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The Thomas Mc Donald
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On Sunday April 26th the Cloughbawn and Poulpeasty National League (alias Land League) met and John Williams of Forrestalstown who had won fame as a suspect back in 1882/3 occupied the chair; in his address to the meeting he indulged in the now inevitable demonisation of the bashaw of Tinnock (the 3rd Lord Carew of Castleboro) 1. The evictions carried out by Carew, especially that of the Dunnes, an elderly couple at Poulpeasty, had terminated the proud reputation of the House of Carew as a liberal and humane presence. The visceral references to Carew were probably intended as a means of grabbing the attention of the local media, especially that of the populist People and New Ross Standard newspapers. However the real controversy generated by this meeting centred on a dispute between the Carrigbyrne branch (part of the old parish of Adamstown) and the Cloughbawn one. Actually this is not quite correct: the Carrigbyrne branch was in reality incensed with Fr Thomas Staples C.C. Poulpeasty, the dynamic personality in the Cloughbawn branch. The sincerity and determination of Fr Staples in assisting the Land League agitation was beyond question; he gave the local branch an avuncular style of leadership and adorned his addresses to them with allusions to poetry and avant-garde theories of social reform. One presumes that he scripted the high sounding and socially informed speeches made by the several occupants of the chair at these meetings.
Fr Staples' address on that April Sunday meandered (it seemed) almost interminably; it compounded logic, fallacy, poetry, rationality, irrationality and touches of sardonic wit. Fr Staples balanced his comments in a metaphorical twilight zone between outright attack on the Carrigbyrne tormentors and appeasement of them. This dispute while apparently tedious and irrelevant may at a deeper level have articulated a real divergence between the absolutely radical and lethally separatist concept of the potentialities of the Land League (the Land League was to use an apt analogy a broad church) and the Catholic Church's system of determining morality and the requirement of the Church (an international or universal institution) that its clergy and indeed its laity give it their primary loyalties.
At the outset Fr Staples stated a resolution had been passed by the Carrigbyrne National League "censuring them for having passed a vote of condolence with the friends of Cardinal M'Cabe on his early demise. The glove has been thrown down to us by the Carrigbyrne directory. We are accused of too much fealty to ecclesiastical authority and a long list of other irregularities. We have been called some very hard names, I suppose, in accordance with the tenets of the Carrigbyrne code of public morality and philosophy-no doubt which tract will become in future time, a document for our guidance before a social and political world." The use of the noun "directory" in (I think) a sardonic and condescending touch more than an accusation of adherence to the totalitarian and anti-religious philosophies that held sway in the aftermath of the French Revolution; nevertheless the allusion does denote an unease in Fr Staples' mind.
He proceeded to accuse the Carrigbyrne branch of using "language too strong for an emperor of the proudest empire in the world" and used analogies of separating the branch from the bough and the bough from the stem or vine but the import of his words at this stage are not clear. As wine is an essential part of the celebration of the Holy Eucharist he may have meant these analogies as implying that the Carrigbyrne crowd were a fractious influence in the context of the sacred unity of the Catholic community but he certainly stopped well short of making such an assertion in any outright manner. Fr Staples not only employed obscure and ornate diction but further complicated matters by confusing arrangements of his diction as in this indecipherable sentence: "perhaps a word of explanation upon the multifarious ways of reviewing the case in point may not be out of place." He then proceeded to enunciate a most unsound piece of logic:
"On the authority of the Carrigbyrne statesmen we are told that Cardinal M'Cabe was an excellent ecclesiastic. Well, from our convictions it is not easy to be an excellent ecclesiastic without being also and at the same time, being an ecclesiastic marked and endowed from the hand of God with that healthy spirit called the spirit of Irish nationality. They are convictions that can scarce be considered apart. They are so intimately united, like a holy sisterhood, that we may be pardoned for presuming to discuss the position and politics of so eminent an ecclesiastic as Cardinal M'Cabe."
On a later occasion Fr Staples asserted:
"It has always been a maxim with us that next to the love of God comes the love of country, they are inseparable and can never be separated&ldots;Freedom comes from God's right hand/ And needs a godly train/And righteous men must make our land/A nation once again.' That of course is our great ambition-our holy desire-that we should make our country a nation free and glorious, from North to South, East to West2."
The clear inference from Fr Staples words are that an Irish Catholic had of necessity to be imbued with the spirit of Irish nationality; this nationality was in itself, both mystical and fused to Catholicity. The irony of a requirement of national or nationalist spirit for membership of a church defined by its universality is obvious but not relevant to the present discussion.
The most immediate problem about Fr Staples' prescription is that nationality/nationalism is essentially a political issue and as such subject to infinite variation and cynical amendment of definition. The nationality of Cardinal M'Cabe was certainly much, much less than that felt by Fr Staples and almost nothing at all compared to the potentially lethal ideology of the Carrigbyrne branch. In a holy sisterhood, in the event of a fundamental disagreement which sister is to have the power to ultimately resolve it? And what if the holy sister of nationality demanded a total allegiance transcending the teaching authority of the Church, itself? Several variants of national and social ideology floated and interweaved in the Land League: the resolution of the Carrigbyrne branch was probably informed by an influence of the more implacable, totalitarian and mystical spirit of Irish nationality (inevitably inflamed by the horrible evictions carried out by the landlords in response to the land agitation) that culminated in the Rebellion of Easter Week 1916.
Fr Staples in defence of Cardinal M'Cabe pointed out that he was a priest and prelate in the Archdiocese of Dublin "for well nigh fifty years" and had an intimate knowledge of every aspect of life in the metropolis: he knew about the confraternity, the Holy Family Society, tontine society, the brotherhood of St Patrick, St Stephen, central and press association and finally Masonic and secret societies. He added:
"To us here at a distance he appears the special Apostle sent by God to cope with these latter societies. Yet history tells us he was unable to check its breaking out here or there in Dublin, as the murder and bloodshed of Sir Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke would seem to prove-if a man were open to proof or conviction. So the question narrows itself down; or we may ask ourselves was Cardinal M'Cabe justified, or did he show foresight in temporarily withdrawing the priests from politics? Perhaps better still, would he be justified in advising the clergy to be more cautious and circumspect in the language that they might feel called upon to predicate on public platforms?"
The murders referred to by Fr Staples were abhorred by almost the entirety of the Irish people but a sneaking sympathy for or empathy with them undoubtedly was held by extremist elements. This is the most compelling and logical part of Fr Staples argumentation: Cardinal M'Cabe could hardly have acted otherwise than to radically disassociate his clergy form any contact with these extremists, known as the Invincibles. The opposition of the Church to secret societies had an obvious rationale: the cover of secrecy means that devious, cunning and violent men have an enormous advantage in securing control and leading their followers towards sociopathic ends; such an organisation is not accountable to public opinion and feeling. Fr Staples then carried his attack to the Carrigbyrne directory;
"If the Carrigbyrne chairman says he was not justified in advising moderation and partial restraint, we simply say, have it your own way. We throw up the sponge in the contest."
Fr Staples, however, did not deal with a much more ambiguous issue of Papal and Episcopal authority as distinct from the black and white issue of psychotic extremists such as the Invincibles: what if the Papacy condemned an unsavoury (although not exactly violent) strategy of the land agitation? As a priest Fr Staples was bound by absolute loyalty the Church and would have taken a vow of obedience to his ecclesiastical superiors. At a later date in regard to the legendary priest leader of the land agitation, Canon Tom Doyle, the New Ross Standard noted in his defence:
"we may say that the Canon's letter on the Plan of Campaign and boycotting was written long before the condemnation of the Holy See and therefore was not written 'in face' of that condemnation. So long as the question is open, every one has a perfect right to debate it but no Catholic-and above all no priest-is warranted to controvert the decision on questions of faith or morals emanating from the Chair of Peter3."
The antipathy of the Carrigbyrne directory to the late Cardinal M'Cabe (to use Fr Staples jest), in fairness to them, is best interpreted not as an approval of the criminal lunacy of the Invincibles but as an articulation of a fear (maybe sub-conscious) that diplomatic pressure by the British authorities could extract some sharp denunciation of the land agitation from the Vatican. The diction of Fr Staples concluding remarks are unclear: he hoped that the Carrigbyrne resolution "will not fasten on us the serious charge of anti-clericalism or West-Brittonism". He concluded with a snippet of the poetry of Robbie Burns;
"Wad some power the giftie give us
To see oursel's as ithers see us."
It is very possible that Fr Staples had the local branch pass the resolution of sympathy on the death of Cardinal Mc Cabe in order to demonstrate the Catholicity of the Land League movement and help (albeit in a small way) to forestall any move by the Church authorities, under British pressure, to condemn the more controversial tactics of the land agitation. Conversely the Carrigbyrne branch may have reasoned that the prospect of an unpleasant popular reaction would deter the more conservative, cautious and less nationalist members of the Catholic Hierarchy from sharp denunciation of the land agitation.
The Carrigbyrne branch at their May meeting responded to Fr Staples in a critical and challenging manner. Their reply began with a pungent assertion, sharply egalitarian in tone:
"We inform this rev. gentleman that we appraise men, living and dead, by their actions and not by the elevated places or offices they occupy or have occupied. We have never crouched to high position and never shall; we leave this to the servile and sycophantic4." They then challenged the Poulpeasty Curate to do an impossible feat: "and we challenge Father Staples to disprove, if he can, our assertion that the Cardinal was a most bitter and persistent foe of Irish nationality. If this cannot be done-if the last Archbishop of the Pale must be admitted to have been obstinately hostile to the popular cause-we cannot see how any but West Britons and Dublin Castle can regret his decease." The response was made at a time of heightened emotions in Ireland-the meeting itself denounced horrible evictions and police brutality at Mallow-but the atavistic and venomous terminology is frankly unsavoury. The branch rejected any insinuation by Fr Staples that they might be anti-clerical and proceeded:
"Nothing give us greater pleasure than to see the clergy where (we maintain) they ought to be, namely-in the ranks of the people from whom they have sprung and who have the strongest claims upon them."
There can be no doubt that Fr Staples took his place in the ranks of the people during the land agitation: he was the dynamic of the Cloughbawn/Poulpeasty branch during his short stay there; he provided an avuncular and forceful style of leadership, tinted by his reading of avant-garde social theorists and poets and at auctions of evicted farms he did not hesitate to face down petty but self-important legal functionaries. It is not clear, however, if he complied with the prescription of the Carrigbyrne branch on taking his place in the ranks of the people: the words of the Carrigbyrne branch have a hint of mild revolutionary absolutism whereby the priest would serve the popular movement without reference to the dictates of ecclesiastical superiors as the service of the revolutionary project would transcend his clerical and religious obligations. The use of the word "bobby" in connection with the Royal Irish Constabulary possibly denotes a wider British revolutionary influence; Davitt the founder of the Land League had worked in a factory in England, losing an arm in the process. His concept of the land agitation was utterly revolutionary with a prescription of violent resistance to evictions.
On May 11, 1885 Fr Staples wrote to the local media in reply and made this wry and bemused observation about the resolution of sympathy to the friends of Cardinal Mc Cabe:
"His merits must be rare and few, indeed, when a poor and unpretending National League, like that of Poulpeasty, meeting on the roadside under the shadow of a gable end of a house, could not be allowed to vote a resolution of condolence with the friends of an ecclesiastic now no more"5. Fr Staples then returned to the stronger part of his argument: his theme of the necessity for Cardinal Mc Cabe to oppose the violent and psychopathic revolutionaries: "If I were told how Cardinal Mc Cabe was a most bitter and persistent foe of Fenianism, secret societies bound by oath, with the object of destroying life or property at the direction of a head centre like James Carey, I could understand the whole theory quite easily. He should have known his diocese much better than a stranger like your humble servant. If the city of Dublin were transpierced with Dynamitards, Internationalists, Fenians, Invincibles, &c who could have understood it better than the late Archbishop."
Sections of the Land League might well have agreed with or at least condoned the Fenians! The reiteration of the argument that the Cardinal opposed the dangerous and violent revolutionaries is not only the stronger part of Fr Staples' case but is, also, undoubtedly obscurantist: the unspoken issue had to be that of the danger that high ranking ecclesiastics or the Papacy itself would denounce the Land League, disrupting its unity and creating ugly controversies. It was not an issue that Fr Staples could directly address.
Fr Staples expressed deep dismay at the persistence of the "Carrigbyrne chairman in calling Cardinal Mc Cabe the Archbishop of the Pale" and thus corrected the matter: "He was the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church."
During the controversy Fr Staples referred constantly to the dogmatic language of the Carrigbyrne branch and in this parting statement he made another crack along similar lines: "I believe some people will have none but out and outers-a thing not to be obtained every day, a state of society only to be hoped for."
He rejoiced (his own word) to learn that any insinuation of anti-clericalism against the Carrigbyrne branch was repudiated and untrue but then with a sudden shaft of wit he indicated that this assertion was in reality also obscurantist: the controversy was focussed not on priests but on an Archbishop and Cardinal and there is no doubting the force of Fr Staples final sentence:
"I should hope, also, to hear that there is no foundation for any antiarchiescopelianism." You could not put it better than that!
1. The Wexford People April 29th 1885. In the National Library.
2. The Wexford People, January 19th, 1887. In the National Library.
3. The New Ross Standard, January 10th, 1891. In Wexford Library.
4. The People, May 6th, 1885. In the National Library.
5. The People, May 16th, 1885. In the National Library.
@Copyright 2008
