The golden age of the bishops
William Trevor
GOODBYE TO CATHOLIC IRELAND by Mary Kenny Sinclair-Stevenson, £11.99, pp. 320 hen the last British soldiers retreat- ed in the early 1920s from what was to become the new Irish state, a way of life — a whole imperial hierarchy — went with them, and a vacuum of vast dimen- sions was left behind. No mere arrange- ment of politics, no wrenching of equestrian statues from their pedestals, no proud hoisting of the tricolour could ever be sufficient to purge the infant of its inherited infection. Like the Wild Geese of long ago, the Anglo-Irish families had mostly fled, their houses burnt and aban- doned. The Irish language was clawed back from the oblivion to which it had been confined, green paint was splashed over the red pillar-boxes, but still it was not enough. A terrible beauty was born, but what it would grow into was not at all clear. A prize was there to be seized and the Catholic Church — hounded and hammered for centuries, yet always cautious about its support for revolutionary upheaval — seized it in a seemly and dignified manner. Catholic Ireland began.
Saying goodbye to it more than 70 years later, Mary Kenny enlivens her pages with a torrent of information and speculation that is thankfully devoid of academic pretension. In snappy journalese that only occasionally jars she thrashes her way through what most Irish people know but outsiders, I suspect, do not. Anecdotes and statistics, fact and hearsay, are sewn into a grey tapestry ubiquitously marked with the black cloth of priestly suiting and nuns' habits. I remember it well.
A Protestant childhood in the small towns of Munster and Leinster was as good a vantage point as any from which to observe the Catholic Ireland that is cur- rently falling apart. In seaside Youghal the priests, two or three abreast, marched up and down the promenade, more intent on catching the afternoon sun than on offering children sweets. The reputation of the Christian Brothers was for brutality, not an excess of affection. In Sldbbereen the nuns wrapped the novels of their convent lend- ing library in brown-paper covers to keep them clean, not knowing that The Stars Look Down and No Orchid. for Miss Blandish were on the Irish Index.
For my part, I didn't know there had been talk of incorporating the Sacred Heart in the white of the green, white and orange. Nor that, 20 years on, another small town — Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford — would provide a chilling instance of clerical bigotry when little Eileen Cloney, born into a mixed marriage and therefore nominally a Catholic under the Ne Temere papal decree, was sent to a Protestant school. An innocent child was being stolen for the services of heresy, rant- ed a bishop who happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time. The two Protestant shops in Fethard were boy- cotted, as was the milk of Protestant farm-
All she ever does is sit at home all day.'
ers. Protestants themselves were ostracised. Shots were fired.
It was De Valera who brought the unpleasantness to an end, condemning it as 'deplorable, ill-conceived and futile . . . unjust and cruel'. Far more sagacious than he has ever been given credit for, De Valera — although a deeply religious man himself — knew that the Church had to be watched, even if the benefits of Catholicism far outweighed its shortcomings at this time. While other European countries swung into the second half of the 20th century by cutting the odd theological corner, Ireland stood firm, the Irish imagi- nation continuing to be nourished by the miracles and wonders of belief. Virgins moved, plaster eyes wept, there were the favours of the rosary. When the elderly worried about taking communion with denture powder holding their teeth in place they were kindly reassured. Misfortunes were offered up as God's will.
The period was one of almost startling stability for a country which gangs of gun- men had so recently and with such bloody violence released from captivity. There were bare feet on the streets, rags under the shawls, the stench of disease wafting over the half-doors, massive emi- gration. But you could leave your house unlocked. No one mugged you. The bank alarms didn't ring. No wonder the bishops wanted their golden age to last. No wonder political leaders valued their clerical alliance.
But quite abruptly, as this book most graphically recalls, the halcyon days dark- ened. Liberation came with the Sixties, its harvest undiscovered for more than a gen- eration. My Irish Times, as I write, carries a photograph of a beaming Brendan Smyth, paedophile priest, just released from a Deny prison, having served his sentence for the sexual persecution of Belfast children over a period of 20 years. Seventy- four similar charges await him in Dublin, and he is one of many. Priests, Mary Kenny observes, find it much more difficult
in a highly sexualised culture . . . to keep testosterone under control . . . The files marked Priests/Sex Abuse in Irish newspaper libraries bulge .. .
Goodbye, indeed, to safe, holy Catholic Ireland.
This book is not an attack on the Church, but a fair analysis — well researched and documented — of what was, and still is, good and bad in its devel- opment since the fall of Parnell. Mary Kenny confesses that she herself rebelled against the repression that affected Catholics of all classes once the bishops' rule became absolute, but her personal his- tory appears in no way to have influenced her pursuit of the truth. There is no equiv- ocation, no selective presentation of fact in order to bolster an argument. Goodbye to Catholic Ireland is a welcome and valuable addition to the record of Irish history. I read it with unwaning admiration.
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