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Post by maguidhir on Sept 18, 2023 3:35:17 GMT
A few observations: Monsignor Corish's book THE IRISH CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE might be a good one-volume introduction from the 80s. The HISTORY OF IRISH CATHOLICISM of which he was editor was never completed and what was published amounts to a series of pamphlets which are difficult to obtain and don't provide comprehensive coverage. Bear in mind also that Mgr Corish was an organisation man and thus not inclined to be over-critical. The basic difference between revisionism and anti-revisionism is whether Irish nationalism (however defined) is to be taken as self-evident and self-explanatory, or whether it is to be treated as a historical phenomenon which requires analysis and exploration. (I say "however defined" because the writer often smuggles in a lot of their own assumptions and treats the result as the only legitimate form of Irish nationalism. Sean Cronin does this with his form of republican socialism and Desmond Fennell with his decentralised communitarianism.) A lot of old-style Catholic history falls into the same mistake, and takes it as unthinkable that the Irish might ever have ceased to be Catholic. One historical narrative which doesn't get as much attention as it deserves is James Lydon's HISTORY OF IRELAND. I'm not sure how much attention it gives to religion, but Lydon's mediaevalism gives him a very strong sense of how the same constitutional issues recurred over the centuries. (It is not strong on pre-Norman Ireland.) The increasing dominance of modern historians within the profession means that these sort of continuities and recurrences tend to be overlooked. Another book from the 70s which is worth a look is Patrick O'Farrell's IRELAND'S ENGLISH QUESTION. It was written by an Australian liberal Catholic with certain axes to grind (he thought Australian catholicism needed to be emancipated from the Hiberno-Roman model and become naturalised) but he does take Catholicism seriously as a causal factor. Mary Kenny's GOODBYE TO CATHOLIC IRELAND from the 90s is a bit self-consciously ditzy but it does try to explore faith as seen from within. Two problems with Irish Catholic history: (a) it tends to be written in a political framework, in terms of relations with the nationalist movement, rather than as a distinctive phenomenon (b) Following the model of Emmet Larkin's monumental multi-volume history of the C19 Irish Catholic church, a lot of it is written from the bishops' perspective. A couple of very distinguished modern historians, both of whom I would describe as pretty secular, have remarked to me that academic studies of Irish catholicism have tended to overemphasise its social role at the expense of actual belief, so I think there is some awareness that there is a gap in understanding. BTW I will say this - I have had some contact with Fitzpatrick (now deceased) and Foster, and while their worldviews are not mine and they can be condescending in different ways, both were extremely fine historians with strong analytical powers who have added a great deal to our knowledge of modern Irish history. They can be disagreed with but not ignored. I'll try to put up some more thoughts in the next few days as I find time. I have The Course of Irish History (Moody, Martin, Mercier Press) on the way, as suggested by Beinidict. I'd also like to pick up a book by Lydon, but I'm still not sure which book you meant. If you've had some more thoughts since your last post, please do share.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 21, 2023 17:10:39 GMT
That looks like an interesting blog, if a poorly formatted one. I'll see if I can find a way to make it more legible. I thought the implication was that the Gill History of Ireland was due to be replaced, but Richter's attempt was not a good one. Is it still good source, then? In any case, the only set I can find is well out of my budget. I can find several (affordable) volumes from the A History of Irish Catholicism series, so I may start there, along with The Course of Irish History, as suggested by Beinidict. Beinidict, that is interesting, re: dispensation requests of Gaelic aristocrats. But wasn't divorce written into the Gaelic legal codes (among other un-Catholic things)? Are the dispensations from a later period, after the reforms of the 12th century, perhaps? There were a couple of essays by Peadar Laighléis in the Brandsma Review in the mid 1990s about divorce in early Irish law that haven't been uploaded onto the Fides et Goedelica blog yet that asked questions about this. One of his main points was that divorce was a very convenient translation of the old Irish imscarad which may not have been entirely accurate. That would be to reduce the research at bit much as it looked into the marital norms a bit further. I suppose you could say that establishing Christian marriage anywhere - not just in Ireland - was a work in progress for a long time and still is in much of Africa, while the west sees the family collapsing at the seems. The problem is to regard Ireland as unique and it's also important to say we are really only talking about the upper classes. I picked up the entire Gill History of Ireland volume by volume in second hand book shops over many years. I had already purchased some while they were still in print, but you had to learn how to pounce when you saw one, as one shop-keeper told me whenever a volume came in, it didn't stay on the shelves very long. I think with the New Gill History of Ireland, the mediaeval period just wasn't a priority, a single volume to replace 6 in the original (6 out of 11). I have to say I think the weakest of the 11 volumes was Margaret McCurtain's Tudor and Stuart Ireland.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 24, 2023 16:05:20 GMT
Here's the Jim Lydon book I meant - THE MAKING OF IRELAND FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE PRESENT (1998) www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Ireland-Ancient-Times-Present/dp/0415013488BTW the general view at the time I was a student in the 80s was that Michael Dolley's ANGLO-NORMAN IRELAND was the weakest volume in the original Gill series - it was the only one that wasn't on our reading lists.
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Post by maguidhir on Nov 25, 2023 23:57:37 GMT
Rather than start a new thread, I'll just pose my history question here, which is: What do serious Catholics in Ireland think of Éamon de Valera's post-civil war (or post-abstentionist) legacy, his legacy as a statesman rather than as a leader of a militant movement? My take: I'm aware that he is mostly, or even entirely, despised by the Irish intelligentsia today, representing to them the backwards, socially conservative Ireland from which they escaped. But I expect Catholics think differently. I am particularly impressed by the 1937 constitution, which must have been written with constant reference to Catholic social teaching, especially the writings of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. Consider Article 41.2 of the constitution (under attack today) on the State's obligation to ensure that mothers are not forced into the workplace because of financial necessity at the expense of their children and duties. While this article may be unpopular even with many Catholic women today, it was almost certainly written with reference to Pius XI's 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.* Another article, which was removed, was the insistence on the "special position of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of citizens," while ensuring tolerance to religious minorities. Would de Valera have been familiar with Leo XIII's letter to the American church, in which he said the American system of religious liberty was a compromise, not to be modelled on by other states? (For those who think Dignitatis Humanae abrogated this teaching, I recommend reading Ratzinger's 1987 reply,** as CDF chief, to Marcel Lefebvre, who also thought DH had rejected this teaching. Or read Thomas Pink on how DH was an explicitly Leonine document). I found those two articles particularly striking for their similarity to passages in social encyclicals. The constitution's understanding of the family was also clearly derived from these documents. Was this constitution representative of de Valera's more mature thinking, as a serious and sincere Catholic, or was he a savvy politician? I'm less familiar with de Valera in his later years, after the Second World War. Given my reading, de Valera emerges, post-1926, as a serious Catholic political thinker, not a pure reactionary as his critics would have him. He was not a liberal in the classical sense, but he did draw from liberalism in qualified ways. Even his defense of censorship was made on grounds which any Catholic should embrace (since we do not hold to an absolute right to freedom of speech), even if, in particular instances, the government may have been too trigger happy -- which is the impression I get. Anyways, that is my take. I'm curious about how he is received today by Catholics in Ireland. Hibernicus, I understand you are an expert on modern history and may be able to fill in some gaps in my account. Was he just using the Church to his political advantage, or was he seriously and sincerely engaging with the Catholic tradition? Chesterton, on his visit to Dublin for the Eucharistic Congress in 1932, said something along the lines of Dublin being the only city in Europe where the intellectuals were genuinely intellectual. Does de Valera fit that description? *Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno: 71. "...It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father's low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children." **"Le statut commun de liberté religieuse sur le plan civil et social est le minimum nécessaire dont a besoin l'Eglise pour accomplir sa mission divine, ce qui ne veut pas dire -comme on l'a dit précédemment- que ce minimum soit le seul possible ou le plus avantageux pour l'Eglise." DH is on the whole a very doctrinally conservative document that has been misinterpreted through the years. The whole letter is translated somewhere in English, but I couldn't find it - only the original in French (and yes, the link is from the SSPX website, because that's where I found the letter, but I see it as a good rebuttal of their claims about DH): laportelatine.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/reponses_dubia.pdf
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Post by maguidhir on Mar 13, 2024 2:46:43 GMT
Rather than start a new thread, I'll just pose my history question here, which is: What do serious Catholics in Ireland think of Éamon de Valera's post-civil war (or post-abstentionist) legacy, his legacy as a statesman rather than as a leader of a militant movement? My take: I'm aware that he is mostly, or even entirely, despised by the Irish intelligentsia today, representing to them the backwards, socially conservative Ireland from which they escaped. But I expect Catholics think differently. I am particularly impressed by the 1937 constitution, which must have been written with constant reference to Catholic social teaching, especially the writings of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. Consider Article 41.2 of the constitution (under attack today) on the State's obligation to ensure that mothers are not forced into the workplace because of financial necessity at the expense of their children and duties. While this article may be unpopular even with many Catholic women today, it was almost certainly written with reference to Pius XI's 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.* Another article, which was removed, was the insistence on the "special position of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of citizens," while ensuring tolerance to religious minorities. Would de Valera have been familiar with Leo XIII's letter to the American church, in which he said the American system of religious liberty was a compromise, not to be modelled on by other states? (For those who think Dignitatis Humanae abrogated this teaching, I recommend reading Ratzinger's 1987 reply,** as CDF chief, to Marcel Lefebvre, who also thought DH had rejected this teaching. Or read Thomas Pink on how DH was an explicitly Leonine document). I found those two articles particularly striking for their similarity to passages in social encyclicals. The constitution's understanding of the family was also clearly derived from these documents. Was this constitution representative of de Valera's more mature thinking, as a serious and sincere Catholic, or was he a savvy politician? I'm less familiar with de Valera in his later years, after the Second World War. Given my reading, de Valera emerges, post-1926, as a serious Catholic political thinker, not a pure reactionary as his critics would have him. He was not a liberal in the classical sense, but he did draw from liberalism in qualified ways. Even his defense of censorship was made on grounds which any Catholic should embrace (since we do not hold to an absolute right to freedom of speech), even if, in particular instances, the government may have been too trigger happy -- which is the impression I get. Anyways, that is my take. I'm curious about how he is received today by Catholics in Ireland. Hibernicus, I understand you are an expert on modern history and may be able to fill in some gaps in my account. Was he just using the Church to his political advantage, or was he seriously and sincerely engaging with the Catholic tradition? Chesterton, on his visit to Dublin for the Eucharistic Congress in 1932, said something along the lines of Dublin being the only city in Europe where the intellectuals were genuinely intellectual. Does de Valera fit that description? *Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno: 71. "...It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father's low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children." **"Le statut commun de liberté religieuse sur le plan civil et social est le minimum nécessaire dont a besoin l'Eglise pour accomplir sa mission divine, ce qui ne veut pas dire -comme on l'a dit précédemment- que ce minimum soit le seul possible ou le plus avantageux pour l'Eglise." DH is on the whole a very doctrinally conservative document that has been misinterpreted through the years. The whole letter is translated somewhere in English, but I couldn't find it - only the original in French (and yes, the link is from the SSPX website, because that's where I found the letter, but I see it as a good rebuttal of their claims about DH): laportelatine.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/reponses_dubia.pdfI've been away from this forum for several months, but I still think about the questions in the post above (especially given recent events), so I am quoting it in the hopes that it doesn't get buried forever. If the post is too long or too roundabout, here are my questions in short form: Who was the Eamon de Valera of the post-Civil War era? Was he a mature Catholic thinker, or was he a clever politician, or neither? And was the 1937 Constitution the fruit of de Valera's mining of the Catholic tradition (as it seems to be, in many respects), or was it a political move -- an attempt to get the Irish Church on his side, and its congregations with it? Cheers.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 13, 2024 15:21:28 GMT
Rather than start a new thread, I'll just pose my history question here, which is: What do serious Catholics in Ireland think of Éamon de Valera's post-civil war (or post-abstentionist) legacy, his legacy as a statesman rather than as a leader of a militant movement? My take: I'm aware that he is mostly, or even entirely, despised by the Irish intelligentsia today, representing to them the backwards, socially conservative Ireland from which they escaped. But I expect Catholics think differently. I am particularly impressed by the 1937 constitution, which must have been written with constant reference to Catholic social teaching, especially the writings of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. Consider Article 41.2 of the constitution (under attack today) on the State's obligation to ensure that mothers are not forced into the workplace because of financial necessity at the expense of their children and duties. While this article may be unpopular even with many Catholic women today, it was almost certainly written with reference to Pius XI's 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.* Another article, which was removed, was the insistence on the "special position of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of citizens," while ensuring tolerance to religious minorities. Would de Valera have been familiar with Leo XIII's letter to the American church, in which he said the American system of religious liberty was a compromise, not to be modelled on by other states? (For those who think Dignitatis Humanae abrogated this teaching, I recommend reading Ratzinger's 1987 reply,** as CDF chief, to Marcel Lefebvre, who also thought DH had rejected this teaching. Or read Thomas Pink on how DH was an explicitly Leonine document). I found those two articles particularly striking for their similarity to passages in social encyclicals. The constitution's understanding of the family was also clearly derived from these documents. Was this constitution representative of de Valera's more mature thinking, as a serious and sincere Catholic, or was he a savvy politician? I'm less familiar with de Valera in his later years, after the Second World War. Given my reading, de Valera emerges, post-1926, as a serious Catholic political thinker, not a pure reactionary as his critics would have him. He was not a liberal in the classical sense, but he did draw from liberalism in qualified ways. Even his defense of censorship was made on grounds which any Catholic should embrace (since we do not hold to an absolute right to freedom of speech), even if, in particular instances, the government may have been too trigger happy -- which is the impression I get. Anyways, that is my take. I'm curious about how he is received today by Catholics in Ireland. Hibernicus, I understand you are an expert on modern history and may be able to fill in some gaps in my account. Was he just using the Church to his political advantage, or was he seriously and sincerely engaging with the Catholic tradition? Chesterton, on his visit to Dublin for the Eucharistic Congress in 1932, said something along the lines of Dublin being the only city in Europe where the intellectuals were genuinely intellectual. Does de Valera fit that description? *Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno: 71. "...It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father's low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children." **"Le statut commun de liberté religieuse sur le plan civil et social est le minimum nécessaire dont a besoin l'Eglise pour accomplir sa mission divine, ce qui ne veut pas dire -comme on l'a dit précédemment- que ce minimum soit le seul possible ou le plus avantageux pour l'Eglise." DH is on the whole a very doctrinally conservative document that has been misinterpreted through the years. The whole letter is translated somewhere in English, but I couldn't find it - only the original in French (and yes, the link is from the SSPX website, because that's where I found the letter, but I see it as a good rebuttal of their claims about DH): laportelatine.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/reponses_dubia.pdfFirst of all, if Éamon de Valera is a hate figure among the Irish establishment, it's because of what he represents rather than what he is. I think any alternative leader at this time would have presided over a similar regime. I don't think there was any sea change in de Valera after the Civil War - even the 1916 Rising was one of the most pious uprisings which ever happened anywhere. But de Valera became the dominant figure in Irish politics. There is no doubt that he was a savvy politician. I think the 1937 Constitution is a huge problem for the Irish Establishment. This, ironically, arises from judicial activism in the 1970s when Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh (later the 5th President) was Chief Justice and Brian Walsh was a justice of the Supreme Court. It turns out that a lot of the personal rights created by the Constitution were incredibly robust. In summary, the 1937 Constitution is the oldest constitution in use in a European democracy and also the oldest extant constitution in which the personal rights are part of the original document and it was used as a model for the Federal German Constitution and the Indian Constitution, among others later. It's a document which should be a source of pride, but which is given abuse and routinely mocked by establishment figures in Ireland. Though there certainly is a lot of Catholic input in the constitution, it's far from the exclusive source of inspiration. The special position of the Catholic Church is lifted out of the 1801 Concordat between Napoleon and Pius VII. There is a lot of American and French Revolutionary thought in it and the references to natural law may be read in either a Thomistic light or an enlightenment school of natural law light. I know that a number of Protestant clergy made contributions to the drafting of the Constitution, the Presbyterian Minister James Irwin had an input. The extent to which the then President of Blackrock College, Father John Charles McQuaid CSSp had an influence is one for debate. De Valera was probably influenced by the outlook of Father Edward Leen, also CSSp. I suppose his friendship with Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne also needs to be looked at especially in the light of Mannix's influence on Australian politics and the development of the Catholic Church in Australia.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 14, 2024 1:14:19 GMT
De Gaulle might be a good comparison for de Valera. He was a sincere Catholic (not saying he was flawless) and everyone knew it, but he downplayed public expression of his catholicism because he wanted to unite a divided nation. Dev's Ireland was obviously different from de Gaulle's France, but I think Dev's decision not to have a "one true church" clause, which he seriously considered, and his recognition of the major non-Catholic denominations, reflect a similar view. Remember he wanted the 1937 Constitution to apply to all Ireland. John Charles McQuaid was very annoyed with this. A lot of liberal CAtholic history from the 60s and 70s made the point that figures like Dev and Daniel O'Connell had a better grasp of how far catholic teaching could be implemented in practice than contemporary bishops did. The other side of that, BTW, could be the practical separation of personal piety from Tammany politics (or worse - cf Andreotti). I think I have noticed in recent years a tendency to replace Dev with John Charles McQuaid as archvillain because Dev was a founder of the state, whatever else he was. Dev is seen more as so remote that he's irrelevant.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 14, 2024 14:38:38 GMT
Interesting Admiral Philippe de Gaulle died yesterday at the age of 102, RIP.
I certainly accept the parallels between de Valera and de Gaulle, and believe you can see a similar trajection in the career of Konrad Adenauer who likewise was a sincere Catholic and also took over a deeply divided, and humiliated, society in what was to become the German Federal Republic.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 15, 2024 0:36:37 GMT
Adenauer also combined genuine religious devotion with a Machiavellian streak (he is said to have employed ex-Nazis because he knew they were politically dependent on him, as well as because it was simply impossible to exclude from public life everyone complicit in the crimes of the Third Reich without destabilising the country). It is also noteworthy that West Germany had a postwar religious revival which turned out to be shallower than was perceived at the time, and which was partly driven by a sense that something must come out of so much suffering. The same motivation has been suggested for the public Catholicism of the immediate post-independence decades in Ireland, the growth of Opus Dei in post-Civil War Spain, and new post-1945 religious groups in France and Italy.
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Post by maguidhir on Mar 16, 2024 2:22:12 GMT
De Gaulle might be a good comparison for de Valera. He was a sincere Catholic (not saying he was flawless) and everyone knew it, but he downplayed public expression of his catholicism because he wanted to unite a divided nation. Dev's Ireland was obviously different from de Gaulle's France, but I think Dev's decision not to have a "one true church" clause, which he seriously considered, and his recognition of the major non-Catholic denominations, reflect a similar view. Remember he wanted the 1937 Constitution to apply to all Ireland. John Charles McQuaid was very annoyed with this. While I greatly admire de Gaulle, I wouldn't have thought him a good comparison for de Valera (at least as far as I understand Dev). France and Ireland certainly had very different cultural and political climates (de Valera never had to worry about laicité, or anything remotely like it ), but Dev allowed his faith to influence him in a way that de Gaulle seemed unwilling to do . My point (or my question) in my original post was that Dev's faith formed the basis of his thought and politics, which is how the 1937 Constitution came to be. Can anything comparable be said for de Gaulle? Or did his faith remain private in all senses of the word? De Gaulle seemed to toe the line very obediently when it came to maintaining French secularism. This is an interesting article from Catholic World Report on de Gaulle. The author mentions that de Gaulle wouldn't even receive communion if he was at Mass in an official capacity. While Dev was essentially refounding Ireland on Catholic principles (among other sources, as Alaisdir said), de Gaulle was diligently secular. The things de Gaulle did "behind the scenes", as the author put it, only relieved the Church in France of especially burdensome restrictions. Was it really necessary for de Gaulle to be so reticent? Maybe it wouldn't have been politically prudent, but the days of the guillotine were over. I wonder. The comparison leaves me even more impressed with de Valera, even granted the varying political and cultural climates in Ireland and France.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 16, 2024 18:19:56 GMT
Politics is the art of the possible, de Valera, de Gaulle and Adenauer each did what was possible to them in their respective situations. Adenauer couldn't have run Germany without co-opting a certain amount of functionaries from the Third Reich period.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 20, 2024 17:41:09 GMT
De Gaulle seemed to toe the line very obediently when it came to maintaining French secularism. This is an interesting article from Catholic World Report on de Gaulle. The author mentions that de Gaulle wouldn't even receive communion if he was at Mass in an official capacity. While Dev was essentially refounding Ireland on Catholic principles (among other sources, as Alaisdir said), de Gaulle was diligently secular. The things de Gaulle did "behind the scenes", as the author put it, only relieved the Church in France of especially burdensome restrictions. Was it really necessary for de Gaulle to be so reticent? Maybe it wouldn't have been politically prudent, but the days of the guillotine were over. I wonder. The comparison leaves me even more impressed with de Valera, even granted the varying political and cultural climates in Ireland and France. There is a reason of the famous law of separation and it also plays to the Church's advantage. An example comes with the Irish College in Paris which saw state investment (IR£7 million in the 1990s) to relaunch as an Irish Cultural Centre. Reading between the lines, an interest group within the Irish Arts and Culture community piggybacked on the scheme to make careers for themselves in the Paris Art scene. They set their sights on the chapel, but the chaplain (I don't remember if it was Father Pearse Walsh or Father Declan Hurley) got counsel for the Archdiocese of Paris in and it was established very quickly that the chapel was untouchable. Despite the fact that like all other churches and chapels in France, it is state property.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 20, 2024 21:10:14 GMT
Part of the issue with de Gaulle was that the integriste wing of the French Church, which would have liked a French confessional state, was associated with Vichy and consequently discredited. Another is that de Gaulle saw his mission as holding France together by overcoming/transcending its internal divisions (a comparison might be with the union sacree - the reconciliation of anti-clerical Republicans and Catholics to defend France during WWI, symbolised by Clemenceau attending the victory celebration in Notre Dame, though everyone knew he was an unbeliever). Remember how France almost tore itself apart over Algeria - and that war was not purely Right/Left either; it was presented as defending French Republican values from Islamic barbarism and the most prominent political backer of the OAS, Jacques Soustelle, was a Protestant who later supported legalising abortion. De Gaulle presented himself not as a right-winger but as transcending left and right; there were leftwingers in his governments who self-identified as Gaullists, and some present-day French leftists argue that they rather than the Atlanticist French Right are the true heirs of de Gaulle.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 20, 2024 21:17:41 GMT
Politics is the art of the possible, de Valera, de Gaulle and Adenauer each did what was possible to them in their respective situations. Adenauer couldn't have run Germany without co-opting a certain amount of functionaries from the Third Reich period. The trouble is not just that Adenauer used ex-Nazis but that he used a rhetoric of moral and religious renewal to avoid coming to terms with the extent to which Germany had been morally contaminated. There might be another parallel with de Valera - Irish neutrality in WW2 was morally defensible under the circumstances, and de valera did a good deal behind the scenes to help the Allies, but at the same time his government's official rhetoric suggested that Irish neutrality showed that we were morally superior to both sides and particularly blessed by God, in a manner that now comes across as intolerably self-righteous. (Admittedly British and US propagandist suggestions that we were practically in Hitler's pocket didn't help, and provoked a perfectly understandable reaction.)
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