by Bury, Robin;
Ireland had become poor and backward. In 1912, it was the 11th richest country in the world, but by 1947, the dreams of the Irish founding fathers lay in ruins. They had predicted that once Ireland cast off the yoke of British rule, it would become more prosperous. Arthur Griffith envisaged strong, protected local industries giving employment to their communities. He wanted an industrialised Ireland, which would give economic support to a greatly increased population of perhaps 20 million people. He also believed there were rich mineral reserves that the British administrations had left untouched. Instead there was widespread poverty.
In contrast, in Northern Ireland, Atlee’s welfare state was introduced in 1947, giving children of low-income families the opportunity to have free secondary education. They could go on to university by availing of the new grants. Children in the Free State, however, had to wait almost 2 decades before free secondary education was provided. The Northern Irish welfare state also introduced family allowances, which provided twice the amount of money for the child after the firstborn as was granted in the Republic. There were equally significant differences in unemployment benefits, pensions and sickness benefits. Professor F.S.L. Lyons of Trinity College, Dublin pointed out that ‘between the health services the differences were so great that little comparison was possible.53
The Inter-Party government of Fine Gael and Clann na Poblachta came to power in 1948, and in the words of the historian Ronan Fanning, it ‘was to conduct the most cringingly servile and sickening obsequious Catholic foreign policy in the history of the State’.54 One of the first acts of this government was to send a message of ‘filial devotion’ to Pope Pius XII, signed by Costello, which read:
On the occasion of our assumption of office and our first Cabinet meeting, my colleagues and myself desire to repose at the feet of Your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and devotion as well as of our firm resolve to be guided in all our work by the teaching of Christ and to strive for the attainment of social order in Ireland based on Christian principles.’55
The inspiration behind this government initiative was Joe Walshe, the Irish Ambassador to the Holy See. He was, according to Ronan Fanning, ‘as notoriously misogynistic as he was polemically Catholic’56 and wrote in March 1950 to the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, following a visit to Rome by Costello, ‘T(hank) G(od) we have such a wonderful Catholic at the head of Govt.’57 Home Rule had become Rome Rule to an extent even hardline Ulster unionists would have hardly imagined possible in 1914. This message to the Pope was ‘the most abject statement of Catholic piety since independence’.58 It sent an unambiguous message to the Protestant minority, and all minorities which were not Catholic: the state you live in is a Catholic one for a Catholic people.
In 1949, the coalition government – under the influence of Sean McBride and leadership of Fine Gael’s John A. Costello – took the country out of the British Commonwealth in a hurried and clumsy manner, declaring a republic. De Valera would not have left the Commonwealth, as he believed that it provided a bridge to Northern Ireland and his dream of unification. In fact, there was no need to leave the Commonwealth to achieve a republic, as India, which left the British Empire a few days later to also become a republic, remained in the Commonwealth and is today an advocate for Ireland to return. In the words of the historian Richard Davis:
… by that time the action was both otiose and impolitic. India with a history more venerable than that of Ireland, was demonstrating that a republic without loss of dignity could maintain its association with the British community; the problem of reconciling Ulster Protestants to a united Ireland was increased rather than lessoned by the withdrawal of the Irish Republic.59
Before turning to some Protestant views of modern Ireland and to the failure of the Orange Order to celebrate the centenary of its’ foundation, perhaps it is worth giving a picture of the Irish Protestants seen from the eyes of a distinguished English politician, Lord Hailsham, who married Mary Martin of the old Norman family of Martins of Ross in Lough Corrib, related to Violet Martin of Sommerville and Ross fame. He wrote:
Mary and her family had all the best qualities of Southern Irish Protestants: a steely loyalty to one another and to the Crown, an unshakeable personal courage, a nice sense of fun, and great personal courage. They lack the fierce Calvinism and garrison mentality of the Protestants of the North. They are wholly without fanaticism. They take their own Protestant Christianity for granted without flaunting their faith in the face of different persuasions. They treat the English with amused affection, but are as different from them as the Scots and the Welsh. They bitterly resent Sinn Féin, who have exiled them from their old homes.60
5
Grabbing their Children
In 1907 a stronger, more militant Roman Catholic Church introduced the decree Ne Temere, under which dispensation for a mixed-religion marriage would not be granted unless both the Protestant and Roman Catholic partners gave a written guarantee that the children would be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. The Ne Temere decree played a major role in reducing Protestant numbers for a large part of the twentieth century. In fact, it was the most important factor in reducing Protestant numbers post-independence in 1922. The decree remained in effect until 1970, when local bishops were allowed to relax the rules on mixed-religion marriages. However, as Brian Walker has made clear, in Ireland the bishops in general did not step back and let parents ‘decide on the upbringing of children’ and ‘the Protestant community continued to decline’.1
What was the Ne Temere? Pope Pius X issued it to replace the Dutch Precedent, a mid-eighteenth century ruling which stated that Catholic-Protestant marriages were valid under Catholic canon law. This was valid in countries where Catholics were under penal laws, long since gone in Ireland. To quote Don Akenson:
Henceforth, no mixed-marriage would be valid under Catholic canon law (even if valid in civil law) unless a Catholic priest presided and the non-Catholic partner signed a legal form that was imperious in tone and humbling in detail. The non-Catholic affirmed that he or she would not intervene of the religion of the Catholic partner; the Catholic partner affirmed that he or she would endeavor in every way to bring the non-Catholic to the True Faith. They both swore and signed that all children of the marriage would be baptized Catholic and educated in Catholic schools. And they both swore that they would not engage in any parallel marriage ceremony – either civil or Protestant. The only marital bond was the Church’s.
Then, and only then, the mixed-religion couple could be married in a side chapel and without a nuptial mass.
The Ne Temere pledge reads like some jog-trot insurance document or commercial bill-of-sale and would be easy to ignore. But that would be a mistake: it is in fact one of the most inflammatory pieces of prose in twentieth-century Irish history. Protestants are not keen on mixed marriages any more than their Catholic counterparts. But what they hear – accurately – is that any marriage that includes a Protestant is necessarily second-rate. And, crucially, they understand that the children of any mixed marriage will be ‘grabbed’ – that is the most common term – by the Roman Catholics.2
It has been emphasised in correspondence in The Irish Times that there was ‘no reference in the decree in any shape or form to the religious upbringing of the children’. 3 Be that as it may, the practical reality was that before the Ne Temere, Catholic clergymen advised the Catholic partner that the children should be brought up as Catholics, although they did not insist on it. In practice, before the coming of the Ne Temere in Ireland there was flexibility over mixed marriages and the religious upbringing of children from such marriages.
The Ne Temere ‘made the presence of a priest and two witnesses a necessary condition of the validity of any marriage involving a Catholic.’4 Crucially, priests ‘would not perform such a marriage until a dispensation had been granted, and this a bishop would not do until the promises had been given.’5 Ultimately this meant that ‘in practice the promises became
necessary for validity’.6
Due to the social and cultural apartheid-style lives operated by Protestant and Catholics, an apartheid I experienced as a child growing up in Co. Cork, it has been argued that the Ne Temere was rarely an issue before the Second World War. But with increased social mobility and the erosion of old prejudices, mixed religion marriages became more frequent after the war was over. Arguably no other country applied it more harshly than Ireland. It is difficult to get reliable statistics, not least because the Church of Ireland did not keep them, believing that one’s faith and not numbers was what mattered, but Dr Brendan Walsh of University College Dublin estimated that by 1961 around 25 per cent of Protestants were in mixed-religion marriages; and 30 per cent of Protestant men and 20 per cent of Protestant women were in mixed marriages in 1961. Almost all of the resulting children were raised as Roman Catholics.7
In a detailed analysis of numbers of Protestants entering mixed-religion marriages, Richard O’Leary concluded that Protestant brides were marrying Catholic partners in small numbers pre-1926, only 6.1 per cent, but by 1962–66, that had increased to 33.5 per cent.8
By 1971, some 30 per cent of Protestants were marrying Roman Catholics. Today the figure is closer to 50 per cent. Few Protestant leaders spoke up to defend their faith and the effect on the arrogant rapaciousness of the Roman Catholic Church on Protestant numbers over generations. Dr Kenneth Milne of the Church of Ireland wrote:
The regulations of the Catholic Church governing mixed marriages, particularly as expressed in the Ne Temere of 1908, played a key role in the Church of Ireland’s demographic decline. In an environment such as that of the twenty-six counties, where mixed marriages are common, the obligation imposed on both partners to bring their children up in the faith and practice of the Catholic Church has had considerable demographic impact.9
Many marriages were deeply influenced by the decree and one such marriage broke down very publicly. A Church of Ireland husband, Mr Tilson, took custody of his children and placed them in a Protestant home so that they would be raised as Protestants. The marriage must have been under considerable strain as the Catholic mother took a case to the High Court in 1950 where the President of the Court, Justice Gavan Duffy, ruled that as Mr Tilson had given a written promise under the Ne Temere to raise the children as Roman Catholics, he was legally bound to do so. As justification for his decision, the judge referred to Article 44 of the Constitution, which recognised ‘the special position’ of the Roman Catholic Church. The children were therefore ordered to be returned to their mother. Their father appealed to the Supreme Court and lost his case, but not on the grounds of article 44. Of the 4 judges, 3 were Roman Catholics and voted against him. The dissenting judge, Justice Black, was a Protestant.
Garret FitzGerald wrote in Towards a New Ireland that the Ne Temere decree ‘has been responsible for a significant part of the decline in the Protestant population of the Republic’. He tried to bring this to the attention of the Pope when paying an official visit to the Vatican, but was brushed off. FitzGerald said in an RTÉ interview on 27 September 1981:
If I were a northern Protestant today, I cannot see how I would be attracted to getting involved with a state that is itself sectarian … the fact is our laws and our Constitution, our practices, our attitudes reflect those of a majority ethos and are not acceptable to Protestants in Northern Ireland.
However, FitzGerald failed to mention Protestants in the South. Were they happy living in the sort of State he described? He seemed to be unaware, whether through innocence or doublethink, that Irish Protestants who had lived in a ‘sectarian’ State for 60 years, a State that was institutionally and emotionally anti-Protestant, were not likely to be contented. Like Conor Cruise O’Brien, while seeing the serious shortcomings of the Irish State for northern unionists, he failed to see how southern Protestants might also have been alienated by a puritanical, ethno-nationalist Roman Catholic, Gaelic Irish State. When I mentioned this to him in email correspondence, he told me that Protestants had not complained to him, to which I responded that I could introduce him to some who would if he so wished! He did not take up my offer and the correspondence ended. Victor Griffin, the brave ex-Dean of St. Patrick’s cathedral, might have told him that ‘Protestants were scared … I can hear my mother’s warning: “For goodness sake, keep quiet, Victor, or you’ll get us all burnt out”.’10
One writer put it thus: ‘The Church has been the guiding influence on the politics of the nation since the fall of Parnell. It determined the inner life of the nation, and later it determined the inner life of the State. All parties and all Governments have functioned within its ambience.’11
Protestants were living in a State, under a Constitution, and under laws that were ‘appropriate only for those who subscribed to the authority of the Catholic Church.’12
Dr Martin Mansergh, the nationalist Protestant Fianna Fáil TD, wrote that ‘post independence … notwithstanding vestiges of a more idealistic and inclusive republicanism, there was a concerted effort to create a homogeneous 26-county society, in which there would be no challenge to the hegemony of the Church’.13
Another mixed-religion marriage was to hit the headlines more sensationally in 1957. My father was Dean of Cloyne at that time and although I cannot remember him talking about it, he must have been shaken by the stand taken by the Roman Catholic Church. This mixed-religion marriage was in Fethard-on-Sea, a small holiday coastal village in Co. Wexford, where a boycott of Church of Ireland traders started in May 1957, initiated and strenuously encouraged by the local parish curate, Father James Stafford. The boycott was supported by Father Allen, the parish priest; by the Bishop of Galway, by Cardinal D’Alton in Armagh; and by the local bishop, James Staunton of Ferns. Irish politicians, with two exceptions – namely Senators William Bedell Stanford and Owen Sheehy-Skeffington of the Protestant Trinity College, Dublin – failed to speak up, showing the control the Roman Catholic Church exercised over elected representatives of the Irish State.
Inevitably, the boycott drew the attention of the international press, notably Time magazine. Eamon de Valera, the Taoiseach, did intervene eventually on 5 July 1957, some 2 months after the boycott started. He said in the Dáil that the boycott was ‘ill-conceived, ill-considered and futile for the achievement of the purpose for which it seems to have been intended’. By then the incident was causing international embarrassment. De Valera described the events as ‘this deplorable affair’, but he did not oppose the Ne Temere decree itself. Senator Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, however, was outraged. He was concerned that 11 Protestant children were getting no primary education, the 22-year-old Roman Catholic teacher, Anna Walsh, having withdrawn her services as soon as the boycott started. He raised the issue in the Senate on 5 June 1957, calling the boycott ‘cowardly and disgusting’, pointing out that ‘small children are deprived – I might use the word victimised – in relation to the educational facilities.’ The Minister for Education at the time, Jack Lynch, did not turn up in the Senate to debate the boycott, despite Senator Sheehy-Skeffington having been assured that he would, or that he would send a representative. Professor Stanford supported Sheehy-Skeffington, saying that the incident ‘may do grave harm to the good name of the country at home and abroad’. Sheehy-Skeffington separately wrote to Revd Adrian Fisher on 10 August, enclosing a small cheque for the relief fund that had been set up.
What happened to bring all this on? I interviewed a number of people in the summer of 2007, among them Gerry Gregg, who produced a gripping film called A Love Divided; the clergyman in Fethard-on-Sea at the time, the Revd Adrian Fisher, who had to look after his tiny number of parishioners through this ugly time, and Eileen Kehoe, the daughter of the woman who brought on the boycott.
Sheila Kelly was the daughter of Thomas Kelly, a Church of Ireland farmer and cattle dealer. Her mother, meanwhile, came from a Palatine background. The Palatines came to Ireland from the Rhineland Palatinate in the early eighteenth century to escape Ro
man Catholic persecution, only to find it in Co. Wexford during the 1798 rebellion and again later. About 5,000 Palatines were settled in Ireland with tiny holdings of between 8 and 10 acres in counties Limerick, Kerry, Tipperary, Carlow and Wexford. They spoke German initially and had a reputation for working hard and being self-sufficient. They sowed wheat, barley, oats and potatoes in rotation; they even grew flax. During the Great Famine of 1845–49, no Palatines died of starvation or disease, because their mixed-crop methods of farming gave them an alternative food to the potato. They had another major advantage over the Irish: being Protestants, they enjoyed security of tenure; they were given 50-year leases on arrival. No doubt if the Irish had been encouraged to rotate crops and given security of tenure, there would have been far fewer deaths from disease associated with starvation during the Famine.
It seems that Sheila inherited this tradition of hard work, self-reliance and independence of mind. She was a driven woman and not one to spend money on herself. She was a dedicated member of the Church of Ireland, deeply involved in the local parish. It was Sheila who proved to be the farmer, not her husband, Sean Cloney, who inherited his farm of 120 acres. He came from a Roman Catholic family, which had managed to keep its land throughout the time of the plantations and the penal laws. His ancestors had been prominently involved in the 1798 rebellion and fought with Wolfe Tone’s insurgents in the Enniscorthy area. Cloney was aware of the burning of innocent Protestants in a barn in Scullabogue near Wexford at that time and would have been horrified by it. Some 100 men, women and children had been burnt to death in reprisal for the deaths of United Irishmen in New Ross, 6 miles to the west. Cloney became a member of the Scullabogue memorial committee, as he was a man without religious bigotry. Why otherwise would he marry a Protestant of Palatine descent?