HISTORY: COLIN MURPHYreviews A Challenge to Democracy: Militant Catholicism in Modern Irelandby Maurice Curtis, The History Press, 256pp, €16.99
THE BOOKLET'S title was unintentionally suggestive: Wanted – A New Woman. But this was neither a call to feminist action nor an extended lonely hearts ad.
It was 1928, and those seeking the New Woman had formed a new organisation for their purpose: The Modest Dress and Deportment Crusade (MDDC).
The new woman was, paradoxically, to be a rejection of the “Modern Woman”, with her “mannish” habits more appropriate to “the savages of Central Africa”, and her predilection for wearing dresses that fell less than four inches below the knee.
Welcome to the world of Catholic Action, a movement inspired by papal encyclicals to promote lay activism in public life. In other countries, it encompassed political engagement and campaigns for social justice. In Ireland, it focused on hemlines and communists – or as Maurice Curtis puts it, “vigilance and propaganda”.
The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland issued 2,000 publications during the first half of the century; less than 50 of these referred to questions of social or economic reform.
The Catholic Young Men’s Society urged its members to be the “Church’s storm troops” in the fight against Communism. Its Galway branch reported that the vigilance of its members in the Post Office had ensured that “certain literature addressed to a Communist agent in Galway had not reached him”.
On one front, the Catholic Actionists were fighting a losing battle – the tone of their proclamations on moral issues was that of the despairing rather than the belligerent. On another front, they were fighting a fictitious one. There was no communist threat. There were, at the time, just 90 communists in Ireland, reports Curtis.
Curtis’s research is rigorous, but these examples have the effect of undermining his central thesis: that Catholic Action constituted “a challenge to democracy”.
He marshals much evidence for the extent of Catholic Action, but little for any real challenge to democratic politics. This may be because the peculiar manifestation of Catholic Action in Ireland saw it restrained by a paranoid hierarchy, directed away from pressing social or political questions in favour of keeping Ireland free of fictitious Reds and naughty books. Many of the ostensible successes of Catholic Action documented by Curtis were undermined by subsequent political and civic action (or inaction).
A censorship board was established, but the public failed to refer publications to it. John Charles McQuaid and the Jesuit Edward Cahill corresponded at length with Eamon de Valera on the 1937 Constitution, but their advice on the crucial question of recognition of the Catholic Church was rebuffed.
Even the debacle of the Mother and Child Scheme, in which Noel Browne’s proposal for free healthcare was defeated by Catholic opposition, was not quite what it seemed: Eamon de Valera’s subsequent government succeeded in introducing many of Browne’s reforms, with less drama and less opposition than Browne had provoked.
Curtis’s account of the latter is weak, and his book loses steam as the 20th century progresses, ultimately providing little insight into the influence of Catholic Action on politics in recent years, such as in the first Lisbon referendum. Though his account of Catholic vigilance activities is chilling, there is little hard evidence given for its impact: the strongest comes from a Sean O’Faolain short story describing a man turning back from a reportedly “indecent” theatre performance when he sees two men writing down the names of those who enter.
There was, however, a significant challenge to democracy posed within Irish Catholicism, alluded to by Curtis when he references the church’s concern for “charity” at the expense of “justice”. The failure to perceive the poor as citizens with rights, and to agitate on their behalf, facilitated the emergence of an industrial school system that was chronically abusive.
The failure to cultivate an independent lay apostolate (which Curtis rigorously documents) facilitated both blindness to that abuse and attempts to cover it up. Without addressing the genesis and manifestations of this culture of abuse more explicitly, the rich detail of Curtis’s account risks being consigned to the footnotes of the real story of modern Irish Catholicism.
Colin Murphy is a freelance journalist and former Dublin Correspondent for the Tablet
