The Church and the 1916 Easter Rising

Dear Editor, I very much appreciated Mary Kenny’s short discussion of the religious (and in many respects specifically Catholic) dimensions to the 1916 Easter Rising (IC 09/04/2015), and I certainly think she is ‘on the money’ when she states that these dimensions need to be part of the informed public discussion of the significance of the Rising over the coming 12 months.

I would suggest one slight refinement to her observations on the response of the hierarchy to the Rising. Yes, it is true that a small minority of the bishops spoke out against those who had participated in the Rising in its immediate aftermath, but most remained silent, and it is an open historical question in this context as to what extent silence may have betokened consent. Certainly judging by the vituperative criticism subsequently directed against the British government’s suppression of the Rising by one of that silent majority (Bishop Edward O’Dwyer of Limerick) – criticism that was crucial in stiffening the resolve of those who were sympathetic to the insurgents – one should be wary of inferring that those who did not make an immediate public statement shared the views of those who did.

It should also be noted that the two most important figures within the hierarchy of the day – Cardinal Logue of Armagh, and more pointedly Archbishop Walsh of Dublin (in whose diocese most of the fighting had taken place) – were amongst those who maintained a studied reserve on the question. Given Walsh’s well-known misgivings regarding John Redmond’s leadership of the ‘national’ cause, one may legitimately interpret the archbishop’s public stance on this occasion in a number of ways, by no means all of them hostile to the republicans. It may be instructive to note in this respect that two years earlier Walsh had been responsible for at least suturing the open wound that had long infected the relationship between the hierarchy and ‘advanced nationalism,’ when he permitted the remains of the exiled Cork Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa to be received into the pro-cathedral on their return from America prior to his magnificent funeral.

Perhaps The Irish Catholic itself might facilitate this debate, the need for which has so astutely been discerned by Ms Kenny?

Yours etc.,

Gabriel Doherty,

School of History, University College Cork.