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Priests and patriots: Irish separatism and fear of the modern, 1890-1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Tom Garvin
Tom Garvin*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University College, Dublin
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Extract

The political leadership of the independent state that emerged after 1920 was formed in the years after the fall of Parnell in 1891. The cultural atmosphere of the period in which the new leaders had grown up was suffused with a nationalist and anti-modernist romanticism, a sense that a civilisation was perhaps dying and a scepticism about the possibility or even desirability of mass democracy As has been argued elsewhere, the young men and women who were to lead the separatist movement were children of their time. Like their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe, they sensed that the twentieth century would bring great changes; they anticipated with dread or longing the great wars that so many writers predicted; they tended to rebel against their elders, often in the name of ideals inculcated by those elders; they tended toward a romantic and messianic nationalism.' They tended also to think moralistically rather than scientifically; their social thought was derived from ethics rather than from politics or economics. The culture from which they came was dominated by a catholic world-view, and their real intellectual mentors were the priests of the catholic church.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 97 , May 1986 , pp. 67 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1986

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References

l Lyons, F S. L., Culture and anarchy in Ireland, 1890–1939 (Oxford, 1979), pp 85–112 Google Scholar; Garvin, Tom, ‘Anatomy of a nationalist revolution: Ireland, 1858–1928’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28 (1986), pp 468–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See, in general, Brown, Terence, Ireland: a social and cultural history, 1922–79 (London, 1981).Google Scholar

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7 Sheehan, P A., Literary life (Dublin, [1921]), pp 1–34, 64.Google Scholar

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9 Sheehan, P A., The graves at Kilmorna (Dublin, [1915]), pp 66–8.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., pp 268–70, 339–41.

11 Under the cedars and the stars, pp 322–3.

l2 Irish Ecclesiastical Record (hereafter I.E.R.), 4th ser., xv (Jan.-June 1904), pp 5–26.

13 Ibid., pp 22–3.

14 Irish Rosary, i (1897), p. 4.

15 Ibid., ii (1898), pp 185, 235, 281, 320, 377

16 Ibid., v (1901), pp 316–17

17 Leader, 24 Oct. 1903.

18 Ibid., 29 Apr. 1905.

19 Ibid., 21 Nov 1908.

20 Keenan, , Catholic church, p. 160.Google Scholar

2l Leader, 19 Nov 1904; Sheehan, A., The blindness of Dr Gray (Dublin, 1913), p. 35.Google Scholar

22 O’Shea, , Priests, politics & society, pp 17–20.Google Scholar

23 Leader, 1 July 1911.

24 Ibid., 4 June 1910.

25 S.P.O., Crimes Branch Special, 26268/S, attachments.

26 Garvin, ‘Anatomy of a nationalist revolution’, passim.

27 Garvin, , ‘Great hatred, little room: social background, political motivation and ideological perspectives among revolutionary élites in Ireland, 1890–1922’ in Boyce, George (ed.), The revolution in Ireland (London, 1987), forthcoming. On the friction between the teachers and the clergy, see for example Irish Catholic, 15 Apr, 6, 27 May, 3 June, 29 July 1899.Google Scholar

28 On the Gaelic League generally, see Ó Cobhthaigh, Diarmid, Douglas Hyde (Dublin and London, 1917)Google Scholar; on the 1902 congress, see Leader, 10, 17 May 1902.

29 Leader, 7 June 1902.

30 Ibid., 12 Mar 1904, 28 Oct. 1905.

31 Ó Cobhthaigh, , Hyde, p. 54.Google Scholar

32 Irish Catholic, 25 Jan. 1902.

33 I.E.R., 3rd ser., xii (1891), pp 1099–1108.

34 Ibid., 4th ser., iii (Jan.-June 1898), pp 551–2.

35 Leader, 28 Oct. 1905.

36 Joyce, James, Stephen hero (New English Library ed., London, 1966) p. 25 Google Scholar

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38 Ibid., 21 Nov., 12 Dec. 1908.

39 Ibid., 9 Jan. 1909.

40 Ibid., 31 July 1909.

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42 O’Connor, Frank, The Big Fellow (Transworld ed., London, 1969), p. 184.Google Scholar

43 Keenan, , Catholic church, pp 153–6.Google Scholar

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46 Leader, 24 Dec. 1904.

47 Ibid., 24 Feb. 1906.

48 Irish Catholic, 22 Feb. 1896.

49 Ibid., 25 Apr. 1896.

50 Ibid., 22 Mar 1902. On Irish catholic anti-Semitism, see Moore, Gerry, ‘Anti-Semitism in Ireland’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Ulster Polytechnic, 1984)Google Scholar, and his ‘Socioeconomic aspects of anti-Semitism in Ireland, 1880–1905’ in Economic and Social Review, xii (1981), pp 187–201.

51 Leader, 30 Apr., 28 May 1904.

52 Irish Rosary, v (1901), pp 478–83, 575–8.

53 Irish Catholic, 2 Feb. 1901

54 Leader, 10 June 1905.

55 Ibid., 23 Sept. 1905.

56 Ibid., 16 Dec. 1911, 12 Oct. 1912.

57 Ibid., 1 Sept. 1900, 2 Nov 1901.

58 Ibid., 2 Jan. 1904.

59 Ibid., 30 Apr 1904.

60 Most comprehensively in Gannon, p J., S.J., ‘A study of religious statistics in Ireland’ in I.E.R., 5th ser., 17 (Jan.-June 1921), pp 141–57Google Scholar

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62 Wilson, Trevor (ed.), The political diaries of C. P Scott, 1911–1928 (London and Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), p. 66.Google Scholar

63 Leader, 18 Jan. 1908.

64 Ibid., 1 Apr. 1911

65 Ibid., 16 Nov 1912, 13 Dec. 1913.

66 Kickham, Charles J., Knocknagow (abridged ed., Dublin, 1978), p. 220.Google Scholar See Comerford, R. V, Charles J. Kickham (Dublin, 1979)Google Scholar, where the novel’s status as epic is argued.

67 Stern, Fritz, The politics of cultural despair (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961)Google Scholar

68 Ibid., p. xii.

69 Ibid., pp 121–2, 124.

70 I should like to thank John Moloney for information and Cormac Ó Gráda and John Whyte for their suggestions.