Skip to main content

The Morality of the 1916 Rising


The Morality of the 1916 Rising          Gerry O'Shea                                                                   

When County Kerry Bishop David Moriarty condemned the Fenians after their abortive rebellion in 1867, his critique of the organization was in line with Catholic teaching at the time. The Church opposed the use of violence to achieve political ends and took a strong stand against membership in oath-bound societies like the Fenians. "Hell is not hot enough or eternity long enough for them" was Moriarty's harsh and intemperate condemnation of the men who led the Fenian Brotherhood. John Mangan, his episcopal successor in Killarney in 1916, was also dismissive of the Easter revolution in Dublin because he claimed that the leaders were "evil-minded men affected by Socialistic and Revolutionary doctrines".

 The rebellion in Dublin was led by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a rebadged version of the Fenians, which was also proscribed by the Catholic Church because it too was a secret oath-bound revolutionary organization. So, it is no surprise that, unlike the last major Irish revolt against the English government in 1798, there was no priest participating in the military planning or execution of the Easter Week rebellion.

 While some of the 1916 leaders like Patrick Pearse, Joe Plunkett and Eamonn Ceannt were devout Catholics, others like Clarke, McDermott and McDonagh took a more jaundiced view of their religion and its impact on the separatist nationalist agenda. And James Connolly, a committed socialist, found very few priests with a positive word to say about Karl Marx and his central tenet that the capitalist system kept workers in a permanently subservient situation. Tom Clarke famously showed the door to the priest who was hearing his confession the night before he was executed when he invited the rebel leader to seek absolution for the violence he caused by participating in the Insurrection.

Were Patrick Pearse and James Connolly morally justified in leading what is now known as the Irish Rebellion? In recent articles in The Irish Catholic, the most widely-read Catholic newspaper in Ireland, two distinct perspectives were presented on the morality of the Easter Week Rising in Dublin.

Fr. Seamus O Murchu, a Jesuit priest who is a professor in Loyola University in Chicago, argues that the revolution lacked democratic legitimacy because the Irish people at that time overwhelmingly supported Home Rule whose implementation was delayed only because of the war in Europe. He also points out that this rebellion by a small and secret group of people opened the door to other small groups who - right up to the present - believe that their violent military actions are justified by the 1916 philosophy. They claim that the nobility of their cause justifies a violent response to what they see as government oppression. The professor warns about an acceptance of "unelected gunmen taking over from elected representatives ... that wrought dreadful long-term damage to democracy" in Ireland.

O'Murchu also notes that the number of civilians, including children, who lost their lives during Easter Week was greater than the combined casualties among the combatants. How, he asks, does one morally justify such civilian deaths in the name of patriotic goals?

Finally, the professor dismisses the allegedly Christian notion propounded by Patrick Pearse that the shedding of blood would have a salvific and enobling effect on the whole community. He calls that a pagan idea contrary to mature Christian ethical teaching.

Fr. Joe McVeigh who ministers in a parish in the British-ruled Six Counties takes a  more traditional view of the Rising and believes that it meets all the standards set down in the Catholic "just war" theory. McVeigh who lived through years of discrimination against Catholics in the North has a different viewpoint to the man lecturing in Chicago.

He points to the extreme poverty, including terrible housing, that defined the lives of so many Irish people under British rule in the early part of the 20th century. The IRB men who led the rebellion had also witnessed the batoning by police of the strikers during the 1913 Lockout of Dublin workers, and they often pointed to British responsibility for the devastation of the famines of the late 1840s. From their perspective the abusive and dehumanizing actions by the English rulers fully justified a call to arms for revolutionary change.

For Fr. McVeigh the blood sacrifice that some of the leaders spoke about was designed "to move people from apathy about their own oppression" to a life where their culture and heritage were sources of pride not embarrassment. Pearse and company were really fighting for the soul and honor of their country. Their noble vision was of a just society that "cherished all the children of the nation equally" and certainly not in his words for "the narrow Catholic sectarian state that emerged" in the early 1920s.

The McVeigh perspective can be summed up by saying that the men and women who fought in the 1916 Rebellion were brave and honorable patriots motivated by a love of their country and driven by high ideals. From this viewpoint the Insurrection was  justified and is not open to unjustified moral censure by revisionists like OMurchu.

Clearly the two priests take a profoundly different view of the morality of the Rising. For one it breached the strict and well-established Catholic rules for engaging in warfare; for the other, it was a noble and justified reaction to oppression. This important debate will feature more and more as the commemoration ceremonies gain momentum coming up to Easter.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  Trip to Honduras        Gerry OShea I recently returned from a four-day visit to San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras. I was accompanied by Vincent Collins, his wife Linda, and Patricia Alarcon Cavalie. We were representing the New York-based charity HOPe, which has a project in the region of Choloma on the outskirts of the city. All of us, except Linda, are members of the organization. HOPe was founded in Yonkers by a group of Irish people in 1997, the 150 th anniversary of the worst year of the Irish potato famine. The members of this group, led by Pat Buckley from Killarney, felt that bemoaning the awful laissez-faire policies of the British Government, which caused the Irish disaster, was an inadequate response to the Gorta Mor tragedy.   We looked for other ways of honoring the lives of the million or more Irish people who died from starvation or related diseases in their family huts or on the streets, or in the coffin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Election Reflections

  Election Reflections       Gerry OShea On a post-election day when I lived in Dublin, I recall meeting a local man who was very involved with one of the political parties in the previous day’s contest. I asked him for his views on the election. I still recall clearly his answer: “The election was fine but the f----ing voters turned on us, despite all we did for them.” This response will resonate with many Democrats as they reflect on the recent presidential election. After all, the health of the American economy is deemed by experts to be so strong that it claimed a cover-page headline in the prestigious Economist magazine, stating in bold letters that the United States economy is the envy of the world. They compared the employment statistics, wage increases, and growth of GDP with those of all the other major countries and found the United States ahead in these measurements. Add the good news of major gains in the stock market, which usually p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Some Moral Perspectives on American Life

  Moral Perspectives in America      Gerry OShea The clear division between the traditionalists and progressives in the American Catholic Church has become more glaring during the last few decades. A more free-thinking membership has largely supplanted the old-time religion involving weekly attendance at mass and regular confession of sins to a priest. In my Yonkers neighborhood stretching along McLean Avenue from Broadway on the west to Bronx River Rd., which is still populated by large numbers of emigrants from Ireland, three Catholic schools have been closed in the last few years, and the number of people attending weekly mass has dropped dramatically from just a generation ago. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey highlights a major difference between Catholics identifying themselves as supporters of the Republican and Democratic parties. 82% of Catholics who are Democrats feel that global climate change presents a serious moral problem, while among Repub...
Post a Comment
Read more