While the Eucharistic Congress, organised to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of St Patrick's arrival in Ireland, was taking place in Dublin 70 years ago this weekend, the Irish writer, mystic and agricultural reformer George William Russell (AE) was holidaying beside the sea in Donegal.
There is a story that when a thunderstorm broke out in the sky in the direction of the capital, he stood half-naked on the rocks, shaking his fists and shouting through his voluminous beard: "Give it to them! Give it to them!" The prayer of the "Hairy Fairy" (as D. P. Moran called him) for the soaking of the multitudes attending the congress went unanswered.
Obviously AE didn't approve of the outpouring of Catholic devotion that was witnessed in Dublin between June 22nd and 26th, 1932. Some bigots in Northern Ireland clearly didn't approve either because there were attacks in Ballymena, Larne and Portadown on people travelling to and from the event. But no sort of disapproval could deter Irish Catholics from attending the event in their hundreds of thousands.
It was the greatest international celebration of Catholicism in the history of independent Ireland and the crowds that assembled for it were vaster than any that gathered again in the country until the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979.
Religious spectacle
There wasn't a town or village in Ireland that was unaffected by the congress, and probably not a Catholic household either. Cleaning up and decorating became the order of the day and neighbours, whether in individual homes or towns and villages, vied with each other to produce the most impressive religious spectacle. To have travelled through rural and urban Ireland at the time must have been an amazing visual experience.
The material culture of the congress is highly significant. There were a number of large temporary structures erected, especially elaborate shrines created mainly in the tenement areas of Dublin. In addition, a wide array of souvenir objects was made for the occasion. Also notable was the use of cutting-edge technology like spectacular lighting effects, skywriting and the largest PA system in the world. These, together with the design of the crowd, have been compared, perhaps unfairly, to European fascist spectacles of the 1930s such as the Nuremberg rallies.
The Irish Independent and the newly established Irish Press, the newspapers of the Catholic majority, wrote with great enthusiasm about the Eucharistic Congress. Indeed, the Irish Press, the mouthpiece of the newly empowered Fianna Fáil, used the occasion to point the lesson for Anglo-Irish relations: one editorial characterised the congress as "the august resurrection of a nation". Another editorial, recalling the missionary era of the "Island of Saints and Scholars", declared: "If we can get ourselves to realise all that has gone out to other nations from this land, we shall find it easy to stand stoutly before the nations we have so gifted for the rights that are still withheld from us."
The Irish Times, which was then the paper of the Protestant minority, also wrote favourably about the congress but, as Fintan O'Toole, editor of this newspaper's Book of the Century observed a couple of years ago, try as it might, it "could not submerge itself in the orthodox culture of Catholic Ireland". In its account of the huge open-air Mass in the Phoenix Park, which up to a million people attended, the paper hinted at "typically Protestant unease in the presence of a devout Catholic throng".
John McCormack
This is what an Irish Times reporter wrote of the occasion: "The beautiful voice of John McCormack. . .came clear and bell-like, borne without a tremor over the whole, silent space, midway through the Service. It was at that moment of the elevation of the Host, the supreme point in Catholic ritual, that one fully realised the common mind that swallowed up all individuality in the immense throng. Flung together in their hundreds of thousands, these people were merely part of a great organism which was performing a tremendous act of faith, with no more ego in them than the sands themselves."
Ten years before, Fianna Fáil in a previous incarnation had been the party of the excommunicated because of the Hierarchy's denunciation of the anti-Treaty position during the Civil War. But on coming to power in February 1932 the party moved quickly to show its Catholic credentials. It recommended measures such as suspending Dáil sittings on church holidays, starting Dáil meetings with a prayer and displaying a crucifix in the Dáil chamber.
Leading part
The Eucharistic Congress gave the party the perfect opportunity to dispel any lingering doubts about its fidelity to the Catholic Church and it made the most of it. Ministers took a leading part in the ceremonies, with Eamon de Valera and Sean T. O'Kelly acting as canopy bearers, along with W.T. Cosgrave, the leader of the opposition, for the papal legate, Cardinal Lauri. As the historian Ronan Fanning put it: "Unprecedented and frequent joint appearances under circumstances of great grandeur and devotion by leaders of Church and State. . .effectively set the seal of church approval upon the new regime."
Could an event like the 1932 Eucharistic Congress occur today in Ireland? I believe it could. Despite the supposed decline in faith and despite the crisis the Catholic Church has been undergoing in recent years, the remarkable reception accorded the relics of St Thérèse on their journey round Ireland last year persuades me that people would come out in numbers as vast as those witnessed 70 years ago.