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Post by shane on Mar 8, 2013 19:00:51 GMT
I wonder if the antagonistic attitude of those like the Duke of Norfolk to the Land War was motivated by class reasons as much as 'national' ones. I can't imagine many Irish Catholics today of middle or upper class provenance being favourably disposed to aggressive agitation by trade unionists, for instance. I suspect if Irish landlords had been mostly Catholic and of unimpeachable Gaelic ancestry, they would have been just as protective of their class interest as their Anglo-Irish Protestant counterparts.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 8, 2013 20:08:41 GMT
I would say it was significantly shaped by class as well (BTW there were quite a few Catholic landlords and professionals in Ireland who would have taken the same view - I have seen reports that during the LAnd War, Home Rule and War of Independence era a significant proportion of Jesuits in the Clongowes community, including the saintly Fr John Sullivan, were opposed). It should also be remembered that Catholic theology of the nineteenth century placed far more emphasis on obedience to lawful authority as a religious duty than has been the case in recent decades. Fr Walter MacDonald's SOME ETHICAL QUESTIONS OF PEACE AND WAR is an interesting read in this context - he was a maverick Maynooth professor who during the War of Independence pointed out that by the commonly accepted standards of Catholic theology the authority of the Crown in Ireland was legitimate, and the arguments to the contrary advanced by pro-Sinn Fein theologians were extremely evasive.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 12, 2013 9:35:12 GMT
In the seventeenth certury, some Gaelic aristocrat or else a poet in the employ of such, came up with Pairlimint Chlainne Thomáis (the Parliament of the Children of Thomas) which is said to be a reaction to St Thomas More's Utopia and basically states the position of an aristocracy with a free hand. It certainly reacts to the republican ideas current in England in Charles I's reign. This would seem to corroborate Shane's point.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 12, 2013 13:02:55 GMT
PArliament Chlainne Thomais was often cited by mid-century liberals to puncture over-idealised views of pre-conquest gaelic society as culturally organic Utopia. The author goes to considerable lengths to trace back the ancestry of the lower orders to the Devil, one of his principal complaints about the conquest is that the churls are rising in the world rather than being kept in subjection to their natural elders and betters, and at one point the "Parliament" choruses the praises of Cromwell for having crushed the gentry. The idea that all would have been well with Ireland if the landlords had been Catholic instead of Protestant had a long post-Emancipation pedigree; quite a few novels were written on the topic by Jesuit-educated gentlemen and genteel Catholic ladies. One of the standard FF criticisms of FG was that its Clongownian leadership thought themselves a new aristocracy (though the FF leadership rapidly developed similar airs and graces). I hate to say it, but Eoghan HArris does have a point when he says that the brutality found in orphanages, industrial schools, etc had something of the old contempt for Chlainn Thomais in it, as well as old-style Victorian snobbery towards "bad blood" and the undeserving poor.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 14, 2013 9:12:16 GMT
Just remember that militant nationalist Ireland doesn't equate with the Irish as a whole.
The irony about McGeough and the people around him was the extent that they follow Dickie Williamson's influence (and he never had Ireland's best interests within his radar).
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 23, 2013 21:13:37 GMT
Youngireland: I agree that militant nationalism had its shortcomings, but so had the Irish ancien regime. (I can think of quite a few pious nineteenth-century Irish Catholic novelists who serenely argued that all Ireland's problems stemmed from having Protestant instead of Catholic landlords; if there were Catholic landlords they would be generous to the tenants and the tenants would be dutiful to them - an argument which the history of European Catholic aristocracies hardly bears out.) "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" is deliberately equivocal (i.e. since the questioners are willing to co-operate with Caesar enough to use his money they cannot criticise Jesus for doing the same); it leaves open the question of what exactly it is that is due to Caesar, and the possibility that nothing might be due to him in temporal affairs. I remember reading a book by an ex-Fenian who had become a Home Ruler (and incidentally an agnostic) recalling his clashes with priests as a youthful Fenian. He thought that in retrospect many of the specific criticism they made (e.g. that they had no chance of success and would only throw their lives away) were reasonable, but that they were not made in a reasonable way, and that by taking an "Obey me or else" approach and making all sorts of slanderous accusations about being communists, infidels, etc they put people's backs up whereas they might possibly have been open to reasoned argument.
I agree that many people over-idealise militant nationalism and tend to ignore its darker and bloodier aspects (which aspects were not necessarily desired by its leaders and ideologues) but I might add that the tactic of trying to get Catholics appointed to judicial/political office in the hope that they might have a favourable influence on how the Irish administration was run, often led to bishops supporting sleazy opportunists who were quite willing to make all the right Catholic noises while they stood to get something out of it and then turn on their former patrons once they had achieved a nice fat job.
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Post by shane on Mar 25, 2013 20:05:58 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 26, 2013 8:49:28 GMT
Shane, just read Bl Pius IX's letter. Thanks for drawing our attention to it.
Hibernicus, the support of opportunists is something which was still a problem in recent generations. The evolution of the Recognised College of the NUI which was a constituent part of St Patrick's College, Maynooth to today's NUI Maynooth between 1966 and 1997 (I am open to correction on the second year) is a case in point. But I know you are seriously refering to the 19th century position. There are many aspects of this problem, but the 'Papal Brass Band' of the 1850s specifically comes to mind. There were a lot of beneficiaries from government largesse who began as protesters against the Ecclesiastical Titles Act.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 27, 2013 22:49:17 GMT
Anyone at the top of a hierarchy who develops too high an opinion of themselves will tend to attract opportunists because these are the only people who will tell them they are always right (whereas principled supporters may disagree with you). I think this was one of the besetting faults of traditional Irish Catholicism. The Pope's Brass Band are the classic example of the phenomenon I had in mind; Cardinal Cullen supported their taking office although they had pledged themselves against doing so, because he thought having Catholic officeholders would help the Church's influence (and when their opponents, some of whom were highly committed Catholics, criticised him for doing so, he decided they were dangerous infidels). Of the two principal "Brass Band" leaders, one committed suicide after being exposed as a large-scale fraudster, and the other became a judge and in later life was wont to give anti-clerical harangues from the Bench. Any resemblance between this and a certain Mayo TD who, as recently-released state papers showed, spent much of the early 80s passing on messages from his constituents to the government demanding a pro-life amendment to the constitution is, of course, entirely accidental.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 28, 2013 9:19:10 GMT
Just read reports of that Mayo TD's intraventions in the early '80s. Not unbelievable; all too believable.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 3, 2020 22:42:19 GMT
This account of the labours and sufferings of Irish priests during the Famine is worth reading. The overall interpretation (i.e. that our present-day bishops are doing the opposite) is questionable, and the view may be slightly overidealised (I recently read a book about Quaker relief during the Famine and one worker in the field included in his letter to HQ an account of a local priest refusing to administer the sacraments to those dying of famine unless he was paid. The Quakers excluded this passage from their published report as they didn't want to provoke sectarian controversy - Judas is always with us) but the details given of priests who suffered and often died for the well-being of their parishioners are generally well documented by the late Fr Donal Kerr. www.lifesitenews.com/news/irish-potato-famine-showed-incredibly-heroic-humble-priests-thats-what-we-need-today
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