David Quinn
RTÉ documentary came from a strange place, writes David Quinn
It is hard to know what the point of Rome v Republic was. The programme aired last week on RTÉ and was presented by former Justice Minister Michael McDowell. It repeated talking points about the Church and its relationship to Irish society and the State that have been discussed endlessly for years at this stage.
Perhaps the only bit of semi-originality lay in its thesis that the British Crown and the Church in Rome conspired to keep the ideas of the French Revolution out of Ireland. Both the British State and the Catholic Church felt threatened by it because it sought to overthrow the monarchy, the Church and the established order generally.
McDowell holds up Wolfe Tone as a hero because he wanted to import the French Revolution to Ireland, drive the British out and unite all Irish people, whatever their religion, in an Irish republic, which is what was being attempted in France. If this dream had been realised, which was McDowell’s basic message, how different our history might have been. We would not have come under the domination of Rome, we would have been a true republic for all the people.
Vision
But right here, at the start, his thesis comes off the rails, or ought to, had he spoken to a wider range of people for his programme. It might at least have been challenged and made viewers think a bit more that there is another way to look at this.
For example, arguably the most gigantic figure of 19th Century Ireland rates only the briefest of mentions in the programme, namely Daniel O’Connell. O’Connell’s vision of the path ahead for Ireland was very different from that of Tone.
O’Connell was in France when the Revolution was breaking out and saw its horrific violence for himself. He did not want to see this violence come to Ireland. He wanted peaceful reform. He was strongly opposed to the 1798 rebellion.
Suppose Wolfe Tone and the French had succeeded, with great bloodshed, in kicking out the British, does anyone imagine this would have lasted? Britain would never have tolerated a French ally at its backdoor, especially in the era of Napoleon. It would have moved might and main to defeat us again. The loss of life would have been enormous. O’Connell’s way – peaceful mass protest – was far better.
O’Connell was also very critical of the bitter anti-Catholicism of the French Revolution. Its extreme violence is barely mentioned in Rome v Republic. It is silent on the Terror and on the first mass murder in modern history, the massacre of the Catholics of the Vendée in western France for resisting the revolution.
O’Connell was aware of all this. So was Tone. Whose way was better for Ireland? Even if Tone did not want to see the violence of the French Revolution inflicted on Ireland, he must have known the dangers. Why does McDowell side with Tone and give O’Connell short shrift?
Rome v Republic looks at the Church of 200 years ago and presents it to the viewer as barely Catholic. There was a ‘folkloric’ religion to be found among the ordinary people, an amalgam of elements of Catholicism and paganism, it argues. But here again something that should have loomed much larger in the narrative is barely mentioned, namely the Penal Laws.
These were still in force 200 years ago, although becoming milder. But there has been a long-running attempt by the British State to destroy Catholicism in Ireland. It did enormous damage, smashing or taking over churches, monasteries, convents etc. No wonder so much rebuilding needed to be done once the Penal Laws began to lift.
The programme makes much of the fact that the British funded the building of St Patrick’s seminary in 1795 at Maynooth as if this was some kind of revelation. It’s true that it suited both the Church here and the Crown to do this. The Irish Church wanted its priests trained in Ireland, and Britain didn’t want them trained on the Continent and exposed to revolutionary ideas.
But this self-interested gesture by Britain was against the grain. O’Connell did not win emancipation for Catholics until 1829, 34 years later.
Again and again, Michael McDowell presents the Catholic Church in Ireland as somehow alien, that it was imposed upon us by Rome, hence the title of the programme. This, of course, is exactly how Protestant Britain viewed the Catholic Church, which is to say, as an outside agent, not homegrown, not native.
This rhetoric goes all the way back to Henry VIII. It’s why Henry established the Church of England, and it is why the Church of Ireland was established here. Ian Paisley loved to talk of the Roman Catholic Church.
But the Catholic Church in Ireland dates back 1,500 years. Few things here have deeper roots. Yes, the influence of Rome has waxed and waned, but it is the international, universalist dimension of the Catholic Church that has prefigured organisations like the European Union and helped to form European culture. Irish people were well aware of the internationalism of the Catholic Church, and proud of it.
Popular support
And this brings us on to something else that gets very short shrift in the programme, namely the huge popular support that once existed for the Catholic Church here. Its influence came from that and has waned only as that popular support has waned.
Rome did not impose an outside religion on us. If it was ‘imposed’ we did it to ourselves and we expected our politicians to heed it.
Michael McDowell is, or was, a classical liberal, that is someone who believes in limited Government, a State that does not overreach, and an autonomous civil society.
Any republic has to defer to what people want, and whether our former Justice Minister likes it or not, for a long time we expected the Irish State to defer to the gigantic civil society organisation that is the Catholic Church. That was unhealthy for both, but it is what we wanted. It was not a Roman invasion of Ireland.