The pope's green island

Contents

I. Introductory — An Editor's Adventures II. The Isle of Extremes

III. Pope, Priests, and Protestants

IV. The Coming of the Gaelic League V. The Studious Ireland Outside the Schools

Chapter I Introductory— An Editor's Adventures

This book is written primarily for myself and for others who are seriously interested in the real Ireland. It does not seek to establish or support any " case " or theory : political, theological, or otherwise. It is a review and a reverie, but a review and a reverie concerning dramatic and enlightening experiences probably unique in latter-day Ireland. Developments, objective and subjective, were so unexpected or so peculiar, the association with diverse individualities was so liberal, the experience of stress, cross-currents, and changing conditions in the religious, theological, intellectual, social, and other domains was so considerable — nearly all of it reflective of an Ireland scarcely realised abroad, and in part a surprise to myself — that the whole drama fascinates the imagination, and challenges examination, if possible comprehension. Even the purely personal record might be made expressive, but that is a minor matter in comparison with the complex interests and forces, psychological, social, and otherwise, which from an exceptional and rather ironic vantage-place I was enabled, nay driven, to study —

A and of course earlier trends and historic facts and factors that bore directly upon them came into the review. Trying and troublous though many of the experiences were, with stagnation and repression as accompaniments, I saw much of work and workers that were joyous and even heroic, while opposing principalities and powers showed human and almost epic qualities on occasion. I often had reason to recall the sage who bade us remember the good deeds of our enemies. From first to last I was in contact with an Ireland that appeared inexhaustibly interesting and spacious. In a breathing-spell I desire to obtain, if I can, a just and coherent picture of the men and minds concerned in the making and marring of this transitional Ireland.

From the beginning of December 1905 to the end of 1910, I was the editor, in succession, of three Irish weekly papers — yet practically one and the same paper — that had the curious fortune of proving obnoxious or distasteful to official Catholic authorities in Ireland, and of being a joy and an inspiration to younger Irish Catholic clerics — several of whom were contributors to their pages — as well as to a host of independent and progressive lay workers I was banned by clerics and blessed by clerics. Certain Protestants were heartened by the ideas and the struggle, and cordially co-operated ; other Protestants were puzzled or alaitned. Materialists, idealists. Modernists, theosophists, became interested. All this, though peculiar and piquant, would not be worth reviewing if the work we did or tried to do was not worth doing, and of Irish and human appeal. It was so, I believe, at every stage ; and there was scarcely anything of significance in Ireland that did not enter into our province.

All the time new factors and forces had come or were coming into being, and, apart from their own creative stress, challenged powerful old orders and conventions, though some on both sides pretended that there was no challenge. A national consciousness and a spirit of criticism that had been rising for a decade earlier began to give a more serious account of themselves. One saw an Ireland as rigid and insensitive as minerals apparently are, and one realised an Ireland the movement and growth of whose mind might be felt. Closer study revealed a curious variety in this living Ireland. Builders had sometimes builded better than they knew, pioneers had led to stages of which they had no notion whatever at the beginning. The mission of the Gaelic League, for the furtherance and popularisation of the Irish language and what were called " Irish- Ireland " ideas, had developed faculties and feelings far removed from the formal conception and programme, and led amongst other things to an educational zest delightful to thousands in humble places, disturbing or irritating to many in high places. It had attracted Churchmen and antagonised Churchmen. Within itself and without itself Catholicism in Ireland had ~tprcc£on with facts and factors which to an extent entirely novel in a long submissive and unquestioning nation put it on its trial philosophically, nationally, and above all socially. Even priests had come to admit that a serious case could be made out against official Maynooth, and that in the Ireland outside its walls Catholicism had grown formal and unworthy of its traditions as a spiritual and social force.

Amongst numerous laics and clerics there was a very critical attitude towards Vaticanism, or the political and diplomatic side of Rome, though the Ultramontane attitude grew stronger in other quarters. '■ On the place and rights of priests in the Irish social economy there were conflicting notions amongst the priests themselves, and a still greater conflict of view as to the place and rights of laics in the Church and elsewhere. Leaders of the laity who claimed that they had rights in the Church had their claims admitted frankly by candid priests, while they shocked or alarmed not a few of their lay brethren.^ The Catholic bishops as a whole were not particularly popular with laymen or clerics, and at one stage were severely criticised by both and defeated on a national and intellectual issue. The Modernist ideas, though privately rather than publicly, led to no little unrest. So the drama in the Catholic world had variety go leor. Something of Protestantism was also in a sense at the cross-roads. Others raised their voices on behalf of what they described as Qeltic- Christianity. In the places where what, in the broad sense, may be called theosophic ideas, either obtained or began to find their way, we found a vision and philosophy of life rather fascinating to some Irish temperaments. Sometimes the efi'ect of these esoteric ideas was to give inquirers and students a more spiritual and idealistic conception of their particular Christian creeds, sometimes they led to a virtual parting of the ways. Through all, the unhappy beings who most needed an enlivening and exalting gospel of life — the manual workers of various orders

— were not reached or taken serious count of by Catholic, Protestant, Modernist, or mystical teachers ; at last they began to find pioneers of their own. Politics all the while was a singular medley, though here was transition too. Literature, in Irish especially, was racily alive and companionable, though the Gael, as a rule, was too social or critical or dominated by what he regarded as traditional, and as such sacred, to be much of an originator so far.

It must not be assumed, however, from this rapid and general sketch of our changing conditions and acute issues that this varied Ireland which I saw at close quarters was quite problem-vexed and fretful. The humanity was always more attractive than the problems, and whether we reached heights or deeps of experience we knew that the Master of Life had far greater lines and lessons to set for us still. To me it was appealing and animating to be amongst intensely earnest people, some trying bravely to live and express life, some trying grimly to suppress it, and to have part and pen in the fray at this critical phase of Ireland's re-moulding and re-making. It all seems to possess the colour and character and momentum of a saga — with a dolorous social world in the background always — and it were a blunder to spoil its telling by any tinge of conscious partiality. The factors and forces of those five years are of course in being to-day, and promise to be in being for many a day to come. To seize them fully and fairly — with necessary incidental glances either backward or outward — is to know Ireland from within, a region of strange light and shade.

A few more or less personal points will enable the reader to see the angle, so to say, at which I observed Irish interests and changes. I had the happy fortune to grow up in a south-of-Ireland environment that still preserved a good deal of the lore and character of Gaelic times. In London for some years I saw much of the two different worlds of the daily press and the Irish organisations, the last being the London Gaelic League, which was full of individuality and zest. From the beginning of the century I had been following the new movement in Ireland itself very closely, wilting regularly in new Irish weeklies, and on home tours and visits had made the personal acquaintance of many of the leaders and workers, lay and clerical. Towards the end of 1905 came the offer of the editorship of the Irish Peasant, printed and published at Navan, on the border of the beautiful Boyne Valley, some twenty miles from Dublin. It had been started by Mr. James M'Cann, M.P. for the College Green division of Dublin, in connection with his industrial and other schemes in Meath. After his death both the paper and the work were continued by Mrs. M'Cann and her sons. The Irish Peasant was edited in 1905 by Mr. P. D. Kenny ("Pat"). While much of it was "local" and to me exceedingly oppressive, Mr. Kenny's own work seemed very much alive ; sometimes caustic when he addressed clergymen or graziers and spiced with an agreeably whimsical egoism. He and others gave me to understand that he was regarded as an " anti-cleric," but he thought that the Pope was upon his side.

I had given a good deal of attention to clerical questions in Ireland, especially since the stage, a few years before, when troubles arose over Gaelic League matters in the west and south. Most of the Irish priests with whom I had come into contact were' young and liberal-mindfid. We had discussed philosophical and intellectual matters, and new problems of Church and nation, with interest and ardour ; I had written on some of them in Irish and English. I looked forward after London literary and journalistic stress to a peaceful, pastoral life in the Boyne Valley, which, by the way, is wonder-ground in Irish lore and legend. It was understood that I could make the Irish Peasant as representative of the new and hopeful movements as I pleased, so I changed its scope and nature, bringing out a general or all- Ireland edition as well as a local one, and introducing sundry new features. From Dublin, Maynooth, Belfast, Cork, and other Irish cities and towns, as well as from London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and further Irish centres in Britain, contributors and correspondents quickly and steadily came. The year 1906 was a laborious one, but it was endlessly interesting and zestful. While critical where necessary, and always independent, the Irish Peasant of that vivid year showed decided glow and optimism. It treated of everything hopeful in the nation, and as one way of showing how really rich and alive that nation was in many of its elements, gave impressions and character-studies of all sorts of Irish thinkers and workers, intellectual and artistic and industrial, Catholic, Protestant, and Presbyterian.

A belief in man's innate worth and divinity was implicit in its philosophy ; it suggested that four and a half millions of people who could not make Ireland more human and attractive than she was as a whole ought to be ashamed of themselves. It expressed on occasion the theories of progressive and eager clerical friends regarding cleric and laic, Church and nation ; theories which are made clear in subsequent pages. There was no suggestion of clash with the " Church," there were necessary differences with Churchmen, in some of which clerical contributors and friends were unanimously with me, in regard to others they were divided or undecided. Everything was freely and fully discussed by both lay and clerical writers ; there was a bracing stress of thought and proclamation of ideal reflective of the younger Ireland of the day. The first great cause of difference with the Catholic bishops and conservative ecclesiastics generally arose over the British Education Bill of 1906, some of us maintaining that the Irish Party had no business to interfere in the British educational realm, that in this as in other things it gave its own avowed case away, at the instigation or dictation of the Hierarchy. The matter, bound up with various other matters, need not now be discussed. A further burning question was that of the management and control of Irish primary education. It was raised incidentally in our editorial columns at an early stage, and afterwards treated more exhaustively, while lay and clerical contributors debated it with spirit. The conservative clerical stand was strongly against any lay control in any circumstances ; young priests admitted lay rights in certain circumstances. The advocacy of free libraries and various other things brought further trouble. Altogether, the Irish Peasant of 1906, though it was constructive and conciliatory as well as critical, illustrated, and no doubt accentuated, the difference between the old order and a more hopeful new order of Irish ecclesiastics. There was also the feeling on the part of the older priests that, as a friendly young priest informed me, it was " telling the people too much." For some months the pressure brought to bear on the M'Cann family was strong and at times subtle. At length, in December 1906, Cardinal Logue intervened. Mr. John M'Cann received a remarkable missive from his Eminence.

The Cardinal said he found that the Irish Peasant "was becoming a most pernicious anti- Catholic print." Its columns were open to all kinds of characters to ventilate their anti-clerical views. As it was published on the borders of his archdiocese, to guard the people for whom he was responsible " from its poisonous influence," he would be obliged to denounce it publicly and prohibit the reading of it in the archdiocese.^

Mr. M'Cann's mother, who was the actual owner of the paper, was greatly distressed by this communication. She did not inquire curiously into the difference between Catholicity and clericalism, or between religion and ecclesiastical politics or preferences. The family had also particular ecclesiastical ties and connections, as well as special business concerns — including a stockbroking firm with clerical clients —

^ I published the text of the letter later on, when the whole question was the subject of comment at home and abroad. Personally, though the judgment astonished me, I have never doubted that the Cardinal acted according to his own sense of duty.

and were altogether in a peculiar position. Already they had been troubled considerably by clerical pressure, direct and indirect. This last bolt was too much for INIi-s. M'Cann, and she decided to discontinue the publication of the paper forthwith. I decided that if at all possible I would continue it independently, and from Dublin. At the moment there was also a suggestion — it was not originally my own and was rather casually adopted — of appealing to Rome on the question of Catholicity raised by the cardinal. However, in the correspondence I had with him, he first expressed a strong doubt that he had described the paper as " anti-Catholic," and finally it appeared that he meant it was anti- clerical, or that it raised questions which ecclesiastics considered disturbing. The mention of Rome in an emergency number of the Peasant, published in Dublin at Christmas-time, in which I explained the situation and the " suppression," brought me curious expressions of incredulity, astonishment, and protest, all from Catholics. I was told — what I did not know — that there was no use in troubling Rome, as the Vatican was in a state of alarm and excitement over France, what came to be called Modernism, &c., and furthermore — which I knew perfectly well — that Rome in any case had no right or title to interfere or lay down the law in Irish aff"au's. " Don't appeal to Rome ; it's worse than Parliamentarianism," wrote an Irish editor, I duly explained that Rome had been mentioned only in regard to the question of Catholicity or anti- Catholicity. Some of our ecclesiastics were very ready to try to frighten simple people by raising the cry of " anti-Catholic " on slight or no provocation, and it was time to show them that we had no intention of enduring it, also that on questions of Catholicity pure and simple Cardinal Logue was not the final authority. As to any Irish domestic or national or other question — school management or otherwise — disjjussed in the Irish Feasant, Rome of course, I said, had nothing to do. A pronouncement from the Pope himself on anything Irish could only be treated on its merits ; it would settle nothing ; we would take or reject it just as we deemed proper. An order of a Pope to a particular country, as Newman had shown in his famous ** Letter to the Duke of Norfolk " on Papal Infallibility, was in no way binding and could be resisted or ignored. Anyhow, once the Cardinal left the " anti-Catholic " note I considered that my own point had been gained, and I troubled no more about the matter one way or the other.

As to the continuance of the paper, while I had no hesitation myself as to the duty, and while many of the younger priests, like the progressive laity, agreed heartily with me, the position was difficult and complicated. First of all the great majority of us had little or no money ; almost every ardent friend, to use the country phrase, was " as poor as a church mouse." Again, while there was a strong feeling generally that the Cardinal had been unjust or had blundered, it was felt in many quarters that, right or wrong, the " Church " generally would support him, that the Irish Peasant's successor would be banned far and wide ; that while readers could be gathered, advertisers would be frightened ;

that generally speaking an already difficult situation — the Portarlington battle, described later, was in progress — would be further complicated. Curiously enough, amongst those who doubted and hesitated the most were Protestants. Some of them in the Gaelic League were exceedingly nervous at the thought of what would surely be described as "a paper to fight the priests." I had been elected a member of the Gaelic League executive some months earlier, and my membership would bring the connection home. The spirit of the rank and file, however, was much more militant than the official spirit. Meanwhile the arrangements for the new series of the Peasant proceeded in Dublin, and the first number was issued in February 1907. Pessimists said the paper would live for three months, optimists said six. I, although I knew our deplorable financial weakness much better than optimists or pessimists, thought that with a struggle, and by being satisfied with apostolic poverty — there was a very small staff at first, and never an adequate one — we might hold the field for twelve. We did ; in fact, at the end of two years, when we changed the name of the paper to the Irish Nation, we felt cheerily alive under difficulties. There had been an acute financial crisis about once eveiy three months. The starting of a printing business, partly designed to keep together as many members of the old concern as possible, and the founding of a municipal paper at a later stage, were not exactly beneficial moves ; but one had to learn by experience, and in those years what I learned about Ireland and myself was encyclopaedic. The struggle was arduous, exciting, and joyous.

Despite all that unfriendly clerics could do against the paper in towns and country places its circulation was good ; the advertisement fortunes were necessarily much weaker, (We declined to take whisky advertisements, &c, ; some thought quixotically.) It was wider in scope than our weekly of the Boyne Valley days, but more critical on occasion ; necessarily so, as bishops and others had become more militant, especially on questions of education. I had clerical contributors and supporters from Doctors of Divinity to curates. Reams of enlightening correspondence arrived every week. Literary, dramatic, political, industrial, and social matters all came within our province. Through the Gaelic League and other bodies, from industrial to mystical, life was wonderfully widened, and the everyday experience of two languages was decidedly stimulating. The home and foreign visitors to the modest editorial room in that unpretending Dublin street were original and entertaining studies in themselves. Maynoothmen, Americans, Frenchmen, farmers, modernists, Celtic poets, cattle drivers, schoolmasters, politicians, and scores of others came. At a couple of stages when life was exceptionally toilsome and exciting, I found what the reader may consider a peculiar species of recreation and distraction in the writing of novels, the first in English, the second in Irish. Both dealt with contemporary Irish life and thought, both contained characters based on actual people. The first. The Plough and the Cross, was an effort, amongst other things, to interpret the subjective side of what objectively was more or less familiar to thousands ; I found the task and experience singularly exhilarating. One story added to the difficulties, both to the surprises of life. The Plough and the Cross, both on its serial publication in the Irish JSation and its issue in book form, irritated conservative clerics to an astonishing degree. It was treated as diabolical propagandism, and a malignant attack on episcopacy and clergy; in the words of a priest, who wrote a long series of articles against it in a Dublin weekly, the writer " lashed out with all his might against priests and bishops in Ireland." Strangely enough well-known priests with high Irish ideals figured largely in the story, and their characters and conceptions were of course unfolded with the utmost s^Tupathy. Still, it simply sowed wrath in extreme clerical quarters. And as it seemed as lightsome to others as it seemed darksome to them it might be considered a peculiar production. The fact is it was a piece of Ireland seen from within and presented in a detached spirit. The later Irish story concerned less exciting but at times more esoteric themes, and the surprise was the measure of interest displayed by young and old readers in just this unfamiliar ground.

As time went on the Irish Nation concerned itself with more and more phases of Irish life and fortune, and for that matter misfortune. Hard as the battle was with the more rigid and formalistic clerics, the greater trouble arose out of social rather than clerical issues. Theories and truths, regarding the rights of laymen and nation, for which the Irish Peasant had fought, came to be widely accepted, but a great deal of our later social criticism and suggestion caused alarm and antagonism. On labour questions, housing questions, problems of rural lives quite untouched by land purchase or co-operation, and in numerous other encounters with vested interests or social selfishness our progi'amme proved distinctly disturbing. What the Irish Nation called applied Christianity was described by the anti-social as '* Socialism," and that was assumed to be diabolical. Others, especially those who accepted one or other official political party policy, would have the consideration of social ills and sores put away pending the triumph of the policy in the unveiled and idealised future. Meanwhile more and more of the nation might decay or emigrate. Towards the end of 1910, after four years of a struggle of a record kind in Ireland, and five years of Irish editing altogether, I found it impossible to get any further for the time. We had even less funds than usual, which is saying a good deal ; the younger people who were on our side were little better circumstanced ; we had helped much to win a few big battles, like that against the bishops over Irish in the university ; we could make no more headway with social questions, or others like the control of education, till the national legislative question were done with. Whatever one may think of " Home Rule," whether it is good or bad, a "national settlement" or "more Imperialism," or anything else, the working or waiting for it means that several urgent things are " held up," or saved from being tackled, in Ireland. For the rest, I saw that the Irish Nation would need to be re-organised on a better financial basis and an adequate staff provided if it were to be made effective for the varied work that still needed to be done. Meanwhile, especially after my somewhat exciting experiences as a story-teller, I wanted to write a book or two. So the eventful pioneer press-work was suspended at the end of 1910, to the relief of some and the deep regret of more. We had had five years of storm and charm.

Chapter II

Students of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita — which has been an inspiration to a number of people in Dubhn — are familiar with what is called "raising the self by the Self," that is to say, purifying and exalting the ordinary selfish nature, the ever}day personal self, through realisation and application of more and more of the higher Self, the hidden Divinity, the inner Christos, the Son of the Father, the Light that enlighteneth every man, as it has been named in turn. It is one of the Hindu doctrines that, seriously considered, are kindred to facts and phases of esoteric and mystical Christianity. It means indeed a realisation and utilisation of the divine truth that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. " There is no purifier in this world to be compared to spiritual knowledge," says Krishna in the same book, wherein, as in other works, the idea and its practical bearing are unfolded in many ways. At one stage it is pointed out that he who has attained to meditation — in this oriental scriptural sense — should constantly strive to stay at rest in the Supreme, remaining in solitude and seclusion, having his body and his thoughts under control. " For the self's purification he should practise meditation with his mind fixed on one point, the modifications of the thinking principle controlled and the actions of the senses and organs restrained," This is a higher form of the concentration, or one-pointedness, of which students of such lore and ethics learn so much. The most interesting Irishman, I think, of the period once gave us in Dublin a graphic and humorous description of his own early efforts in concentration. He is one of our greatest and most practical pioneers. Practical people often mean people who are practically dead, but he is intensely alive and ardent, the best example I know of the visionary as worker. But his initial experiences with one - pointedness were terrific. Whether he concentrated his thoughts on "an illuminated, selfless Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog, an outcast," a lyric, a lotus, or the Liffey at O'Connell Bridge, it was all the same. He was conscious at once of a sense of interior exaltation and a desire to arise and slay those who were nearest and dearest to him. The good he slowly developed was accompanied by an intolerable share of impassioned evil. The progression to the condition of the " harmonised man " was both thrilling and painful.

The latter-day Ireland in which we are interested has illustrated some such duality on a large scale. There has been a great deal of self-recovery, of vision, of ideation, of a passion to realise fine ideals ; there has been an intensity of concentration — in the educational order and others. This has been mostly beautiful, but sometimes a little violent, unreasonable, and extravagant ; and all the time it has led to stiffening, antagonism, a thirst for repression, yet now and then capitulation and conversion in other parts of the body politic. Agricultural co-operators have disturbed certain politicians and sundry shopkeepers, Gaelic

Leaguers have angered very different principalities and powers, broad-minded and Irish-minded priests have clashed with rigid and un- Irish politico-clerical tradition, Modernists and theosophists in the broad sense have begun the breaking of crusted ecclesiastical jurisprudence and have released spirit, a more human and Christian social ideal has shocked worldliness in high places, clerical and lay; and so on. Hence, as in our friend's individual case, the progression has meant pain and strife as well as thrill. If we dwelt merely on the actual clash and combat and the sometime impassioned language our record would be rather vexatious. We must always try to see and remember the underlying ideal, the explaining vision, the essential points of view. We must also remember that even the conservative and the repressive have other and worthy sides. Bishops who declaim against thought and appear to dread progress, parish priests who resist lay rights, do helpful and sacred work in their own proper spheres week in week out.

The situation is made more dramatic and more difficult by several causes but little understood abroad. Thus it is usually assumed that what is called the " religious difficulty " in Ireland arises from the clash of Catholicism and Protestantism. We do not see any such clash throughout the greater part of the country, and where we do see it it is seldom the fault of the democracy on either side, at least primarily. Far greater difficulties lie within the very mixed Irish Catholic world itself. One or other of them meets the Irish pioneer, intellectual, industrial, or otherwise, at every point.

K

In the first place, Catholicism in many rural districts and towns has long been marred by overgrowths that have nothing to do with essential Catholicity. This is shown in some astonishing beliefs, especially about the priesthood. In regard to these latter the explanation is many-sided. In the penal days, the tragic times of Irish Catholicism, priests and people suffered together, and_the_^riesthood, speaking generally, was in due course Meahsed::- Throughout the nineteenth century the priests lived comfortably on that tradition, and did little themselves in the new conditions to deserve the continued idolising. As the Gaelic order of things, after wars and famines, penal laws and emigration, and the establishment of a deliberately un-Irish or anti-Irish educational system, began to lose its last holds, great confusion arose. The official Church on tlie-xdiole had become an anglicising agency in Maynooth and outside it. Whatever its reasons, it was on the side of English policy and projects against what remained of the Irish national idea and the Irish conception of civilisation. To folk who mostly spoke Irish, to folk who thought in Irish and spoke a mixture of good Irish and broken English, to folk who mostly spoke broken English, the sermons preached and the religious instruction tendered came to be more and more in English, and a verbose, extravagant English they could not possibly understand. In the primary schools, of which the priests were made managers, not of course by Irish popular choice, but by English enactment, the amazing policy of teaching, or trying to teach, Irish-speaking and partly Irish-speaking children through English alone was relentlessly pursued.