ross’ Bishop Denis Kelly, who had been bishop since 1897 and served on several royal commissions, including one in 1911 for projected Home Rule finance, was apparently far more strident when speaking at Mass in Skibbereen. Describing the Rising as “a senseless, meaningless debauch of blood”, indefensible on any basis, he said that in such an unlawful war the killing of men was murder pure and simple.
Claiming that the Irish had been taxed more leniently than the English and Scots since the Great War had begun, he said the Rising was bound to worsen the miseries and deprivations of the war, not least by lengthening it. Such, he said, was probably its aim, citing the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s claim that the Rising was not a truly Irish rebellion, but was a German-orchestrated attempt to discourage the United States from pushing Germany to abandon its U-Boat campaign against vessels supplying Britain.
The manipulative hand of Germany was similarly seen by Tuam’s auxiliary bishop Michael Higgins as behind the Rising. Blaming “the Sinn Féin section” for the lives lost, with those urging them forward being doubly responsible, he said they would have to render “a fearful account” for the blood that had been shed.
The Rising was, he said, asking where the German army was that had been promised to assist the rebels, “the old, old story of relying on false promises of foreign aid”.
Dr Higgins returned to the issue of the Rising when speaking at Glenamaddy Church some weeks later, saying that looking back on it appeared “like a nightmare”, one that hardly seemed possible. “Let them think of the insanity and utter madness of any body of men, comparatively only a handful as these were,” he said, “rising up against the English Army, which amounted to five millions of men.”
Urging them to “think of the utter insanity of any body of persons without ammunition and guns, except rifles, shot guns, and a few machine guns, rising up against that army”, he conceded that some of the rebels were driven by good motives, but that the Irish were poor enough without the loss of lives and property the Rising had caused.
Ireland’s people, more than anything, “had their hearts fixed” upon their land, and had been fighting for it all their lives, he said, claiming that most of this had already been won and what remained due would come “in its own good time”. If the rebellion had succeeded at all, this would have been taken from them, he said, such that “farmers and everyone associated with them had nothing to gain but everything to lose” from such a rebellion.
Wondering what inspired the Rising’s leaders and those few rebels who took part in a minor incident in Athenry, he said they had “turned aside from the advice and guidance of the Church and the recognised leaders of the country”. Pointing out that the Church condemned secret societies, he said of the rebels, “they would not listen to the advice of the Church, which condemned rebellion when there was not a just or sufficient reason for it”.
Bishop John Mangan of Kerry was not slow to condemn those “misguided men, who, if they had their way, would plunge Ireland into the horrors of civil war”. Speaking in Killarney Cathedral, he asked why the rebels had been so keen to fight Germany’s battles, pointing to how Sir Roger Casement, once he had served Germany’s purposes, had been “cast helplessly adrift on the Irish coast”. With Casement having come ashore at Banna Strand in the bishop’s own diocese, this added local colour to his speech.
The responsibility for the Rising rested in large part, he said, with those Ulstermen who had founded the Ulster Volunteer Force in an attempt to discourage Britain from introducing Home Rule to Ireland, leading Irish nationalists to follow their example.
Policies
“Much has been said in these latter days,” he said, “of the body called the Irish Volunteers. Some of them have adopted policies and lent themselves to courses of which no wise Nationalist could approve. But in justice to them as a body they professed to be opposed to any revolutionary measures. I am informed, and I believe correctly, that Mr McNeill himself issued an appeal to his followers to abstain from any illegal course of action.
“If this be true,” he continued, “I appeal with all the strength and authority I possess to the young men who are members of the Irish Volunteers to be more faithful to the pledge of their constitution, and not allow themselves on any account to be drawn into illegal courses by evil-minded men affected by Socialistic and Revolutionary doctrines.”
Clonfert’s Bishop Thomas Gilmartin, however, while condemning the Rising likewise agreed that blame for it needed to be shared with those Ulster unionists who in 1913 had reintroduced the threat of violent insurrection into Irish life and the London government that allowed them to do so. “This thing was allowed to go too far,” he said in Loughrea Cathedral, continuing, “Sir Edward Carson and his Volunteers were permitted practically to do what they liked.” Now that the rebellion had been quashed, the bishop pleaded for restraint, calling on the authorities and the military to be guided by the principles of humanity.
Bishop Joseph Hoare, Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, likewise appealed from Rathdine Church for the authorities to refrain from a policy of vengeance, saying that the time had come for reconciliation.
Preaching that there was no excuse for revolution, and that it could never be lawful to take up arms to depose the ruling Sovereign, he lamented the state of Catholic education in Ireland, as indicated by how many Irish politicans were badly instructed on this point, wrongly convinced that a united people could justly make and depose kings.
Outlining the basic principles of Just War theory, the bishop said the Church could not condone the Rising, which he called “a mad and sinful adventure”, devoid of sufficient cause for revolt for a reasonable chance of success.
On the face of it, then, anyone relying on public statements from the hierarchy could have been forgiven for assuming that Ireland’s bishops were of one mind in their condemnation of the Rising, albeit with slight distinctions in their apportioning of blame. The truth, however, looks not to have been so simple.
Ireland had 31 bishops in 1916, and it seems that while a handful spoke out against the Rising, the overall majority said very little publicly on the matter, and the silence of the majority may say more than the few words we have from a vocal minority.
Bishop Michael Fogarty of Killaloe, who like Dr Hoare had cautioned against governmental vengeance in a May 14 homily, in 1949 told the Bureau of Military History that the hierarchy had in fact been divided on the issue, and were – generally speaking – divided as much by age as by attitude.
While the bishops never discussed the Rising in council, he subsequently clarified, “Individually they would be all for the independence of Ireland: but the shooting troubled some of the older members, whose names need not be recorded.
“The first outbreak on Easter Monday shocked and annoyed the general public: but this was only for a few days,” he continued, “when it dawned upon the people that the Easter leaders had deliberately in good faith risked their lives for Ireland’s sake, the public rallied wholeheartedly behind them.”
Asked about his own view of the Rising’s morality, Dr Fogarty said “so much may be said on both sides”, though he indicated that he was inclined to see it as justifiable, writing afterwards that the rebellion had a kind of retroactive authority: “after a few days the whole nation mobilised behind the Easter Rising, and made it justifiable as far as required.”
Sympathetic
The bishop had clearly been at least sympathetic to the Rising at the time, to judge by how he said that when news of the Rising first reached his diocese most people condemned it out of hand, but that he advised them, “not to be carried away by impulse”.
He described how an old parish priest, on first hearing of the Rising, quoted Hebrews 9.22, ‘nulla salus sine effusione sanguinis’ – that there’s no redemption without bloodshed, and observed how “As a matter of fact all or nearly all the big civil revolts that afterwards eventuated in such tremendous results present in their first beginnings moral issues I should not like to decide upon.”
Dr Edward O’Dwyer, Limerick’s bishop who died in 1917, had maintained privately to him that the Rising was morally justifiable, he said, and this seems to be borne out by other events at the time.
In August 1915 Dr O’Dwyer had written to Irish Nationalist Party leader John Redmond, urging him to work for peace rather than the continuation of the Great War, saying “the prolongation of this war for one hour beyond what is absolutely necessary is a crime against God and humanity”.
Following Redmond’s response he addressed him that November in an open letter published in a few provincial papers, maintaining that Irish people should not be shedding blood for British ends. “Their crimes is that they are not ready to die for England,” he wrote. “Why should they? What have they or their forebears ever got from England that they should die for her?” As for Redmond’s belief that Home Rule had been achieved – it was being held in abeyance until the war ended and the opposition of the Ulster unionists had been addressed – he was scathing, saying that “any intelligent Irishman” could tell it was merely “a simulacrum of Home Rule, with an express notice that it is never intended to come into operation”.
Dr O’Dwyer would be the first bishop in 1916 to condemn General Maxwell’s handling of the Rising and its aftermath.
The Commander-in-Chief, responsible for the administration of martial law in the country, had written to the bishop to ask him to remove two of his priests, Drumcollogher’s Fr Thomas Wall and Newcastlewest’s Fr Michael Hayes, from their parishes, describing them as “a dangerous menace to the peace and safety of the Realm”. Had they been laymen, he said, they would already have been placed under arrest.
Unfortunately for General Maxwell, his first charge against the priests was to say that Fr Wall had preached against conscription on the previous November 14; what the Drumcollogher priest had in fact done was to read from his bishop’s open letter to John Redmond. In response on May 17, Dr O’Dwyer said that the two men were “both excellent priests” who, while holding “strong national views”, did not seem to have “violated any law civil or ecclesiastical”.
Referring to General Maxwell as “military dictator of Ireland”, he said he could not help him, saying, “the events of the past few weeks would make it impossible for me to have any part in proceedings which I regard as wantonly cruel and oppressive”.
Contrasting the British treatment of “buccaneers” in advance of the Second Boer War to their handling of the Rising’s leaders, he said, “You took care that no plea for mercy should interpose on behalf of the poor young fellows who surrendered to you in Dublin. The first information which we got of their fate was the announcement that they had been shot in cold blood.”
“Personally,” he continued, “I regard your action with horror, and I believe that it has outraged the conscience of the country. Then the deporting of hundreds and even thousands of poor fellows without a trial of any kind seems to me an abuse of power as fatuous as it is arbitrary and your regime has been one of the worst and blackest chapters in the history of misgovernment of the country.”
The ordinary clergy around the country had like the bishops been divided on the Rising, with The Irish Catholic describing one Ratoath priest scorning it as “a feeble attempt… to establish a toy republic, under the jurisdiction and by the liberty of Liberty Hall”. Younger priests, however, were generally not unsympathetic to the rebels’ aims, and the priest who accompanied Fr Fogarty to his 1949 interview said he had been a seminarian in Maynooth in 1916, and that he and his fellow students “had unanimously and unenthusiastically favoured the Rising”.
Dr O’Dwyer’s response to General Maxwell served to boost the confidence of the younger clergy, and helped accelerate the shift in public opinion towards support for the rebels. Support for constitutional nationalism – now inextricably linked with the seemingly inevitable partition of the country – began to collapse among people, priests and bishops.
On June 19, Derry’s Bishop Charles McHugh told John Redmond that he would rather 50 more years of direct rule from London than accept the British attempt to settle Ireland through excluding six Ulster counties as a separate Home Rule area. With his fellow northern bishops taking a similar line, it was clear that the Irish Church, if not yet committed to immediate independence, was no longer willing to settle for Home Rule.