Four Green Fields: Trollheart's History of Ireland

[Trollheart]

The Manchester Martyrs

Alluded to briefly in the previous chapter, this incident followed hard on the heels of the Fenian so-called Uprising, and centred on two men, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy, both senior figures in the IRB, who had arrived in Manchester for a meeting of the Supreme Council, and who were promptly arrested. Oddly enough, reflecting something that would occur almost a hundred years later, when serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the infamous Yorkshire Ripper who had been hunted - without any success - by the police for nearly four years, was arrested on a charge of soliciting, without any idea who he was, Deasy and Kelly were charged with loitering with apparent intent to rob a shop. It was only when they were brought to the police station that their true identities were confirmed, and they were re-arrested as members of the Fenian movement.

On September 18 1867 Deasy and Kelly were being transferred via police van from the court to jail, when a man jumped out and pointed a pistol at the driver of the van. Immediately, about forty armed men jumped over a nearby wall and seized the horses, shooting one. The guards quickly fled, and the armed men tried to force the door of the van to free their commanders, using axes, crowbars and sledgehammers. Finding the lock resistant to their efforts they called upon the sergeant in the van to open the door. He refused, and so they blew the lock off with a gun. Unfortunately, that was the moment the sergeant chose to look through the keyhole and he was shot dead, accidentally. Deasy and Kelly escaped, and were said to have fled to New York.

The Manchester police, in the meantime, rounded up almost every Irish person they could find, and brought them in as suspects with not a shred of evidence, but when one of your own has been killed I guess the rule book goes out the window. Irish as charged, they were brought before the magistrates, and despite almost all of them having witnesses to their not even having been in the area at the time, these alibis were completely discounted and 26 of the 28 men arrested went forward for trial. The men seen as the principle offenders - William Philip Larkin, Michael Allen, Michael O'Brien, Thomas Maguire and Edmund O'Meagher Condon - were tried together as one defendant, under the principle of common purpose joint justice, which holds that anyone involved in an illegal act is as guilty as the man who pulls the trigger, basically. After a trial that lasted five days, and was proven to have heard evidence from so-called witnesses who had perjured themselves, the jury nevertheless took just over an hour to find all five men guilty of murder.

All were sentenced to death, but Condon and Maguire had their sentences commuted. O'Brien, Allen and Larkin however were hanged in a public spectacle on November 23 outside Salford Jail. Since the original attempt had been made while trying to effect a rescue, and given the strength of Fenian sentiment in the city, over 2,500 troops were drafted in to ensure that another such attempt was not made. The execution of the three men, seen as nothing more than a desire to satisfy the rabid anti-Irish and anti-Fenian fervour of the English, was decried across the world and made the men martyrs to the republican cause. Even Frederick Engels noted in a letter to Karl Marx that "So yesterday morning the Tories, by the hand of Mr Calcraft, accomplished the final act of separation between England and Ireland. The only thing that the Fenians still lacked were martyrs. They have been provided by Derby and G Hardy. Only the execution of the three has made the liberation of Kelly and Deasy the heroic deed which will now be sung to every Irish babe in the cradle in Ireland, England and America ... To my knowledge, the only time that anybody has been executed for a similar matter in a civilised country was the case of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. The Fenians could not have wished for a better precedent. The Southerners had at least the decency to treat J. Brown as a rebel, whereas here everything is being done to transform a political attempt into a common crime."

Like every martyr executed by the state, the hanging of these three men served to drive more and more Irishmen to the republican cause, and strengthen sympathy for it among the Irish in England. The last cry of O'Meagher Condon from the dock before being led away became the rallying cry and unofficial anthem of Irish republicanism: "God save Ireland!"

By contrast, another action carried out by the IRB in England had precisely the opposite effect.

The Clerkenwell Explosion

Three days prior to the execution of the "Manchester Martyrs", Richard O'Sullivan Burke and Joseph Casey had been arrested in London after having bought explosives in Birmingham, and imprisoned in Clerkenwell Prison. On December 12 an attempt was made to free them by blowing a hole in the prison wall, but the bomb failed to go off. The next day they tried again. This time the bomb did explode, but having been warned of the attempt the prison authorities had ensured nobody was in the exercise yard, as they should have been at that time.

Unfortunately, as with so many  bombings, innocents suffered. The bomb was placed on a costermonger (trader)  barrow, and when it exploded it also took out several houses opposite the prison, killing twelve people and wounding over a hundred. Oh and yes, you know I checked: December 13 1867 was a Friday! Eight men were arrested and tried, but two turned state snitch and gave evidence against their companions. Michael Barrett, who had protested his innocence, saying he had been in Scotland at the time, was convicted and hanged, earning himself the dubious distinction and place in history of being the last man to be publicly hanged in England: the practice was outlawed five months later.

In the aftermath of the Clerkenwell Bombing, and particularly with the failure of the Fenian RIsing, the IRB rewrote its constitution to allow it to pursue other means than violence, "until it had the full support of the people", As a result, efforts were channelled into supporting Parnell's Land League and Land War.

Across the big water though, they had other ideas...

[Trollheart]

Maple Leaf Morons: The Fenian Raids on, um, Canada

Although initially set up as a training camp and financial support hub for the IRB, the Fenian Brotherhood (later to be rebranded as Clan na Gael - the Irish Family) had, as has been already noted, tens of thousands of men at its disposal. These mostly came from a military background, having fought in the American Civil War. Now that they were free of that conflict, they turned their hand towards an attempt to help free Ireland, by attacking... Canada? Um, yeah: that's what it says. Let's see. Okay well I suppose since they were trying to drum up support for the Irish cause in America they couldn't exactly attack targets there, so maybe Canada was seen as the best alternative? At any rate, most of these failed, as the population was torn between divided loyalties, and the already ultra-Unionist Protestant immigrants fought against them in the Canadian Orange Order.

It is, I must admit, amusing to think of Ireland invading any country (usually the other way around) but it does seem that initially at least, the Fenians had some success with their attempts to, um, invade Canada. Most of the reason for this does appear to rest with the fact that the Canadians, never having really been in any sort of military engagement before, were untried and untested, and many had not even handled a weapon before, whereas the Fenians were all Civil War veterans, and so, for the only time in history, the Irish were the more experienced and battle-hardened, and in June 1866, having been roundly defeated at New Brunswick by the British, they launched the reasonably successful Canada West campaign.

The idea here was to divide Canada by capturing Canada West (southern Ontario) and cutting it off from Canada East (southern Quebec), thereby stopping British reinforcements from coming to the Canadians' aid. The US Navy would find to its cost that the Fenians were everywhere, including in the crew of the USS Michigan, a gunboat which was sabotaged by sympathisers in its crew, delaying its entry to the battle. The next day's conflict would be entirely against the Canadians, and the only victory for the Fenians in Canada.

The Battle of Ridgeway

The odds were not with the Irish. 650 Fenians faced about 850 Canadians, but as already mentioned, the latter were poorly trained, if at all, and very unfamiliar with their weapons. They had not taken part in any action, and now faced battle-hardened soldiers who had not only seen off the Confederate South, but came from a line of stock used to battling the hated English. Even so, the Canadians looked about to prevail before, well, something happened. Nobody knows quite what, though suggestions that Fenian scouts on horseback were mistaken for cavalry, leading to an order to form a square, which wasted time when the mistake was realised, may have given the Fenians their chance. They surged forward in a bayonet attack which scattered the Canadians, and the day was theirs.

Other theories suggest that, as some of the Fenians were wearing red coats (there was no agreed uniform and men wore what they preferred) these were mistaken for British infantry, and the Canadian commander ordered a withdrawal, which others took for a retreat and panicked. Either way, it seems, if you will, the luck of the Irish was with the Fenians, but for probably the only time in their attempted invasion of Canada.

Not at all happy with what was happening over the border, the US President, Andrew Jackson, issued orders for Fenians to be arrested, and to enforce neutrality. This more or less ended the attempted invasion of Canada by the Fenians, most of whom were arrested and imprisoned. Ironically, the two main results of these hilariously botched campaigns was to push Canadians closer to confederation (where all three major provinces banded together to create was is today Canada, a united entity) and to increase anti-American sentiment there. As much of the financing and funding for the IRB was coming from there, this has to go down as a colossal own goal. In the end, it achieved nothing except to show why Ireland has never invaded any other country.

Having failed utterly in their "invasion of Canada", the Fenians headed back home, probably consoling themselves with the fact that the lads back home would pick up where they had left off. They were right, if by that they meant they would fail utterly, as we have seen.

The Phoenix Park murders and the fall of Parnell, as again we have seen, pretty much drained the country of any real support or sympathy for the Fenians, and largely up until the twentieth century there would be little to no further armed resistance. There was no appetite for, as people saw it, giving legitimacy to common murderers, and even though the IRB had denounced the "Invincibles", mud sticks, and they would be forever associated with those heinous crimes. It would also be true to say that when the rebel Irish staged their famous, and final rising in 1916, there was almost no support for that either, but that's another story.

In the interim, as already intimated in the previous chapter, another, far older and more respected power would, if not take up the cause of Irish independence, rise to all but control the island, its people and even after independence was achieved, its government. Ireland had always been a Catholic nation - men and women had died to protect their faith, priests had literally fought for it in the previous century and many of them had been exiled or executed in the centuries before that - so nobody would oppose the Church as it tightened its stranglehold on Ireland.

Well, other than the Fenians, who would always be its hated enemies, but by now they were a fading force, out of favour and out of fashion, desperately trying to regroup after one of the worst PR disasters of their short existence, and left without allies in government.

The Catholic Church in Ireland, then, would rise unopposed and rule over Irish society well into my own time. It's therefore incumbent upon me, I believe, to trace its early history and follow its rise from laughable Christian sect to the powerhouse colossus it became in the Middle Ages, and to chart how greed and personal self-interest led to excesses which resulted in its being split, fighting among itself, riddled by corruption and irrelevant in the modern world, but still a dominant power.

Dip your fingers in the holy water font (no, no I'll pass thanks - it burns me) and bow your head as we enter God's house.

Hope he's in.

[Trollheart]

Chapter XIV: Faith, Fear and Fascism: The Iron Grip of the Catholic Church in Ireland

Part I: Rising from the Ruins: We're Back, Baby!

The title may seem odd to some, given how the Church (apparently) opposed Hitler and Franco, but I tend to wonder. There's a great scene in the comedy series Father Ted where Father Dougal compares priests (he being one, of course, though not one of the brightest) to fascists, and Father Ted says annoyed "No no Dougal! Fascists are people who dress in black and go around telling people what to do, whereas we..."

It's a great piece of comedy and a great piece of commentary on the Catholic Church, as is the series, and it kind of proves my point. What is a fascist? At the very basic heart of it, I believe fascists want to control people, tell them what to do and say and even think, and have little to no time with those who do not think as they do. Sound familiar? While it may not be fair to label Catholics as fascists (and there is an element of satire here, though a grain of truth too) I think it is fair to say that the Catholic Church, certainly in Ireland, displayed, for a very long time, and was allowed to display, further, many of the basic tenets of the fascist. You literally could not go against the Church. Its word was literally law. Women had no standing at all, either in the organisation or in the country it basically controlled: we've seen this already. Its members, its staff were seen to be above reproach, the final arbiters of good taste, morals, and even life decisions such as marriage, birth and abortion.

Once the English boot, to use my own phrase, was lifted or pushed off the neck of the Catholic Church, once Ireland was free, the organisation which also bears so many similarities to the Mafia that it's hard not to think of them as brothers under the skin went about systematically controlling every aspect of Irish life, making politicians, teachers, even state leaders bow to their every whim. Its people insinuated themselves, like alien invaders, into every facet of Irish life, from the institutions of education to those of correction, at every level from national to grassroots rural. Like a many-headed snake (which a certain emissary of theirs was supposed to have exiled from the country, but let's not get into that right now) the Catholic Church wove its way into every nook and cranny of Irish society. You couldn't go to a dance, attend a school or even go on a picnic without the oppressive, ubiquitous shadow of the cross hanging over you, like some dread spectre of warning, a physical reminder that you had better not sin, because by Jesus Christ almighty boy (and especially girl), you were being watched.

Depending on when you count from, the Catholic/Christian Church has enjoyed a dominance and position of power over Ireland seldom seen in any country not described as a theocracy for perhaps a thousand years or longer. It's a little fuzzy as to when Christianity became Catholicism, with our old friend Saint Patrick being seen as the beginnings of "Christian Ireland" in the fifth century, but "true" Catholic Ireland only seeming to begin around the twelfth when the Synod of Ráth Breasail ratified the then-monastic structure of the Irish Christian Church into a more parish-led, diocesean style, it says here. Nobody cares. The point is that on that rather auspicious year, 1111, the true beginnings of what could be said to be the Catholic, as opposed to the Christian Church in Ireland appear to have been set down.

I considered making this more an intermission than a chapter, but it's going to be quite long and I prefer intermissions to be short, and besides, it still follows the basic story, even if we do jump back along the timeline. So this will be a sort of self-contained series within the journal which will trace the rise, fall (almost), persecution and triumph and eventual rise again to unprecedented heights of the Catholic Church in Ireland. We've already seen how the priests and bishops were persecuted on the orders of various Protestant Kings or Queens of England, so we won't be going back over that again. We will be picking up the story after Catholic Emancipation is granted, and priests no longer have to hide or say mass in secret, bishops have no further need to say "Oh this? I just thought it looked good for the school play. Vestments, you say? Well I never!" In other words, as the nineteenth century moved into its second half and though enmity between Catholics and Protestants (and Ireland and England of course) remained as vitriolic as ever, the repeal of the Penal Laws and Emancipation for Catholics meant that the Church was in a position, really, to begin charting its own course and bringing its people into line. Independence would not of course be achieved for another seventy-odd years, but while the Ascendancy still ruled in Ulster, down south of the border the Catholic Church was preparing to plant, or replant its flag, and once that was in the ground, my son, it was never coming out.

But before we get into that, I think it's interesting to look both at the beginnings of the Catholic Church and even before that, the meaning behind the word "catholic". I've sometimes wondered about that, and now I know: in a very general sense, it means wide-ranging, open, varied, eclectic. It means having sympathies with all, broad-minded, universal... uh, do any of those words sound like they describe the Catholic Church to you? Broad-minded? Open? Having sympathies with all? Has nobody heard of those popular inquisitions? Of course, in terms of what the Church wants it to mean, the word universal is the one to hone in on. Not used in the manner of being open to all, necessarily, but more, I think, in a this-is-all-there-is-and-anything-else-is-not-acceptable sort of way. Yeah, that sounds much more like the Church I know and don't love. Worship our god - not that pagan Protestant one, um, even though he's exactly the same as ours but we choose to worship him differently - or else!

So much for all-embracing and tolerant. Hey you know, I have no time for them, but at least you have to give Protestants points for being honest: they protest (against the excesses of the then-Catholic Church) and so are Protestants. Simple. Not like our lot. Catholic indeed. Anyway, what about the change from one to the other? What I mean is, Catholicism was not around from the word go, because as we all know, the guy who suffered and died on the cross was Jesus Christ, not Jesus Catholic, and therefore the religion - originally a cult, of course - which sprang up after his death, and really did quite well for itself, was named Christianity. So how long did it take for Christianity to become Catholicism? Hmm. Not all that long, in historical terms. It was kind of all down to this guy, of whom I have not spoken here, but I think we all have heard of him. Frankly, if we hadn't, then you and I might be facing off against each other in some Roman arena or the modern equivalent, or being eyed up by hungry lions.

[Trollheart]

Constantine I, Constantine the Great   (272 - 337)

I've definitely mentioned him somewhere, perhaps even here (though I'm not sure) but let's wheel him out again and give him an airing. Very basically, without going into all the ins and outs of it, Constantine was setting up for a major battle when he had a dream, or a vision, in which Christ appeared and told him to put his holy symbol on the shields of his armies and he would be victorious. I used to think this was the cross - and it's probably been simplified as such for handiness' sake in some tellings - but it wasn't. Something to do with the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, but you don't care about that. Nor do I. I think the best approximation is that symbol you see now if you go to mass, that kind of x with a curved line on top, you know the kind of thing, and if you don't, fuck you. It's not important.

What is important is that Constantine won his big battle and to really simplify matters again, marched to Rome where he took the big seat, became the emperor and declared that from now on the Christians were all right, nobody thinking about who the poor lions were going to eat now. Probably plenty of Muslims or moors or whatever infidels Christianity would eventually go on to see as its enemies, many and varied. There's also nothing recorded of how the old gods felt about this sudden and rather unexpected turn of events, and no official footage exists of Apollo down the dole or Vulcan saying eagerly "Oh yeah! I've worked in smiths before. Want to see some of my work?" In fact, to be perfectly honest (and I can't be bothered reading through to find out as it's not that relevant anyway) I'm not sure he did, or indeed could just depose the Gods of Rome just like that. I imagine he probably said something to the effect of "You guys can go on worshipping Zeus and the lads, but me and the Christians, we have this one God, see, and soon enough this empire ain't gonna be big enough for all of them so you'll have to choose your god." Probably not in those exact words of course. For one thing, he would have been speaking in Latin.

The point I'm making here, rather badly, is that I very much doubt it was a case of Constantine sitting on the throne and sending out a mailshot that said nobody could worship at the Temple of Daphne or Artemis or whatever. That would have been too much of a culture shock, and we all know how fragile those first few years on the throne could be; piss the people off too much and you could be run out of town, god and all. Or as Dave Allen used to say, may your god go with you. So it was almost certainly a gradual thing, let people get used to the new regime. Besides, I'm absolutely certain that he had more important and pressing matters to attend to as the new emperor, and these things have a way of working themselves out. At any rate, eventually he did make Christianity the state religion, which I guess you have to say effectively outlawed all other forms of worship (as, as we know well, the one thing the insecure Christian God can't stand is other gods; it's him or nobody) and this happened in 313 with the Edict of Milan, which officially accepted Christianity, ten years later it was the state religion.

So, the Roman Empire being of course at the time the most powerful institution in the world, the emergence of the Christian Church as a power became inextricably linked with Rome, which is why it's still the Holy CIty where the Pope kicks back and has his own tiny little independent state, Vatican City. Christianity had been around for some 300 years before this, naturally, but could not be said to be in any way a force, even if Christ's Apostles and their descendants were doing their best to make it one. Like all things, and certainly all religions, it only acquired the power and the influence it needed to begin really growing when the Emperor or Rome sanctioned it, and then mandated it. Once Christianity had the Constantine Roman Seal of Approval, there was no stopping it.

So that leaves us with a basic beginning for Christianity of around 324. Now as far as Catholicism is concerned, opinion is divided. Many people date the emergence of the Catholic Church from the time Jesus handed over the keys of Heaven to Peter, probably warning "Don't lose these or we'll all be fucking locked out!" but I don't agree. Back then, Christianity was a new thing - yes, being in existence 300 years is peanuts compared to Zeus and Hera and Apollo and all those lads, who had been around for thousands of years - and had neither the time nor the interest in rebranding itself. So I think calling the early, early Christian Church Catholic is stretching things a bit. Therefore I tend to go with eleven-eleven, that Synod thingy, as being the first real mention of, and birth of, what we know today as the Catholic Church. Besides, it's an easy date to remember.

You'd have to say then that it hadn't too long, in historical terms, to get a foothold in Ireland. Although Saint Patrick may have been driving snakes before him in the fifth century, let's just call that Christianity, and then assume Catholicism starts in 1111, sure it's only a century later before King Henry II is nosing around Ireland and invading, and a mere three after that before one of his successors decides that if the Pope won't let him get his end away he'll just follow the lead of that nice German chap, Martin Luther, and abolish the whole bloody Church and set his own up, bringing Protestantism to merry old England and laying the foundations for eight centuries of torment and massacre of the Irish. Boo. During this period, from the sixteenth to well into the nineteenth century, as we've seen, the Catholic Church would be on the run, playing a game of hide and seek with the new Anglican masters of Ireland, a game with deadly consequences.

Another thing that really strengthened and solidified the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland - before the arrival of the English - was their, if you will, export of Christianity to Europe. When the mighty Roman Empire fell, as all empires must, Europe was in a pretty bad state, and emissaries - all but missionaries really - were sent out from Ireland to do what missionaries love to do, convert the heathen. They met, I believe, with quite a lot of success, but we'll be looking at that in more detail later. Right now, what this serves to show is that after the greatest empire in the known world had been toppled, Ireland emerged as the bastion of Christianity, and would always be. This, perhaps, leads to its once being described as "the land of saints and scholars", as the only people able to read and write at this time were the monks in monasteries. As the world more or less fell into the Dark Ages, Ireland remained a beacon of learning and science, a hope for the world.

So let's recap: our timeline, such as it is, if we accept my definition of Catholicism (and you have to, because who's writing this journal anyway?) looks a little like this:

400 - 1111: Christianity in Ireland. Mostly left alone, no other country interested. Christianity in fact exported from Ireland and in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire Ireland becomes a great centre of learning, education and of course religion. Even the English can learn from us and get converted.

1111 - 1183: Synod of Rath Breasail basically sets up the Catholic Church in Ireland, and there are seventy years or so before King Henry II comes over to invade us. In fairness, at this time England is also Christian/Catholic (there's nothing else to be unless you're a pagan or a Jew) and while the beginning of the Norman conquest and  occupation of Ireland is hardly fun for us, at least we get to keep our religion. Because, you know, it's theirs too.

1533 - 1850 approx: Henry VIII declares himself head of the state Church of England, and from being fidelis defensor (Defender of the Faith) becomes the arch-enemy of the Pope and Catholics, which spells bad news for Ireland. Future kings and queens think this sounds like a ripping idea - some of them taking this literally - and continue the persecution of Catholics right up to the repeal of the Penal Laws and the granting of Catholic Emancipation. During this three hundred year period, the Catholic Church is outlawed by England and, there and here, its members, adherents and leaders hunted, killed and their rights (and possibly other, more vital things) removed. But to its credit, the Catholic Church never gives in, and waits with that ancient saying used by the IRA, tiocaidh ar la (Our day will come) to take power. And to paraphrase an even more ancient Ferengi saying, one of the most prized and sacred tenets of the Catholic faith was "once you have their souls you never give them back."

1850 onwards then, though England (now Britain) remains in control of Ireland, and with a rather important war looming a mere seventy years on the horizon that will take their attention elsewhere, sees the slow and inexorable rebirth and rise of the Catholic Church as it laboriously but patiently and determinedly grasps the sides of the ladder of power and begins to shift its feet from one rung to the next, beginning a climb at whose summit it will hold court over the country, its people, its laws, even, to a great extent, its government.

After three hundred years of being beaten down, somewhat like abused children becoming themselves abusers, the Catholic Church will rise to hold all but total power in Ireland, and especially once independence is achieved, will control, chart and direct the course of the nation's history for the next century or more. It would only be with the shock (!) revelations of clerical abuse against innocent children in the second half of the twentieth century that an almost unshakeable faith (pun intended) in the Catholic Church would be broken in Irish people, and even then, I guarantee there were many many people who refused to believe it, until they had no choice. In fairness, to consider such horror being capable of being practiced is terrible enough, hard enough to contemplate, but by so-called men of the cloth? I suppose in some ways it must have been what it was like when the initial allegations against Jimmy Savile were revealed, before the mass of proof that made it impossible to deny.

Also, in general I don't think people wanted to believe it. Well, who would? But that's not what I mean. I feel practicing Catholics would and probably were ashamed that the people they had trusted, the men and women into whose care they had committed their children, could turn out to be such monsters, and that they felt guilty for having believed in them. It certainly could not have been an easy thing to hear. I don't really recall what effect it had on me, but I wasn't one of those who ever believed these were the perceived "Holy Joes" everyone, or so many, the majority, thought they were, swore they were, fought against those who said they were not, that they might actually just be flawed and often evil men and women. Of course I was shocked and revolted, but I can't remember it coming as that much of a surprise.

That however is all for a later part of this series, and you can bet we will be delving into the abuse scandals in some detail. Right now I just want to use its existence as a way of showing how beaten down, by choice, Irish people were by the Church. The very idea that a priest could do something like that could not even be considered, and of course every priest protested his innocence. Backed up by the Gardai (our police) and by the very government they controlled, who was going to challenge them? But as I say, more of that later.

[Trollheart]

Evidence of the emerging power of the Catholic Church has already been noted above, with the construction of Catholic cathedrals and churches even as the Great Famine stalked the land, something that could not have been possible in the time of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I or Charles I or II! And as for the, ah, protectorship of one Oliver Cromwell... But now with Catholic Emancipation granted Irish Catholics were free to build, as Homer once put it, as big a cage for God as they wanted, as long as they kept them in their own filthy country. Having had to hide for so long, saying mass in hedges and basements of rooms had become irritating and the bishops declared proper churches, and indeed cathedrals, should be built. And so they were, because now, as at all times, even when they had been hunted and on the run, for the Irish people, the word of the Catholic Church was law.

It's not too hard to see why. At a time when the Irish were being vilified and killed and their lands taken just because they wouldn't bend the knee to the Crown and the Anglican Protestant god and denounce the Pope, it was their faith which gave them strength. To their credit, the priests and bishops of the Church fed them: they fed their souls, they fed their hope and, certainly during the Famine, they literally fed their bodies when few others would. We've already seen that Catholic priests not only took part in but led, commanded Irish armies against the oppressor during the 1798 rising, how so many died for their faith, and how their boss, the Pope in Rome, even issued an edict against Queen Elizabeth, dubbing her a heretic, and certainly proving himself on the side of the Irish. The fact that all this denunciation really meant was that the Pope was highly pissed at Her Majesty's daddy for not falling into line and marrying that strumpet against his wishes, was neither here nor there, and the Irish didn't care. They hated the English Queen (and with very good reason), the Pope hated the English Queen (for a perhaps less valid reason) and so they were of one mind.

Once Emancipation had been achieved, it stood to reason that Irish people would flock to their now-more-or-less-legal priests and bishops with many an ecclesiastical high five and get down to the serious business of asking them to boss them around and tell them what to do, which the priests were only too happy to do, believing it, after all, their divine duty. I suppose it would have made little sense, anyway, for anyone to oppose the Church. After three centuries of supporting them in defiance of the English, now that they were allowed to do so, why would they suddenly say "You know what? It was great and exciting when you were illegal and all that - hedge schools, secret masses, priest holes; couldn't get enough of all that stuff. But now you're legit, well, now that I think about it, some of the guff you're spouting I just find hard to credit." Nah, Irish people, like a bunch of fish spotting the tasty worm, gobbled it down and were easily reeled in, heads knocked against the bank and lifeless bodies plopped into the bag to be carried home and devoured, if only with doctrine and gospel. And that was how they wanted it.

And if it wasn't how they wanted it, then their parents or grandparents would want to know why the bloody hell not? As I say, Catholicism had been the equivalent of Covid in Ireland, infecting everyone it touched (except Protestants, who had had their shot of Ascendancy Antidote and were immune) and carried and passed down from generation to generation. When I went to mass as a kid, I didn't ask why I was standing in this cold chamber with a load of people I didn't know as some guy in white vestments droned on up there on his platform and everyone seemed stricken with some sort of verbal disease which only allowed them to answer him in a sort of muted, almost sulky  mutter. I just did it because, well, you had to. You were dragged to church, and you didn't ask why. You didn't dare ask why. If it was good enough for yer ma and yer da and their ma and their da, then it was good enough for you.

Religion by rote. Faith by familiarity. Prayer by pronouncement. The phrase "Not go to church" was about as welcome as bad language or your new album by those rockin' tearaways, Simon and Garfunkel. You went, or your parents would know the reason why. You just simply did not have a choice. Once I had that choice, I chose not to go. Didn't see any point in it. This would of course become a pretty emergent trait in the younger generation over time, who would fail or refuse to see the priests as the walking saints their parents had, and who would be exposed to the scandals involving the Church, nod sagely and say to themselves they knew something was up.

But back to 1850 or so. The Famine was, of course, as I've already said, a time when the Catholic Church needed most to tend to its flock, and in fairness it did. As you'll have read in the article, they weren't the only ones by any means, but there wasn't a lot of help coming from the ruling Ascendancy, and this desire to minister to their people would only have helped the Catholic Church strengthen and confirm the bonds between both, locking the two in a sort of symbiotic relationship that would almost to some extent, to my mind anyway, reflect that of abused women, those either unable or unwilling to break free of their domineering husbands; the ones who "needed this sort of treatment", and were assured by their abusers that they did indeed need and deserve it. The Irish people gave the Catholic Church licence to all but rule over them,and, to extend the metaphor in a somewhat uncomfortable direction, they  bent over and said go for it. And the Church went for it.

You might, naively, imagine that the Catholic Church, having been on the receiving end of persecution due to belief and faith, might have been a little more tolerant, but not a bit of it. The Church we all grew up with was one that brooked no dissenting voice, accepted no other point of view, demanded complete, blind and unquestioning obedience to its ethics. Do you know, there are Catholics even today, in the twenty-first century, who will not eat meat on a Friday? There are those who go on punishing pilgrimages to desolate mountains, climbing the rocky sides in their bare feet (!) for no other reason than to pay penance for their sins, real or imagined. And there are those who religiously (pun very much intended) go to mass every Sunday and sit there reciting phrases that no longer mean anything to them? These are the same people who go bless themselves, go home and beat the wife or growl at the children, or spend all day in the pub and then go home and beat the wife and/or growl at the children, or who head off with their sparkling, freshly-laundered soul to commit adultery on the bad side of town.

If Catholicism is about anything it is hypocrisy. It has to be. How otherwise can we pass a beggar in the street, knowing that Jesus would have given him his coat? Or see a mother suffering abuse and not report it? Or live in relative luxury while others starve? The whole point of being a Catholic is to go through the motions, pretend that you care while really not giving a curse, and being told by the guy up in the pulpit how horrible you are for not really giving a curse, even though in all likelihood he doesn't give a curse either. The symbol of the Catholic Church should not be the crucifix but the finger, the pointing finger, the accusing digit that says this is all your fault, I told you so but you wouldn't listen. Well, that and the insufferably smug smile of those who think they're righteous and nobody else is.

But again, like a drunk on the way home I've wandered considerably from my point. Which was what? Oh yes. The rebirth and rise of the Catholic Church. Well perhaps it might surprise you, but it probably shouldn't, that the first real exercise of power by the Catholic Church in Ireland, outside of its own nation since the Norman Invasion of the twelfth century would take us back to kind of where it all began, the seat of power of the Church, thousands of miles away across the Mediterranean.

[Trollheart]

The Enemy of My Enemy Can Still Kick the Shit out of Me: Ireland Goes to Bat for the Pope

If you've been reading my World Exploration journal, and particularly the article on Marco Polo, or if you know anything of European history, you'll know that around this time Italy was still not one country, but was in fact broken up into many small principalities and kingdoms, states scattered all over the country such as Milan, Florence and Naples. And one of these was known as the Papal States, sitting more or less between Florence and Naples; not the largest of the states, but certainly one of the larger ones. It of course contained Rome. Now across the Tyrrhenian Sea were the two islands, Corsica and Sardinia (well, they still are) and they were more or less on a direct line of sight from the Papal States. Little wonder then that the King of Sardinia fancied taking them. Was it that simple? Hell no. We're talking about a whole bloody war of independence here. But let's see if we can simplify it somewhat while still retaining the main nuggets of information we need.

Okay well as usual one thing remains constant in this universe: ninety percent of the time Trollheart doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Rather than being a cynical land grab by Sardnina, the annexation of the Papal States was in fact part of a plan to unify all of Italy, and mostly the Second War of Italian Independence was fought against Austria, with the help of France. The thing is, back then the pope, rather than being some closeted, ethereal, holy figure staying aloof from the concerns of men and the material world, was more a sort of king of his own state. Given that his position had more or less grown out of the edicts of our pal Constantine, it's not that surprising that the pope was looked upon more as a kind of continuation of the emperors themselves, though without the unbridled power, lions and arenas and a cast of thousands in gods for all occasions of course.

Seen more or less as a secular monarch, popes of the time didn't do much to challenge this view of them, holding standing armies, building defences and supporting whatever faction in various wars and battles they believed would benefit them most. And, as Edmund Blackadder once commented, making a fat pile of cash into the bargain. This then makes it easier to see how a kingdom such as Sardinia could even contemplate taking the Holy City; it wouldn't happen today, at least not by Christians (which of course the Sardinians were) but back then, while there was respect for the pope as the head of the Church, there was also the firm belief that he was really just a man, not God's CEO on Earth, but just another ruler, and most if not all lived up to that image. For proof and a much deeper dive into the papacy through history, see my journal on same. Once you understand the basic nature of, and attitude towards whoever sat in the Vatican (I don't know if it was called that; leave me alone - assume it was, yeah?) at any particular time, it becomes easier to see why a mere king of another state would dare to half-inch his kingdom and cause him to have to hie it hotfoot to wherever he could find sanctuary, as happened here. There could be no "Roman Republic" (I think they called it) while a basic emperor sat in one of the states, and so he had to go. And go he did, and most expeditiously, too, if not willingly.

What has all this to do with the Irish Catholic Church, I hear you ask? Well naturally the Irish were none too pleased to hear that their beloved pontiff had been run out of Rome on a rail and that Italy was becoming a Republic, somewhat in the mould of France after the Revolution of 1789, and they rallied to his defence. The bishops immediately denounced the Italian revolutionaries from every pulpit in Ireland, took up a small collection for the poor pope which came to, it says, eighty grand. Now, I don't know if this is meant to be that amount in today's money, but if it was in nineteenth century terms, then I've worked out (or Google has, let's be honest and where would we be without it?) that such a sum corresponds to over 12 million today. I seriously doubt such an amount even existed in Ireland at that time (though I could be wrong) so I'm going to assume it was the eighty grand as stated. If so, that was still a huge sum.

But money itself, though surely welcome to Pius IX, who may have been wondering where his next clean cassock was coming from (not) was not enough, and so over a thousand Irish soldiers signed up to go protect what was, at the time, left of His Holiness's holdings. One thing you can guarantee about we Irish though is that we love to fight, and if we're left without an enemy to fight at the moment, sure we'll fight among ourselves. Witness the worry of one of the officers stationed in the Papal States, sent home with an account: "There are about 150 Irishmen in Macerata. About 40 of them are from Kerry; these latter have given a deal of annoyance; nothing but discontent and fighting, & wishing for this and for that." Sounds about right for Kerrymen. He goes on: ""One of them gave a characteristic answer to Father Bonaventura when he asked him to keep quiet. Oh, he said, we came out to fight, and 'till we meet Garibaldi we must have a spree amongst ourselves." "They were kicking up such rows in Macerata," he reported finally, "that we have been told, the people there are getting up a petition to the Government to have them removed. You see we are Paddies ever more: all the way from the Kingdom of Kerry."

Fucking hilarious! I bet poor old Pius was thinking why didn't these bastards just stay in Ireland instead of coming over here and embarrassing me? Chastening enough to be run out of your own territories, now I have to deal with the reputation these drunken, ignorant idiots bring with them! Heavenly Father, what did I do to deserve this? No, really: I mean, I know my armies killed thousands and all that Vatican gold I have squirrelled away, but come on now: this is a bit beyond the Pale, isn't it?

In short, it seems the Irish recruits were made promises by their priests which amazed the ones in Italy; things like being able to command their own brigade, receiving far more pay than they did and having their own uniform. Not receiving such considerations they did what every Irishman abroad does and has done since time immemorial: they got drunk and caused trouble, to the point where it was said that even Spanish soldiers would be preferable to the Irish. They also paid homage to another sacred Irish tradition and went on strike for higher pay. At least reports did speak of their all but Herculean courage, but combined with their fondness for the drink and their tendency to pick fights with anyone who happened to be handy, friend or foe, it was pretty obvious that as a good idea, this had ranked right up there with King Harold taunting William the Conqueror with that famous phrase "I'm going to win this battle and send you home, may God grant my eye be pierced with an arrow if I lie!"

As history records that Italy was eventually united, the efforts of the Irish, though valiant if perhaps misguided (certainly inebriated and shambolic), were doomed to fail, and in the end the pope was told he could have Vatican City, take it or leave it. He took it, and the Irish trudged home disconsolately, maybe trying to find a pub they had not been banned from.

Amusing all all this is, what it does demonstrate though is the binding alliance between Rome and Ireland, between the Italian Catholic Church and the Irish one. Even more so, it shows the all but fanatical devotion Irish Catholics had to the Pope and to Rome. Previously, of course, the Catholic Church had a history of siding with its people against the enemy (mostly) but that was in the interests of the country. Here, Irish people were basically asked - encouraged, ordered even - to enter a conflict that was nothing to do with them, to travel more than a  thousand miles from their home country (and presumably many of them had never even left Ireland before) and potentially die for the pope. And they did. There was no actual gain to Ireland here, nothing to do with Irish independence or even, to some extent, sticking it to the British (though they must have chafed at how the hated English crowed over the imminent demise of the Papal States and the perceived destruction of the power of the pope, all but the end of Catholicism) yet they were willing - initially anyway, before they realised how duped they had been and how they had been used as political pawns - to lay down their lives in a foreign land not at a time of war.

Add in the fact that the idea of Pius being evicted was cheered on by the auld enemy, England, and you had another reason for Irish people to go on kind of their own Crusade, which no doubt involved much drinking of Italian wine on the way. To, you know, fortify themselves for the fight ahead. I;d be interested to see if the Irish brigades actually fought for the pope, or just guarded his lands, because if the latter then this could be the first instance of an Irish peacekeeping force, something we have become very good at and which has been woven into the tradition of our military. Mostly because we can't fight worth shit and any country looking for backup says "other than Ireland please." Oh, and of course, we're a neutral country. Snigger. Oh no wait: reading further on, and to give them credit, in between the bouts of drunkenness and attacking innocents they did actually fight, and by all accounts fought well. Still, like most times Ireland chose a side in history, they lost.

[Trollheart]

Ireland's other auld enemy, the potato blight, came back to visit twice more after the Great Famine, and in 1861 and 1862 the people were again more concerned with trying to stay alive and keep their families fed than with chasing the pope around Italy and picking up his... well, you get the idea. Not by any means due to the return of the Irish brigades to their homeland, the Papal States were annexed and would collapse completely ten years later, when the annoying French garrison protecting the now-returned-and-barely-tolerated pope in Rome were called home to take part in the Franco-Prussian War. and the King of Sardinia saw a chance to move in. Somewhat like "legitimate businessmen offering their protection" to His Holiness, they dropped the pretence when the pope told them to fuck off (possibly blessing them first, but that's not recorded) and declared war instead.

There really wasn't any contest. The tiny army the pope was left with did what it could, and 12 of them even died in his cause (amazingly, less than a third of the enemy casualties! Maybe they died laughing) but the "war" was over in ten days. The Siege of Rome began September 19 1870 and ended the next day. The Papal States were formally annexed to the new Kingdom of Italy and the pope was allowed to stay in Rome, but he couldn't go anywhere else. Effectively, he became a prisoner. Why the traditionally Catholic powers such as France and Spain did not come to his aid I don't know - well, France was a little busy, true. But Spain? Surely this would not stand? But it did, and in fact it wouldn't be until the next century that the city state of Vatican City would be recognised as a separate entity to Italy, by, of all people, Mussolini, in 1929.

Back in Ireland though, the Catholic Church was about to start building its own powerbase, and the man who would be seen as its principal architect was this guy.

His Eminence Cardinal Paul Cullen (1803 - 1878)

The first ever Catholic Irish Cardinal, Cullen would go on to become Archbishop of Ireland (the first? Let me check: no, but perhaps the first not to be controlled by Canterbury, or something) and loom large over the emerging landscape of not only Irish religion but Irish politics. He is considered to have been one of the most powerful figures of the late nineteenth century, and laid the foundations for what is seen today as the modern Catholic Church in Ireland. HIs first major appointment was as Archbishop of Armagh at the end of 1849, where he promptly convened a synod which concentrated on, in the midst of the Great Famine, with his flock dying all around him of starvation and disease, the ecclesiastical disciplines of the Church. Right. I'm sure that fed many a family.

To be entirely fair to him, he did start the Mansion House Relief Committee in 1862, along with the Lord Mayor of Ireland, in the wake of the second, well, third bad harvest. In 1852 he became Archbishop of Dublin, and fourteen years later, in 1866 he became the first ever Irish cardinal.

His main mission, given to him by Rome, was to essentially bring the somewhat fragmented and unruly Catholic Church in Ireland under Roman control; to have rigorous rules, to set agendas and ensure Catholic (i.e., Roman) discipline was enforced throughout Ireland. People would have to worship at set times, on set days, and for a set amount of time. Sundays would be strictly observed as being a day of rest, wakes and gatherings at shrines were to be discouraged if not actually banned, and into all walks of life, the "new" Catholic Church would push its sticky fingers, no more so than in the thorny question of education.

It may be remembered that a split had developed between Daniel O'Connell's Old Ireland and the Young Irelanders over, among other things, the differences in opinion over the attempt by London to set up non-denominational schools for the education of both Catholic and Protestant children in the one building. Cullen was one who argued fiercely against this, and so the Catholic School system was to be born, foisting upon generations of soon-to-be-scarred children the dreaded nuns and the slightly less dreaded Christian Brothers. To be crude about it, now that the Penal Laws were gone, the Catholic Church in Ireland was not fucking around anymore, and there were going to be some major changes.

What did the British think of this? Nothing much, so far as I can see. They let the Irish get on with it, glad to be rid of their constant whines for equality and freedom of worship, and though Cullen's calls for the dissolution of the Church of Ireland may have rankled, they didn't exactly cause the Crown to send in troops. Richard Kileen in his A Brief History of Ireland describes the many churches that began springing up all over the south due to Cullen's influences as "spiritual factories", and this does give a sense of what was happening. People were being driven, like workers, to these non-Satanic mills where they would be forced to endure long masses, even longer sermons, and from which the absence of anyone would be noted with severe criticism reflected, at the parish priest's direction, in the congregation against the sinner. Catholicism was becoming big business, in an ecclesiastical sense, which means, I guess, you could call Archbishop Cullen a kind of spiritual entrepreneur, a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller making sure God's word got pumped into the ears and hearts and souls of his clients.

1867 was a great year for Cullen and his fellow Catholics as British Prime Minister William Gladstone, eager to calm tensions and prevent risings in Ireland, authorised the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, making the Catholic Church its new official state church. Other than in Ulster, there can't have been many Irish people who mourned the passing of the hated church foisted upon them by London, an establishment they had been required, by law, to pay for, even if they didn't walk through its doors. To the Catholics of Ireland the end of the Church of Ireland must have been an event akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, of course, there was another, worse one just waiting to be built, and it would surround, overshadow and drive every aspect of Irish life for the next century and more.

Though traditionally, as we have seen, the Catholic Church not only gave its blessing to, but in many cases took part in various armed rebellions and uprisings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Cullen was against what he saw as secret societies, publicly denouncing the likes of Young Ireland and its later, more militant offshoot, the Fenian Brotherhood, which would in turn become the IRB, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and eventually the IRA. He thereby split the loyalties of Irish Catholics, who had always been able prior to this to rely on the support of the Church for their rebellions, and now had to choose between nationalism and obedience to the Church. Even so, Cullen did intervene when the Fenian leader, Thomas F. Burke, was sentenced to hang by the British, managing to gain the man a stay of execution and then a reprieve.

Something I find interesting and perhaps a little sad is the disparity, in fact the enmity between Irish and English Catholics. You would have thought (well I would anyway) that in a time when they were under the weight of the Penal Laws (remember, these didn't originally just affect Irish Catholics but those in England as well) that all Catholics would have found common cause, but no. The traditional and long-seated hatred of the English by the Irish and the contempt of the Irish for the English seems to have transcended religious borders and matters of faith: an Englishman was an Englishman even if he was a fellow Catholic, and vice versa. This meant that, apart from battling the Protestants as the Catholic Church in Ireland struggled to re-establish itself, it also fought against the unwelcome influence of English Catholics in Rome, essentially vying with the English for the pope's attention. Once an Englishman, always an Englishman, eh?