Mythical History or Historical Mythology?

MYTHICAL HISTORY OR 

HISTORICAL MYTHOLOGY? 

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Erat autem nox - St John, XIII, 30

I have always regarded tales of de Valera's Catholic theocracy as mythical.  In 1941, he founded the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies to promote scholarship in the two disciplines that fascinated him: Mathematical Sciences and Celtic Studies.

Professor Erwin Schrödinger, a refugee from Austria who later won the Nobel physics prize, gave the inaugural lecture in the School of Mathematical Sciences, in which he proposed that theoretical physics could explain the existence of the universe without reference to a creator-God.  Professor T. F. O'Rahilly gave the inaugural lecture in the School of Celtic Studies and proposed that St Patrick may have been a composite character of two historical personalities.  Myles na gCopaleen found himself in the libel court for suggesting that all Mr de Valera's Institute had done was prove there was no God and two St Patricks.  But de Valera had no inquisition.

Major weakness

As more recent history is enveloped by myth, more ancient history is subject to a myriad of interpretations, not only by scholars, but by anyone with an interest.  One such work, How the Irish Saved Civilization was a runaway bestseller in Irish America.  One might be sympathetic to Thomas Cahill's basic thesis, but one should have problems with many aspects of his arguments.

Mr Cahill brings us on a whirlwind tour of Europe from the last days of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Middle Ages.  He writes in a very engaging style and the book is very easy to read.  He displays a good knowledge of Latin and of the world of antiquity.

A Spiritual Hitler?

These are the positive points.  The major weakness is that though his central thesis - that the Irish saved civilisation by copying the works of classical literature for posterity - is clear, he does not show how, when or where, for example, the text of the Aeneid was found in Irish manuscripts.  I rather think the attitude of a mediaeval Irish monk to posterity qua posterity was akin to that of one of the members of the Irish House of Commons who voted for the Act of Union in 1800 and exhorted the House to do so with the words "What has posterity ever done for us?"

Mr Cahill spends some time on the fall of Rome, first by caricaturing the poet Ausonius and then by giving us a guided tour of St Augustine's Confessions.  He is very positive about the young Augustine, but not enthusiastic about the older St Augustine.  Could the author of The City of God have brought the dusk of the Dark Ages on the Roman world single-handedly?

This again reminds me of Myles na gCopaleen.  St Augustine appears as a character in The Dalkey Archive, written under the satirist's other pseudonym, Flann O'Brien.  Myles (né Brian Ó Nualláin) described St Augustine as a spiritual Hitler in a radio interview in the 1950s - in de Valera's Ireland.

Then Mr Cahill moves on to Ireland, with St Patrick.  The picture of St Patrick is based on the Confession and the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus exclusively, without reference to the Lives.  The St Patrick that emerges is like a cross between Frederick Douglas (the 19th century American abolitionist who was himself an escaped slave) and Abraham Lincoln.

There is no doubt what St Patrick thought of slavery, and that his views were probably stronger than those expressed by any churchman until Blessed Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote against it in the 16th century.  But St Patrick did not bring slavery to an end.  A few generations after St Patrick, aristocratic hierarchs were ashamed the Irish Church was founded by a fugitive slave.

Amchurch tendency

Mr Cahill leaves little time to the Church founded by St Patrick.  He covers Ss Bridget, Colmcille and Columbanus and gives a thumbnail sketch to a Church independent of Rome, uninterested in sexual mores and affirmative of feminism.  All this while Europe was in the Dark Ages.  If his sketch seems to resemble Amchurch (as the fading liberal wing of the American church is sometimes called), it is probably a bit more that coincidental.

As Mr Cahill believes the Irish monks copied classical texts for the sake of posterity, he also believes they wrote down Irish folklore exactly as it was.  Folklore is very difficult to deal with.  It is very rare for folklore to remain fossilised, as any of us who have experienced the circulation of "folklore" about ourselves can testify: for, like gossip, folklore is a dynamic process.  It tends to have some relevance to current situation.

In terms of modern Irish political history, until very recently stories about de Valera tended to be coloured by the narrator's view of the Civil War.  At present, such stories tend to reflect the narrator's view of Church/State relations.  Archbishop McQuaid is another victim of the current trend, as John Cooney's biography will illustrate (another repository of folklore).

The caricature of Archbishop McQuaid raises another question: why have the ecclesiastical historians not raised a voice in his defence?  Could it be that the late Archbishop represents a Church the current hierarchy would prefer to move away from, so they leave charges by secularist historians unopposed?  Is this also why Father Pierre Blet is alone in defending Pope Pius XII?

Repulsive Queen Medb

On the basis of vicissitudes of folklore within living memory, I would challenge the proposition that the Táin Bó Cuailgne, written in the eighth or ninth century was essentially unchanged from the version allegedly told in the first.  Mr Cahill quotes Kinsella's translation of the Táin (he has no Old Irish).  Even reading the poetical English translation, I could see that much of the language referred to Latin or Christian concepts, and therefore could not come from the first century without major alteration.  The character Queen Medb is no heroine; she has many repulsive traits and certainly does not reflect historical reality.

My position on the Táin is that it is not folklore, but composed literature with a flavouring from folklore, and it was meant to be didactic.  Its moral is that women are unfit to rule: Medb's paramour, Fergus MacRóich says as much at the end - that a herd of stallions led by a mare is bound to stray.

Schoolboyish treatment

Claims for the independence of the Irish Church from Rome are really based on only two factors: the date of Easter and the tonsure.  Mr Cahill rightly says the Irish monks never fought these issues.  His other more serious assertion, that sexual morality meant nothing in Ireland until Victorian times, is patently false - but unsurprising given Mr Cahill's schoolboyish treatment of the subject.  In many of the earliest tales of the death of a hero, infidelity or fornication spelt doom, and the only evidence for homosexuality is in bad translations.

Mr Cahill rejoices that returning to being what he alleges we were until recent years: sexual hedonists.  If the post-Christian age is a return to heathen ways, we are also returning to crimes against person and property, and I would love to see some bourgeois advocate of promiscuity trying to refute the charge that these things are connected.

When I began to study Old Irish, I was told that the classical world viewed its mythology historically and the Celtic world view its history mythologically.  It is not always easy to tell the difference, but I suspect the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies have a lot of fun in the area (although this tendency if far from confined to the Celtic period alone).  While they labour slowly, people like Mr Cahill make money.

I would say he is in fact describing himself when, in the book, he calls Ausonius a master of a good tunr of phrase for the kudos of the audience.  And in Mr Cahill's case, the audience are those cultural Irish Catholics - principally but not exclusively in the United States - who are somewhat estranged from Church teaching on sexual ethics.

Lifting Shadows?

The influence of Mr Cahill's book outside the United States surely had its zenith in Leinster House shortly before Christmas (1999).  It was one of the major sources for Mary McAleese's address to the other two Houses of the Oireachtas entitled Ireland's Lifting Shadows - something for posterity.  Mrs McAleese directly quoted Mr Cahill's assertion that St Patrick brought, let us say, a benignly ecumenical Christianity to Ireland:

As Thomas Cahill says: "Patrick's gift to the Irish was his Christianity - the first de-Romanized Christianity in human history."  It was a Christianity that fused easily into Irish life, growing side by side with the old pagan culture, with no anxiety to obliterate it.

This is nonsense, but a nonsense calculated to elicit desired responses to the Northern Irish peace process and the refugee crisis.  To this end, Mrs McAleese paints a dim picture of the generation of independence, and a bright picture of the European Union, all in a language of lifting shadows, with relevant quotations from recent literature to show a modern dark age has been dispelled.  An incredibly naïve view of present day Irish life.

As for "lifting shadows", just one quotation strikes me.  It's from St John's Gospel, when Judas leaves the Upper Room:

And it was night.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 47, February-March 2000.

  

Mgr Cremin and the Revolution

MGR CREMIN AND THE REVOLUTION

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Beatus servus quem, cum venerit dominus, invenerit vigilantum - St Matthew, 24:26

DR NOEL BROWNE had a theological advisor.  In his memoirs Against the Tide he outlined the advice he received regarding his Mother and Child Scheme.  The hierarchy were confusing the area of social teaching with moral teaching and reacted incorrectly.  But the advisor was unnamed until the publication of John Horgan's recent biography of Dr Browne.  It was the late Monsignor Patrick Francis Cremin, P.A., S.T.D, J.U.D.

Mgr Cremin was born in Kerry on October 10, 1910.  He had a brilliant student career in Killarney and Maynooth, as well as distinguishing himself as a hurler.  He spent two years in Rome, remarkably achieving two doctorates, one of which was the Juris Utriusque Doctor - Doctor of both Civil and Canon Law. (He was one of only three JUDs who taught at Maynooth since 1795).  He became Professor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology in the Pontifical University, Maynooth on his 29th birthday and in 1949, Professor of Canon Law.  He was Librarian of Maynooth between 1939 and 1946.

One priest said, perhaps in reference to Dr Cremin's prowess with the camán in minor and major seminary, that Frank Cremin occupied the same position on the pitch as ever, but the goalposts were moved so much that he went from the centre to the extreme right.

Resident reactionary pariah

Well, what brought an adviser to the socialist Minister for Health in the 1948-51 Government to become regarded as Maynooth's resident reactionary pariah in the 1980s and1990s?

In 1962, the bishops went to Rome to Pope John's Council.  There was a question whether Professor Cremin would accompany them; most bishops thought not.  The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr McQuaid, brought Dr Cremin as a peritus.  In the course of the council, Francis Cremin debated with other periti - notably Professor Hans Küng - and he worked on Christus Dominus, the Decree on the Bishop's Pastoral Office in the Church, a key document in dealing with the controversial issue of collegiality.

It might be said that few Irishmen has as much insight into the Second Vatican Council as Father Cremin.  But this did not mean preferment.  In 1966, Mgr Mitchell stepped down as President of Maynooth to become parish priest of Ballinrobe.  Fr Cremin was the senior academic in Maynooth and Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law.  The Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Fr Corish, succeeded Mgr Mitchell and he in turn was succeeded by Fr Jeremiah Newman, Professor of Catholic Action and Sociology.  Among other things, Fr Newman was active in promoting the admission of lay students to Maynooth in 1966.  In his capacity as a sociologist, he also spent sometime living in a hippie commune in California.
A job well done
History is written by the victors.  Humanae Vitae was promulgated in 1968 and the Irish hierarchy asked Father Cremin to present it to the Irish media.  Television viewers watched Dr Cremin declare:

There you have it, gentlemen - no change.

To read David Quinn's piece in The Irish Catholic marking the 30th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, one would think the press conference was a disaster.  Immediately after the conference, Professor Cremin asked Archbishop McQuaid's press officer for an appraisal of how he handled the media, and was told he did very well.

It seems controversy developed afterwards when a would-be Labour TD named Conor Cruise-O'Brien initiated a protracted correspondence on the subject in The Irish Times.  But how in tune with Irish public opinion was Dr Cruise-O'Brien at the time?

Leaving aside the antics of Mrs Robinson, Mary Kenny and others on a train from Belfast in the 1970s, the criminalisation of contraception was found to be unconstitutional in the Magee judgement in 1973, thanks to the "emanation of a penumbra" school of jurisprudence, enabling the Supreme Court to discover a "right to marital privacy" in de Valera's constitution.  So the then Fine Gael liberal, Patrick Cooney, attempted to legislate on the matter in 1975.  After a debate, during which the former Fianna Fáil Justice Minister Desmond O'Malley referred to Mr Cooney's Bill as a "licence to fornicate" (I am not making this up), Dáil  Éireann was startled to see An Taoiseach, Liam MacCosgair and several Fine Gael TDs walking through the Níl lobby with Fianna Fáil.

In 1979, Charles Haughey was Minister for Health and Social Welfare and he introduced his Family Planning Bill.  At the time, the Bill was opposed by a majority of voters in Deputy Haughey's constituency.  Mr Haughey's Act has been described as an Irish solution to an Irish problem, as if Serbo-Croatian solutions to Irish problems are somehow more desirable.  This allowed contraceptives on to the statute books for the first time since their ban in the 1920s.  It was a decisive factor in bringing Pope John Paul II to Ireland on his third foreign trip.
Lengthy transition
This was the law until Dr FitzGerald and Mr Desmond decided otherwise in 1985.  I was outside Leinster House the day Mr Desmond's Bill was debated in the Oireachtas.  The climate outside was palpable.  Most of the people of Ireland did not want this Bill passed.  Mr O'Malley was again on the opposition benches and this time he just couldn't make up his mind, so he abstained.  At the division, 83 voted Tá, 80 Níl, with two abstentions - largely a result of the imposition of a three-line whip.  This was before the red herring of AIDS was introduced into the equation.

A few years later, Deputy Haughey was Taoiseach and Deputy O'Malley, now leader of the Progressive Democrats, was in his cabinet and AIDS was seen as a burning issue.  Mr O'Malley assured the Taoiseach of his party's support for a further relaxation of Mr Desmond's Act.  He found that half his party had problems with his liberal stance on the issue - but all this evaporated a few years later when Brendan Howlin succeed Dr John O'Connell as Minister for Health in 1992.  It took Ireland nearly a quarter of a century after Humanae Vitae to embrace the contraceptive mentality.  And this transition did not come easily.  For this reason, I cannot conclude that the 1968 launch of Humanae Vitae was a disaster.
Pipped by Casey
Following the press conference, Fr Cremin had other battles.  He was passed over for the episcopacy - notably when Fr Éamonn Casey was made Bishop of Kerry.  His Eminence William Cardinal Conway told Mgr Casey that it had taken him four years to convince the Congregation of Bishops that he was a better choice than Dr Cremin.  Dr Cremin got the title Monsignor as a consolation prize.

Some rebel seminarists in Maynooth demanded a course on sexual ethics.  Mgr Cremin agreed, on the condition he could deliver the course in a language of his choice.  Henceforth the lectures and examinations on the subject were exclusively in Latin.  But Maynooth had taken a turn for the worse and Mgr Cremin discovered he had to explain matters to Third Divinity students on topics they should have covered in First Divinity, and later, even things that should have been dealt with in school catechesis.

In the late 1970s, he had a series of four articles published in the Irish Independent entitled "What's Wrong with Maynooth?"  This was principally an appeal to the hierarchy to do something.   The one active element of his career was to assist in the drafting of the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici, with the special reference to the section on the canon law of marriage.  In 1998, he was made a Protonotary Apostolic.
Lonely retirement
Mgr Cremin's years following his retirement were lonely.  A whole folklore about him developed in the college that was quite inconsistent with reality.  Clerical students were not encouraged to make a habit of speaking with him, and those who did were rewarded with a reprimand.  He did not say the Tridentine Mass, nor even the Novus Ordo in Latin.  He said the Novus Ordo Mass in English in the Lady Chapel in Maynooth College Chapel, using Roman vestments and strictly adhering to the rubrics - and he said the Roman canon in a low voice.  On one occasion, I served his Mass and reminded myself that the celebrant of the Novus Ordo Mass used water only for the post communion purifications and not wine, as in the old Mass.  So I was suprised when he requested wine.  He said Mass versus Dominum until the altar in the Lady Chapel was taken back.

He was incredibly well informed about the current situation in the Church.  He believed this current crisis to be worse than the Reformation and that the situation was beyond human redemption.  He was confident of a glorious revival, though not in his own lifetime.  He continued to maintain a broad focus on the world, reading several newspapers regularly, and I remember during a spate of industrial action, his response was to say we neglected the encyclicals on social justice at our peril.
Deeper problems
At a more local level, he was critical of the Maynooth authorities' sudden hardening of attitude towards domestic staff in the early 1990s (until then, domestic staff were treated in a manner consistent with Catholic social teaching rather than with contemporary business practice).  He retained his interest in sport, but regarded the disproportionate reaction to Ireland's soccer successes in 1988, 1990 and 1994 as symptomatic of deeper problems.

In 1999, he moved out of Maynooth when the college authorities closed the infirmary.  This meant that, as his health was deteriorating, he could not rely on medical care as hitherto.  Care for retired academic staff was no longer a priority at St Patrick's College, Maynooth.  On November 1, 2001 he died in a nursing home in Tralee.

Requiem aeternum dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetuae luceat ei.  Anima ejus, et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace.  Amen.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 59, March-April 2002  

The National Way - Where?

THE NATIONAL WAY - WHERE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

WHERE do St Thomas More and Samuel Butler have nowhere in common?  Thus runs an old trick question.  The answwere is that they both wrote books entitled "Nowhere": More's Utopia is derived from the Greek ou topos (not place) and Butler's Erewhon is an anagram for nowhere.

In a collection of 14 essays entitled The National Way Forward, Justin Barrett attempts to map the path ahead for Ireland.  He reflects upon the position of our country, the so-called Celtic Tiger, in the aftermath of the X Case, the Maastricht Treaty, the divorce referendum and the Amsterdam Treaty.  He analyses Ireland from a political, economic and moral point of view and proposes some long-term solutions to what he sees as the current crisis.

I believe this is a book which the Pro-Life Campaign should have read and taken to heart prior to the March referendum.  Published well before the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill, it contains the following observation:

Surely we knew the Supreme Court was politically appointed and, if the Government were not Pro-Life, the Court could not indefinitely remain so?  Surely, we must have understood that a Pro-Life Amendment, no matter how cleverly crafted, could not survive deliberate malevolence on the part of ideologically motivated Justices?  That, plainly, constitutional prohibition on abortion could not forever resist both a hostile legislature and a hostile judiciary?

And there is the most basic question - IF WE DID NOT UNDERSTAND IT THEN, DO WE UNDERSTAND THAT NOW?

If we do not, then it is, as the saying goes, all over bar the shouting.  For new referendum or not, the forces fighting for Life will have committed the cardinal error of short-sightedness and narrow focus, which must inevitably deliver this country up to legalised and widespread abortion - and sooner rather than later.  (The National Way Forward, p. 16, emphasis in original)

So, in his examination of the X Case and its fall out, Mr Barrett seems to dismiss the practicality of any further pro-life amendment, let alone one with a specific wording.  In his analysis of recent Irish history, the X Case is pivotal to the direction the nation has taken, but his treatment of the case in the book's first essay caricatures the issue by subjecting the court to pop-psychoanalysis, and introduces a novel conspiracy theory to which the Hederman judgement can be regarded a key.  There is no doubt that all pro-lifers found the majority judgement in X to be deeply shocking.  But Mr Barrett's conclusion above is unhelpful, to say the least.

Conspiracy theory

In regard to the other meditations, it could be said that Mr Barrett's Weltanschauung is one that follows the masthead of this journal: Pro Vita, Pro Ecclesia Dei, et Pro Hibernia.  However, I do not think too many of the Brandsma Review's commentators would follow him down the roads he takes.  One can sympathise with an economic analysis that is critical of usury and the notion of money.  However, most of us would recognise the importance of both to the global economy.  For all the many faults of the present system, it would be unrealistic and a waste of energy to work on an alternative.

And peddling versions for a conspiracy theory substantially the same as that found in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion is not going to help either.  International finance may well have been behind the October Revolution of 1917, but as long as it remains unproved, it is at least unwise to publish the idea as established fact.

In regard to this country, Mr Barrett is right to see moral bankruptcy cutting across Irish society.  But some of his solutions are problematic.  For example, replacing the Oireachtas with a popularly elected executive president with absolute discretion to appoint a cabinet and without any formal opposition is, let us say, worrying.  Then one recalls that in the Republic, the leitmotiv is Plato's wish for a time when philosophers would be kings and kings philosophers.  Colloquially, this may be translated as "I want to be in charge".  But there the comparison between Plato and Mr Barrett ends - even if much of the latter's thought displays an idealisation of Spartan frugality, also evident in Plato.  This idealisation has appeared again and again in western thought: de Valera, whom Mr Barrett despises, was also an admirer of Sparta.

Questionable assertions

Some of Mr Barrett's historical assertions are questionable.  The idolisation of Michael Collins is not founded on wide reading of the 1916-1922 period, and the suggestion that W. T. Cosgrave ordered his shooting would require a lot more evidence than the conjecture offered.

Moving to our own times, Mr Barrett seems to think we can do business with Sinn Féin, as he doesn't think most of its supporters have much in common with the party's socialist platform.  But Sinn Féin's socialist manifesto must surely be taken absolutely seriously.  Sinn Féin have made political gains in the North, and to a lesser extent in the south, on their stated platform.  To think that one can make a deal with them on the basis of some understood alternative agenda that would be more palatable to us, is ludicrous. 

For a long time now, the bulk of the Provisional IRA members have adopted the philosophy and methodology of Marxist guerrillas; and most of the student influx into Sinn Féin has been due to the left-wing anti-establishment marketing of the party following the H-Block hunger-strike election gains.  Maybe their politics have moderated, but this process would need to go a lot further before we could have dealings with them.

Mr Barrett is very dismissive of the SDLP.  I too would criticise the SDLP's adoption of a socialist masthead, and its fruitless association with the British Labour Party and the European socialist parties at Strasbourg.  But it is wrong to dismiss the party which commands the vote of so many nationalists in Northern Ireland at local government and assembly levels.  Until Sinn Féin seriously alters its policies on socio-moral issues - especially on abortion - the SDLP must be preferred by nationalist pro-lifers.

In  regard to Mr Barrett's view on the European Union and further European integration, I have one observation.  I am a Eurosceptic; I have opposed every step toward European integration since the Single European Act of 1987 (I was far too young to vote against joining the Common Market in 1972).  But in spite of all Europe's difficulties, I would not anticipate a European analogue of the American Civil War as he does.

On constitutional matters,  I would not share Mr Barrett's admiration for America's Revolution and Constitution.  The Irish Constitution of 1937 in fact substantially follows Anglo-American democracy, with concessions to the French revolutionary tradition, to Catholic and secular schools of natural law and even with Fascism (the title An Taoiseach and the vocational compostion of Seanad Éireann) and with Communism (look very carefully at Article 43, on private property rights).

The one serious fault I would find in Bunreacht na hÉireannn is the lack of any meaningful separation of powers.  But this is the result of a strong party whip system - an accidental result of our constitution rather than something directly envisaged in it.

To return to the original point of this review: we just have to live with the fact that written constitutions are subject to creative interpretations in court.  This has even manifested itself in civil law jurisdictions.  To give a recent example, the German Supreme Court found crucifixes in Bavarian schools, hospitals and other public buildings to be repugnant to the German Constitution.  The Bavarian people successfully resisted this.

The chapter on the Church I found to be the most unhelpful, as it is very vague about the crisis in Western Catholicism and it proposes no concrete solutions whatsoever.  Mr Barrett also uses terminology such as "traditionalism" and "traditional Catholicism" without defining them.  There are many conflicting ideas about what these terms mean.

The Barrett book is part soap-box oration, part undergraduate monologue proposing solutions to the world's problems over coffee.  I have some advice for the Justin Barrett PR team: never allow your client use photographs of himself with open mouth, midstream in a stirring rally.  It looks like he's ranting.  If the media want to label Mr Barrett as Ireland's answer to Vladimir Zhiranovsky, it is inadvisable to hand them an invitation to do so.

Secondly, do not mention the Gaelic language or the inability of the populace to speak it, if the fada does not appear once in the book, and Irish words are almost uniformly spelt incorrectly.  And do not assume that either the Irish people or the media are stupid.  It tends to provoke a negative reaction.

The National Way Forward is published by the Guild Press, Longford.  194pp.  €7.55

The Brandsma Review, Issue 62, September-October 2002